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Saldanah Bay may be one of the world's finest natural harbours, but it is a very confusing place.
Firstly, Saldanah Bay is actually Table Bay, for the Portuguese admiral Antonio Saldanah named it Saldanhah when he arrived in Table Bay in 1503. A hundred years later, the Dutch moved his name to the great harbour up the West Coast - even though Saldanah had never been there, and probably didn't know it existed.
Secondly, Saldanah Bay is one of the world's richest stores of oysters..... except that you never see them, for they've been dead for a very long time. They gathered in their billions in Langebaan Lagoon, a 16km long off-shoot of the bay which was belatedly saddled with Antonio's surname. But things grew too hot for the ancient molluscs when the temperature in the lagoon rose 10 degrees during some far off aberration of Nature. The result is a graveyard creek of 30 million tons of oyster shells, lying seven metres deep in water never more than six metres deep.
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The bay itself is deep enough for passenger liners and tankers. Saldanah would have been Cape Town, if only there had been fresh water on that barren shore. But now that water has been piped in, Saldanah has flourished, not so much like Cape Town did before it, but more like Belville-by-the Sea - an un-pretty sight, with pipelines and cranes and ore-carriers and floodlights.
Despite being "one of the greatest natural harbours on Earth", Saldanah is littered with shipwrecks. However, it was a safe place for pirates in the good old days. In modern times treasure was taken from the "Meresteijn", sunk in 1702. Silver and coins worth R500 000 were recovered by divers, one of them using a wooden barrel as a diving bell. Another wreck, the Dutch ship "Middelberg" was set on fire and sunk by the filthy British in 1781.
As these thoughts were creaking through my mind, Nicky was about to sink yet another great ship. We were sailing East, at a fast clip - straight for a bloody-great tanker, five storeys high, moored in our path. The ore-carrier was, we were told, "under arrest" for failing to pay its dues. It looked like it was going to get its dues right this minute.
"Sail close under her," said the Cap'n. The rest of us just closed our eyes. When we opened them, the harbour of Club Mykenos was dead ahead. A few miles on we furled sails in a high wind and motored into the tiny yacht harbour; found a berth facing into the wind, and went into our complicated ropes and bollards routine. . . .on sleepless nights I ravel and unravel a docking/departing sailship with consumate skill, but I'd hate to try it in real life again. However, I try to maintain, through regular and conscientious practice, my skill at the berthing-bottle-opening rites. Club Mykonos was, when we docked, also "under arrest" in a way. It too could not pay its dues, which meant that it was fairly empty of visitors. Yet it has, when approached from the sea, a pleasing, almost romantic Grecian ambience. We explored the warren of whitewashed villas; copies of Mykonos obviously; and enjoyed the barren coast beyond. Let me log now, the most vivid memories of all:
- Delicious hot showers.
- Dinner at an absolutely stationary table in a Greek taverna
- A stroll down the broad, well-lit floating jetty to our boat where Irish coffees miraculously appeared on deck.
- Lying snug in the cockpit, gazing up at twinkling strings of lights on the hillside, and trying to hear the dew as it dropped heavily onto my sleepingbag.
DAY 4, Pre-sparrow hour:
Some swine is revving a motor-boat across the water. Gulls and terns are mewing like sheep (like sheep?) and circling among the masts above my head. A lithe blonde emerges from the catamaran moored opposite us and heads for the showers. I forgive her the clatter she makes on the floating plank-way.
Wander along the breakwater to watch the world awaken. By 8.45 the still air has given way to a brisk breeze. By 9.00 I calculate it is safe to go back and find breakfast ready.
Soon afterwards, taking advantage of the shift in wind from east to West, we leave hurriedly from Club Mykonos harbour and head into the wind at a strong seven knots. Cheryl is at the helm. We just miss the impounded ore-carrier, "Great Eagle" again, this time avoiding her nose, but ruffling her stern feathers. The line Cheryl has taken allows us to skim passed the rocks at the northern end of the bay without having to tack. (Although some of us tacked across the deck of Thor as Cheryl navigated passed "Great Eagle".)
