Nightmares can be a reality too!

I went to Catholic school for Grade 1 and sometime during the year we were all asked by the teacher what we wanted to become one day when we are older. I listened to the other kids in the classroom one by one as they told the teacher about their dream of becoming a teacher, a doctor or an accountant and patiently waited for my turn to come. Eventually my turn did come, but when I told the teacher that I wanted to become an Indian the whole class burst into laughter. I did not see this as funny and thought that the class and teacher were laughing because they didn’t understand my dream properly, so I immediately started to explain that I didn’t want to be an Indian from India but that I wanted to become a red Indian that rides his pony in the plains of America and hunts buffalo for meat. This brought even more laughter and after what felt like a life time the teacher managed to control the little fits that she was experiencing and started to explain to me that this dream could never become a reality as it had to be something that you were born to be and wasn’t possible to become.


This was a reality checkpoint in my life, one that wasn’t easy for a young man to comprehend. The thing that I remember the most about that day besides the absolute embarrassment that I felt was the look on her face as she tried to explain the facts of the impossibility of the dream to me. The look that she gave me that day is hard to explain even now as an adult.

I am not sure if she was disappointed or shocked or just simply amused, but it is a look that will be in my memory forever. Now forty years down the line I see that same look from some of the people that I speak to and explain my new dream to. The moment I mention going on a sailing boat around the world the look arrives on their faces. To this day I am still not sure if the look is one of approval or dismay.

Nightmares can become reality.
More than once in my blog I have mentioned the fear of something happening to the boat whilst we are away. Well this last weekend trip to Richards bay was proof that not just dreams but also nightmares can become reality. Greg called me last week some time and informed me that he had received the balance of the money for the boat. He also then told me that the keys for the boat are on the boat in the usual place. Instant panic sets in and I discuss all the possibilities with Lola about all the things that could go wrong at this point.

Being the absolute paranoid people that we have become living here in Africa we quickly convince ourselves that leaving the keys in the usual place on the boat may be a good idea if you lived in Canada or New Zealand, but living in Africa, this is not just a bad idea but that by the time we manage to start the car and get to Richards bay the boat will be somewhere in Mozambique. So a trip to Richards bay is on the cards and we can no longer afford to wait the four weeks till June the 10th.

We decided that we would borrow a GPS from Wiekus and set the shortest route and get on our way straight after school on Friday. As luck would have it Rauen has a function at school on Friday afternoon till five and we can thus only get on our way at this time. So off we head at five with the sun about to set in an hour or so. The GPS tells us to get onto the N17 toll road and we promptly follow this instruction. This part of the journey goes off very well as the road surface is good and I feel we will be there in no time at all. At the end of this almost perfect piece of tar the GPS tells us to turn right towards Standerton. Then the nightmare begins, the sign said potholes for ten kilometres, there is no real road only potholes the size of the car everywhere. We land up being able to travel along at 30 km per hour for the entire 70 km piece of the journey. Next the road between Standerton and Volksrust. You know that time of the evening when it is not dark enough for your lights to be visible but you cannot see anything because it is to dark but not dark enough, well this piece of the journey was driven in that light with lunatics that have super twilight vision in trucks, carrying huge loads of coal, trying to speed along at one hundred and sixty km per hour. Yes, it was only a matter of time before one of them rolled his truck across the road. Luckily he didn’t kill anyone by this reckless driving technique. After we avoided the upside down truck the GPS instructed us to proceed from Volksrust to Ultrecht on a sand road over a mountain pass, and half way through, stopped working just before it told us which turn to take next. At this point we decided that road maps in a road atlas are so much better and we will in future always follow the charts so to speak. The rest of the trip down saw us avoiding large logs falling off the back of a truck on the next mountain pass. We eventually arrived at ZYC at 00h35.

Something did not feel right and we left the kids asleep in the car in order to go and open the yacht, but when we got to the slip where she was supposed to be my nightmares became reality. She was gone, nowhere to be seen, yet again panic sets in. Lola and I run around frantically from slip to slip trying to find her, all the time trying to think what to do next, who can we contact for help at this hour, has she really been stolen or did Greg take us for a ride and had he planned to sail away with our money from the start. These were some of the thoughts that ran through our minds whilst running around the marina trying to find the boat. Then she appeared, tied to another yacht next to the wall.

Our Yacht tied to the other yacht.

The emotions now go from relief for one minute to anger for the next. Who moved our yacht? And why did no one bother to inform us that she was going to be moved? And how were we going to get from the wall over someone else’s boat onto our boat with our kids? The wall was about a metre away from the other boat, and everything was wet and slippery from the dew. After a while we managed to calm down to a mild panic and fetch the kids from the car.

I pulled the ropes till the other boat was as close to the wall as I could get it and everybody jumped across. The next morning we went to meet Charles the manager of ZYC and he explained why our boat had been towed to the wall. It is amazing how things always look so much better after some sleep.

We decided that we would get some cleaning materials in town and head out for a sail around the harbour in order to familiarize ourselves with the area. After we purchased a harbour chart from the chandlery we started the motors and cast off the lines. Lola had to keep on running indoors to check the chart and pilot guide every time I saw a marker and said “So what marker is that and which side is the safe side to steer?” After a while she got quite mad with me and told me that next time I have to first give her some time to study the chart before we go.

This was our first trip on s/v Debenair, soon to be Yrumoar, and she motored along at 4 knots speed over ground at 1500 rpm. The trip around the harbour lasted for four hours and included pointing the nose out into the ocean. We could not raise any sails as the fitting of the solid bimini had totally ruined the sail plan. This will have to be task number two as task number one will have to be the fixing of the newly fitted solid bimini which was very poorly done.

By the time we got back to the marina, the tide had changed to low tide, and now not only was the boat that we tied onto about a metre away from the wall but the wall was about a metre higher. So we were stuck on the boat until the next high tide at about 10 am the next morning.

View from the cockpit tied to the wall

The homeward part of our journey went smoothly and we arrived home safely at about 8pm after leaving Richards bay at 1pm.