Sailing Course in Langebaan

9th April 2010

No politics today, just want to reflect on the sailing course that we attended. When we arrived at Cape Town Airport we had to find our luggage on a very poorly marked conveyor. This was not the case at Oliver Tambo in Joey’s that is well marked out at the luggage conveyors. After finding our luggage we proceeded to Avis rent a car to collect our bottom of the range Kia and travelled by road to Langebaan. The first impression that you get of Cape Town when you get out of the airport is the view of Table Mountain. This beautiful scene is then destroyed when you glance next to the freeway and see all the tin shacks and the absolute poverty of Africa.

As you drive along to Langebaan you leave the built up area and start to see the natural Cape bush called fynbos, looks a bit like a semi desert and has very few trees. Once we arrived in Langebaan we found the sail training school offices in the mall quite easily from the directions that they supplied, not that I believe you could really get lost here as their is not very much out there. The owner of the sailing school Jaco met us at the office and led us down to the marina at Mykonos.

Jaco then left us at the marina to look around whilst he tried to organise a yacht for us to use for the sailing course as the Wildcat that he used before had been sold. After a couple of hours of walking around on the marina and waiting we started to become worried that Jaco was not able to arrange a catamaran for the course and called him to ask for a progress report so that we could unload the rental car and have a place to put our stuff, and a place to sleep for the night. We agreed to sleep on a L34 for that night as the cat that Jaco had arranged would only become available later that night. So we unpacked the rental car and met two other guys on the L34 that were also on course. We grabbed an early night and in the morning went off to Avis to return the rental and met at the sailing school to start our course.

Day 1: Spent till about lunch time at the training school office and discussed planned routes, and bought some provisions from Pick and Pay. Thereafter we moved our stuff from the L34 to an Ocean Spirit 401.
The owner of the cat then took us for a quick motor sail in the Harbour to show Jaco the basic workings of the yacht. After we dropped the owner and his son back at the marina, we motor sailed to Saldana bay yacht club for an evening braai. On the way we noticed that the Port engine does not pump water and was starting to overheat and smoke, the owner had told us that he had a problem with the port motor and had just replaced the impeller, but this was obviously not the only problem. We continued with our journey and tied up at the yacht club, after the braai we went to sleep.

Day 2 : Motored around the harbour for about three hours trying to fix the port engine, but to no avail. Then we were supposed to sail on to Dassen island but Jaco decided that we should rather head for danger bay. We sailed in swells of about three meters to danger bay and dropped anchor for the night, in a beautiful and totally secluded anchorage. We set the anchor alarm and had to reset it during the night, but the anchor did not drag, we must have set the alarm too sensitive.

Day 3: Sailed back to Mykonos in almost perfect sailing conditions.

Day 4: Sailed from Mykonos to Paternoster, dropped anchor and used the dingy to shore to the restaurant. Later on the way back in the dingy a wave crashed over all of us and needless to say the very cold water of the Atlantic ocean was not pleasant.

Day 5: Sailed a couple of hours then motored back to Mykonos, to fill up with diesel. We then navigated through the narrow channels of the lagoon and anchored at Kraalbaai.

Day 6: Motored back to Mykonos, collected our upgraded car, departed back to Cape Town international airport and then on to Gauteng to row with the other slaves.