Travel Reference
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huge mountain ranges on the borders of the Cape. She was getting old and cranky. She had
broken down once in the Karroo where I had to make an emergency repair to a broken fuel
line, and I could no longer trust her. I thought it best to sell her while she was still running,
and in her place I bought a nice four hundred cc motorcycle, which was all that I could
afford at that stage.
I communicated with Judi via telephone and letters, and six weeks after I arrived, Judi and
Déjà vu arrived, within a week of each other. She had competently, as usual, made all the
necessary arrangements with the trucking company to load up the boat at the Vaal Dam,
and truck it the one thousand miles overland to Simon's Town and into the False Bay Yacht
Club, where I had enrolled Judi and I as members. The day finally arrived, and I went to
pick Jude up at the airport on my motorbike. She was understandably taken aback by this,
but after I explained, she grinned, and organized for her bags to be sent to my latest little
apartment on the outskirts of town.
I was thrilled to see her and found I had really missed her sweet, sunny nature, her intelli-
gent approach to life, and her great organizational skills. She made things happen! It wasn't
too long before she had found a charming but small cottage in Fish Hoek, which was a little
town not far from Simon's Town where Déjà vu was now moored. She managed to find a
great job with one of the local newspapers, The Cape Times, selling advertizing space, as
this was her specialty. I continued to work in a boat building workshop, but after a couple
of months became quite bored with my restrictive duties and, after securing another job
with a smaller boatbuilder, finally resigned.
Let it be stated that I owed my life and my boating career to this charming, intelligent, and
dynamic woman. Judi's father had an IQ bordering on genius; her French mother, Miriam,
was an incredibly accomplished businesswoman and loving mother to Judi and her broth-
er, Steve, as well as to all she met. I never met Jude's father, as he passed away in a tragic
accident, but knew her stepfather, Vic, when I first started courting Judi. Vic and Miriam
were very well known around the social circles of Johannesburg and the area in which they
lived, which was about eighty miles south of Johannesburg, a beautiful little community
situated on the banks of the large Loch Vaal River, which runs into the Vaal Dam, where
we first had launched Déjà vu.
Those were halcyon days down at the Loch Vaal. Judi and I were so much in love; her par-
ents were always so wonderful to me; the beautiful property that Vic had spent a lifetime
building was the most romantic place, with a large, well-designed and classic garden, huge
shady trees and a dazzling, green lawn that sprawled right down to the river bank. There
he had built a beautiful white boathouse in which he had moored his old Chriscraft motor
launch, and his son Denny had moored his beautifully converted lifeboat into an adorable
replica of a classic, old gaff rigged sailboat.
