Knysna

 17 Nov. 13

Yesterday we set foot on land for the first time since we arrived here. The weather hasn’t been good enough for us to want to leave Yrumoar and we were still a bit shaken after our anchor dragging ordeal. Even though we are now tied to a swing mooring we still don’t feel secure. These kind of events tend to do that and it takes a while for your confidence, or is it faith, to return.

 Knysna reminds me of a quaint village and the surrounding area with its flowing mountains and lush green vegetation makes a spectacular view. The inner city buildings are unique and different to any other place I have been in South Africa. It is an obvious tourist attraction since everyone, and I mean everyone had a camera. Just walking and looking around I can understand why it would be a destination as opposed to a “passing through”. It has a good feel to it and walking around the waterfront and even into the city centre felt safe and secure.

 After checking out the town we headed to the Yacht club. We wanted to find the skipper on the fishing boat who had assisted in our rescue and thank him. We also needed to get some contact details of the owner of the Catamaran we had bumped into. We didn’t find the skipper or get our contact details but instead met some really wild and interesting characters at the pub. This led to yet another impromptu party and we eventually managed to escape back onto Yrumoar just before cruisers midnight, in other words nine thirty. The dingy motor? Well I am not sure if I managed to find the leak but at least it started again after I put it back together.

 18 Nov. 13

I sent my CV off again today. Hopefully I have some success at finding work here. There are much worse things I can think off than being stuck in Knysna for a year or two while I do a creative writing course and write my second novel. The place is beautiful and inspiring.

 I took some photos of the damage on Yrumoar and will have to start with the repairs soon. Still not sure about the rudder but hope to dive down this afternoon and have a look.

 

 

 

20 Nov. 13

I didn’t dive down the next afternoon but instead went to town to buy a wetsuit first. The water here is so cold I would’ve died of hyperthermia without it. Now all who know me will know that swimming is not my strong point. In fact, I have a water phobia. If you look back in the blogs you will find my post on my attempted Midmar mile swim where my phobia got the better of me. So it was with great trepidation that I climbed down the back steps and entered the water. Lola had tied a rope around me and her encouraging words “I have you and will not let you go” helped me to eventually succeed. It took close to an hour of repeated dives under Yrumoar and lots of hacking with a few different knives before I finally managed to free our rudder. I was relieved and couldn’t wait to get out the water. At one time while I was diving under I looked down into the depths and couldn’t see the bottom. It scared the crap into me and I had to come up quickly and gulp air repeatedly staying on top of the water for a while before I could dive under again.

 

At least our rudder didn’t suffer any damage and seems to be working again. My swimming phobia? Did I finally conquer my fear? No. I still shudder at the thought of having to swim in water where I cannot see the bottom.

 

We did eventually find the guy that came to our assistance and thanked him. He however had other ideas and thanks wasn’t enough for him so presented me with an invoice of R1000. Wow, I was surprised. I suppose it did cost him  money to help us so did a quick calculation to determine just how much. He assisted from the beginning and towed us across to the mooring bow. The entire operation took about three hours and covered a distance of about 500 metres. That equals just over R330 an hour. His time is obviously more expensive than the dentist I went to in East London since he only charged me R150 for the hour consultation including the local anaesthetic and tooth extraction. But hey, I suppose he is just a simple dentist with only six or seven years varsity studies behind him. I could never expect to pay him as much as this skipper with all his obvious courses and degrees. We bumped into him again later while we did some shopping and he offered to give us a lift back to the yacht club. We thought about it but decided to decline since we were not sure how much he may charge for the lift considering his 100 years driving experience.

 24 Nov. 13

We are still in Knysna and have decided to do the tourist thing here since it is such a beautiful part of the country with many attractions. I have seen most of these at one or other point in my life, some as a kid and some as an adult but my two boys haven’t. It is Rauen’s birthday on Wednesday and he wanted to ride an ostrich so Lola planned our tour around this.

 Last night we had a few visitors, Andy the farmer, his wife Anna and a friend of theirs Gordon. Andy called me during the day and was interested in Yrumoar so invited himself over to have a look. We had sundowners and he then invited us to stay over on his farm on Tuesday. That is the one thing I really enjoy about this life style, its unpredictability. You never know who you will meet or what is going to happen next and the time you spend with the new friends you meet is good quality enjoyable time. Sadly it comes with a twist at the end when you decide to move on but I don’t want to dwell on that part now.