We sail around the spikey corner and head up the coast, averaging six knots with a following wind. Lots of seals and birds, but the dolphins in these waters are shy. Our mark is Cape Columbine, due North, where the sealanes from the West, the South and the North converge.
We round the cape, after sailing close by Two Mile Rock, and later negotiating a smaller spout of surf which marks a second dangerous rock. Passed Paternoster, and sliding down small swells to St Helena Bay.
St Helena Bay was "discovered" by Vasco de Gama on his first voyage of exploration. He sailed into the calm waters of this sweeping, open stretch of coastline on 7 November 1497....St Helena's Day. (Which gives him an alibi for not being on St Helena Island on that day, but St Helena obviously was not short of admirers). Da Gama anchored in the bay for four weeks, during which time his sailors began to fraternise with the locals - well, the women mainly. This resulted in a fracas with the Hottentots.....the first recorded clash between Europeans and Africans on the sub-continent. The racial violence was a precedent that became a nasty habit.
Two other nasty habits were overtaking us in St Helena Bay. The first, a string of trawlers throbbing down a straight line in the sea, hell-bent in not deviating one inch, unless it was to run us down. The second was the sea itself, slapping against the side of our boat and throwing cold buckets of spray over the unwary.
In these famous "still waters", a Force 7, rising to Force 8 wind (30 -36 knots) coming off the land from the South-East put up long lines of advancing, choppy waves which flew over the bow, sometimes sending spray the length of the yacht and into the cockpit. It gave us a sense of battling speed. At eight knots in these conditions it was the most exhilarating sail we had yet experienced.
The chimney tower of Port Owen rose up to become our beacon as we battled to reach harbour before sunset. At eighteenhundred and fifteen hours we passed the two breakwaters guarding the mouth of the Berg River, just as a deep-sea trawler emerged. We wound our way passed the fishing harbour on the right bank and moved upstream to a T Jetty about half way to the Marina where all other yachts were moored. We could go no further for the tide was running hard, pushed by a near-gale.
Cap'n gave us a whole new rehearsal on the bollard-breaking routine of rope-tying-hitching-etc. Despite all the instructions, with Barry and Nicky ready to pole-vault ashore, we twice missed our berth before being pulled in after a flurry of jumping and rope-throwing. Needless to say, I was alert and tensely on duty; ready to open a bottle for the essential rites the moment the Cap'n stopped fussin'.
In the gloaming we walked along the marshes and wetlands; through a caravan park; and along the tarred well-lit promenade surrounding the marina yacht basin. We found a restaurant and clubhouse where crew could phone anxious loved-ones (personally, I think it is more romantic to send your message in a bottle carried by the sea), then returned to the comfort of our rocking cabin.....a pleasant walk, past ever-welcome non-rocking toilets.
The ship's fridge had packed up, so Craig and Nicky and Barry cooked all the meat and bacon scheduled for the rest of the week.
The dinner menu was good for a small ship. It consisted of:
chicken; boerewors; steak; beef and pork sausage and lamb chops - plus a major meal prepared by Lerie; plus red wine to top the beer and whiskey and warmth-giving sherry; with a final topping of Irish Coffee.
Slept like a top.
It was not possible to drink all the beer supplies, as I suggested when the shock of the news of the fridge breakdown was announced. Fortunately, an empty, non-working fridge filled with beer bottles stays cold for days, we discovered.
DAY 5 MARCH 11, End-of-nightjar-hour:
Awoke to the cry of gulls and splash of diving birds. A walk along the wetlands to the Caravan Park for a shower revealed much bird-life. I spotted a blackwinged stilt; marsh sandpiper, and my first pectoral sandpiper, vividly speckled, and a rare barred godwit on the opposite bank. Cheryl joined me as we watched hundreds of pelicans, and a number of herons - the purple, the grey, the blackheaded - all on the same half-kilometre wide stretch of shore. An orange-throated longclaw showed off in the early sunlight. We followed all kinds of small birds - stints; plovers - then closely watched the terns sitting on our T-jetty a few yards from our deck.
