Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter Eighteen
Memories of Cape Town.
Judi and I in Simon's Town.
Judi nearly dies!
We get a son.
Car crash.
Sobriety.
The memories took hold and brought me back to a time when cruising the world was a
fireside dream. I had arrived in Cape Town in 1980 at the tender age of twenty-six, when
South Africa was still under white rule. It was and still is a fascinating place, steeped in the
cultures of the several different nationalities that had immigrated and settled there in South-
ern Africa's pearl of the Cape. Market gardens had been created there in the seventeenth cen-
tury for the scurvied sailors of the great Dutch East India Trading Company, and so began
the exploration, colonizing, and settling of South Africa. It all began here in the Cape of
Good Hope, as it was then called.
I stayed with friends of Judi's when I first arrived and moved into a residential hotel a few
weeks later. The Olympic Hotel was situated smack dab over the little, winding main road of
the Kalkbay Fishing Harbor, and, from my room, I could see the colorful, old wooden fish-
ing boats that swept in and out after a day of fishing. I could hear the cursing and laughter
of these simple fisherfolk, mainly the Cape Coloreds as they were then called. Progeny of
the white and black people of the Cape, they formed their own sad, misguided, and confused
race of people. There was a lot of hard drinking, stories and experiences loudly repeated,
raucous laughter and at times squabbles and fights; it was all very entertaining up on the
first floor of my hotel room window. My grimy, white curtains billowed continually from
the salty southeaster, and I was in heaven!
I have yet to this day never found a more brisk, invigorating place to sail than the False
Bay, which is southeast of the city and forms the bay adjacent to the Cape Point. It is ap-
proximately twenty miles wide and about ten miles deep inland. In the summer, when that
southeaster blows around fifteen knots, it kicks up friendly, little white caps, matching the
sweet white chests of the various frigates, albatross, terns and seagulls that wheel about in
the sunlight. With a well-found boat, sails taut and asleep, sheets thrumming in their stays,
and the wind hard on the nose on a starboard tack, and the crisp salty air so pure it hurts your
lungs, there is no finer sailing in the world!
I had to finally part company with my faithful old companion, the yellow VW van that had
brought me down from Johannesburg safely through the two Karroo deserts and across the