 

I know I have mentioned this before but today I found myself comparing living on a boat as opposed to living in a house yet again. Being in the Knysna lagoon spurred it on. Today is Sunday, no not our proverbial every day is Sunday thing it is actually Sunday and half the country and their sister owns a power boat down here and is powering around the lagoon like it’s going out of fashion. There is no “no wake” zone around us so we are bouncing about every time someone decides to fly past us at warp speed. It’s been happening since we arrived here so we are getting used to it and have had to adjust our routine accordingly. The only time it becomes a real problem is when Lola is cooking lunch and we have to quickly get up and run over to grab the pots on the stove when a wake is about to hit us. This made me think about the house comparison. Imagine having to run over to your stove and grab the pots every time a car passes your house. Fun isn’t it.   

 

29 Nov. 13

We spent the last three days doing the tourist thing. First we hired a car and drove to Andy’s farm to spend the evening. He lives on the side of a mountain and his farm is very secluded from anything. After a twenty minute drive up a small gravel track his house appears between the lush green foliage. On one side a river flows gently towards the ocean and on the other a mountain grows up a steep incline. His home is constructed from wood planks and has many different levels as it stands on stilts up the incline with his main bedroom right at the top level. The setting was perfect and we enjoyed their good company well into the early hours of the next morning before going off to bed. We had a big day planned so had to rise early. I felt a bit rude as we rushed through breakfast and sort of forced our way into leaving without spending more time on our goodbye. It was easy to get captured by Andy and his wife Anna and not that easy to leave.

 

Even though we left quite abruptly we were now behind schedule and had to call the Cango Caves to change our time of arrival. We had a pleasant scenic drive through the Outeniqua Mountains and into the “Klein Karoo”. About 10 km from Outshoorn we were stopped in a routine roadblock and as they checked my drivers licence I mentioned it was Rauen’s birthday. To my surprise all the policemen and women stopped what they were doing, gathered together and started to sing happy birthday to Rauen. It was like being in one of those organised flash mob videos and I quickly looked around to see if I could see any cameras. When they eventually finished they told us we could leave and we drove off laughing and discussing what just happened.

 

We arrived at the Cango Caves just as our group departed into the cave and had to run to catch up. Once inside I became irritated when I discovered how large our group was, about fifty people. I couldn’t hear anything the tour guide was telling us as the whole group never seemed to shut up and someone also had a screaming baby with them. So the Cango Cave tour was a bit annoying. At least the boys got to see it.  

 

 After the tour we drove into the town of Outshoorn, had some Steers burgers for lunch then headed to the Highgate ostrich farm. It was Rauen’s birthday and he wanted to ride an ostrich. The tour around the Highgate ostrich farm was quite informative and we each picked up and held a baby ostrich. They are like all baby animals, really cute. After this we drove across the road and Rauen finally got to ride his ostrich. It was fun watching him hang on for dear life as the ostrich ran around trying to get rid of him. We wanted to go to the cheetah park but it was just too expensive so had to give it a miss and drove back to end our day on Yrumoar at about seven.

 

The next morning we took another drive. This time we headed up the coast and onto the R102, the old road through the Tsitsikamma forest. I wanted the boys to experience the “SA garden route” as I had done it before and it is well worth doing. On our way we passed a 3D puzzle park and the boys got so excited we had to stop and do the 3D maze on our way back. Lola and the boys love that kind of thing, mind puzzles and quiz games. I on the other hand don’t. I’m not very good at puzzles and thus don’t like to try them but went along with my family since it was something they enjoyed. At some point while struggling to complete one of the puzzles a question went through my head, am I with the wrong people? It was an intriguing question for a moment and came to me during a moment of frustration when I was doing something I don’t usually even bother trying. The question was still in my mind when the puzzle pieces fell suddenly back under the table as the game timed out. I was feeling frustrated and annoyed and stomped over to the next puzzle only to be timed out again before I finally realised I was being childish and got over myself.

06 Dec. 13

A few days ago 4 “Oyster” yachts arrived here and today another 3 arrived as part of the Oyster round the world rally. They are beautiful yachts as far as monohulls go but I couldn’t help but think about Barney’s cheerleader effect theory in "How I met your mother".