Weather report bad; south-east winds imprisoning us in Port Owen.
Suddenly, at 11.30 hours, the wind shifts a few degrees to the West and we make haste to depart; pushed this time by an outgoing tide. The manager of the Marina arrives just in time to offer us hospitality in his yacht basin! Waving goodbye, we float passed the trawlers near the mouth and sail back into St Helena Bay - and a healthy wind which sends us streaming westwards at 7 knots.
Lines of trawlers converging from two directions on the fishing harbours along St Helena Bay. We make the headland easily, but stay on a 195 degree course, heading North-West, instead of the desired South-West, flying on a "westering wind".
A long, long tack reaching, I estimate, the Latterlies (or whatever the winds are named) off the east coast of South America. Certainly Africa disappears behind us. Finally we come about and try to head South-East, hoping to reach Saldanah Bay on the return tack. Instead the yacht will head up no more than 165 deg. . .returning, it seemed, to the same spot from whence we had raced out to sea so many hours previously.
Finished with its little joke, the wind disappeared, and we put on the "Japanese sail" (Cap'n's little joke) and motored directly down the coast....but averaging less than 4 knots, without discounting the current pushing us back.
At sunset, I was on the look-out for the bursting spray of "Two Mile Rock". We could see the plume of spray, dead ahead on the horizon, and it seemed a good idea to keep it in sight for as long as possible as we approached it in falling light.
But suddenly I saw spray leaping far higher in a giant column on our starboard bow, a long distance off.
"These rocks keep moving," I informed the Cap'n.
So do the trawlers; three of them overtaking us far to starboard.
There is nothing like mobile rocks at sea to keep you alert at sunset. Thus all of us saw the "black rock" suddenly rise from the ocean. A column of water shot up; and ten minutes later the same spout rose from another spot.
At the climax of the sunset, when the entire western horizon was ablaze, the whale - it was a big Right whale - popped up about 400 metres from our boat and waved its tail, silhouetted against the glowing sky. The dance was repeated before the whale disappeared with the last sun's rays.
What more could one expect on such a night?
Darkness fell, but within minutes we saw a blaze of light on the sea, with winking pinpoints of red and gold near it.
"Aurora Borah Aura Beezlebubs?" I ventured, knowing a thing or two about Nature's tricks with beams through her giant prism.
"Naval target", said Cap'n softly. And in a flash we all remembered the broadcast warnings of naval target practice on
this stretch of empty shore. (The previous day we had seen jet aircraft whizzing by our boat, and watched fighter aerobatics over Saldanha Bay).
Now we were watching explosions and tracer shells light up the sky. Personally, I prefer whales against the sunset.
We sailed on peacefully. The moon rose over our stern, providing us with a silver and gold wake as we throbbed steadily down the dark shore. At last we were able to turn two degrees East and move towards some lights on the Port bow. But not too close; remembering the sharp teeth rising from turbulent seas off the north-west headland of Saldanah. We rounded the point, and steered once again passed the lighted, looming shape of the impounded "Great Eagle"; finally tying up at Club Mykonos amid the usual ropes-and-knots routine after midnight.
At last. "Sundowners" at about one in the morning (Oh One Hundred Hours or nearing the Dog Watch as we sailors say), and a slightly late dinner of potato smothered in bacon and mushrooms which Cheryl had started to prepare hours ago and well out to sea. Clearly a tempermental cook, Cheryl took exception to a swaying stove and a rocking kitchen, and came up on deck, green with anger. "Need fresh air", she had explained.
So we dined in harbour between moon-set and sunrise, and hit the sack as the Dog Watch waned.
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