Cape Doctor

We lived in a flat on the slopes of Devil Peak mountain in the Cape Town city bowl, in a neighborhood that was less expensive than the other side of the city - for one reason only. The Wind.

The views were spectacular and access to the mountain a skip away where mountain biking and dog walks were an everyday occurrence, but mostly during winter. Come summer and your enjoyment of the mountain was quite often impossible as the South Easter would start early and not stop until the wee hours if it stopped at all. The peaceful winter neighbourhood was transformed into a wind battered, door slamming, window shattering, summer madhouse.

I recall one day opening the front door and then going down and around to the far side of the apartment, where I found a few of my socks and t-shirts blowing around the parking area. When I opened the front door, the wind had literally sucked the clothes off my washing rack and deposited them everywhere. No jokes. After a few days of this I was ready to move, as it's very disturbing AND noisy when your windows are rattled and car alarms go off randomly. Actually the highest incidents of theft from motor cars occurs on very windy nights and it's not uncommon to see fresh glass on the pavements in the morning from in car robberies and smashed windows. It's one of those scenarios where it might just be cheaper to replace the car window yourself as making an insurance claim will no doubt cost more.
And then there was the time when a whole Weber BBQ - not just the lid - was found in our yard. It had been flung from a balcony across the road and dumped rather hard in our garden, a distance of some 50m! After this I nicknamed our flat The Dragons Nostril for spitting fireplaces around.

So you get the picture - living in the wind was very similar to living in the rain except the sun was shining and you wore summer clothes. It was a real challenge to stay happy and after about the 4th year I finally decided to do something about it and opted to use the wind. Kite boarding looked like a fairly dangerous sport and so I thought I would take lessons and see if it was possible to do something with the South Easter as apposed to hiding from it.

It was a rather great idea as Cape Town has one of the finest beaches in South Africa to do long downwind rides on. And I'm goofy, which means that in the South Easter, I get to do amazing long front-side runs, sometimes up to 17kms from the starting point. But more on that later.

It's not that the doctor is unwelcome, but you know some days you just wished that he wasn't so destructive. It could be that the doctor is a she and only comes out to play when in a very bad mood, but whatever the case - the doctor made me do it!

Yes I'm referring to the South Easterly wind in Cape Town which picks up in summer months and reaches near gale force strength - locally known as the Cape Doctor. Living in the wind for a few days to more than a week can be very disturbing as the noise and destruction that goes with air being funnelled down the mountain at you is intense. In a desperate attempt to survive and enjoy these periods I adopted the "if you can't beat it, join it" philosophy and in essence, the Cape Doctor made me take up kite boarding. It's impossible to plan your life as the wind picks up on certain days and blows for anything from a day to a few weeks. I believe the longest period that it consistently blew was 15 days and it's rumoured to have been the reason for a least a few murders! Dogs bark and people hunker down as anything that it's fastened down gets pushed and pulled until it breaks off or flies away. The doctor can be very destructive, as witnessed by this recent video of a truck being blown over. This is simply a windy day in Cape Town - not a tropical storm or strange weather event!
Might have been very difficult to explain to the boss and insurance company exactly how on a dead straight section of road the truck simply fell over!! Good thing it's caught on video.

Cape Town gets hot in summer - and without much of a shoulder season it's straight from winter into summer with possibly a few weeks of spring. Most hot afternoons in summer when the wind isn't howling average mid 30c and it's then that the Cape Doctor is most welcome. It brings relief as the cool ocean wind drops the temperature to the low 20's Celsius and lets you get on with life without aircon assistance
You might think that having wind that blows for days in a row would be a sailing and kiting paradise - and you would be partially correct for thinking that, but the reality is the SE'er blows strongest from Cape Hangklip to Melkbos and quite often reaches and maintains speeds of 35knots. No-one sails in that, at least no one who enjoys a pleasant sail. Winds of that speed turn the sea into a white capped mess and unless you're on a broad reach - you're in a for a terrible beating on the return!

So enter kite boarding...