The cruising dream

I have decided not to use this blog anymore. Sailblogs are using us to build up their website so that they can put more ads on our blogs. We do all the hard work and they make all the money.

I have started a new blog with google. They also put ads on your blog but at least you can make some money out of it and you can decide which ads you want on your blog. For us poor wannabe cruisers this might just help us reach our goal faster!

Check out my new blog on www.mycruisingdream.blogspot.com

I sold my car today. I am both sad and happy at the same time. The Merc was a lovely car. Unfortunately big V8 cars like that are not really in demand over here. I got a hundred and thirty thousand rand for it. That is thirty thousand less than its book value. I hope I don't regret this later on.

Anyway, now I can seriously start looking for a yacht. I saw one on Gumtree (That's our local classifieds website). It is a 37 foot ferrocement ketch. According to the owner the yacht was launched in Durban in 1989. He and his family cruised the Indian Ocean islands for a year and then returned to SA. They moored her in Richardsbay and she has been lying there until now, twenty years later!

Apparently the hull is ferro but the superstructure is wood. The owner (Mike) says she needs a lot of work. The asking price is onehundred thousand rand which is about US$ 13000-00 at the current exchange rate. Might just be worth a look. Mike emailed me the inventory. There is a full set of sails including roller furling genoa, 20hp yanmar motor and all the other standard stuff. The electronic equipment included in the price was removed from the boat a some stage and includes GPS, radar, VHF, Depth sounder and wind instruments.

I want to go and have a look at her this weekend. If we can make a deal I know what I'll be doing this holiday! Watch this space!

Where to from here? At the moment it feels like my cruising dream is going to remain just that, a dream. Time to do a stock take again.

In order for me to be able to go cruising I will need a Yachtmaster Offshore qualification. The laws on sailing in South Africa is quite strict. You must be a qualified Day skipper to take a yacht out of a harbour during the day. If you want to sail from one port to another you have to be a qualified Coastal skipper. You are then allowed to sail up to 40nm away from land during night and day. To sail to another country you must be a qualified Yachtmaster Offshore! RYA qualification is not recognized here! Only the local SAS qualifications!

Before you can be examined for the various Skippers tickets, you have to log a certain amount of seamiles required for that specific qualification.
For coastal skipper you need 800nm logged which must include at least 200nm in tidal waters, 3 trips of 60nm each, 48 hours of night watch and 3 night entries into your home port. To qualify up to Yachtmaster Offshore you need 2500nm logged. It can cost up to threehundred thousand rand to get to a Yachtmaster Offshore qualification if you don't have your own yacht.
I am convinced that I can buy an old yacht, fix her up and get the qualifications for the same money. At least then I will have a yacht to sail once I'm qualified.

So now I need a yacht. Which brings me to another problem. My nearest port is Durban which is 600km from where we live. Even if I do find a cheap yacht to fix up, when and how will I do this? and with what money?

To own a yacht in South Africa you have to have a safety inspection done annually. The boat is then given a Category A,B,C or D clearance which restricts the distance you are allowed offshore. To sail to another country you need a Category A clearance which must be presented to port control before they will allow you to leave the country. To obtain a Category A clearance you need a list of safety equipment on board as long as my arm!
On top of that you need a hull inspection carried out every two years which involves removing the propshaft and propeller!

Anyway, there is a Coastal Skipper's course in January 2010 in Cape Town which I would like to attend. My plan was to buy a yacht In Durban or Richardsbay and then sail it down to Cape Town over the December holidays when I'm on leave. This will give me the required milage and we can stay on the yacht for the two weeks duration of the course. We can then sail her back to her home port or maybe join another club down there and leave her there. This will of course mean that I will have to find a Coastal skipper or Yachtmaster to go with me but that shouldn't be a problem.

The problem is to find a yacht which I can afford and that is in seaworthy condition and has all the clearance certificates. Ready to go yachts are hard to come by in the price range that I'm looking at. I have found a 30 footer that has a Category B offshoe clearance(40nm) but I will still need to sell my car before I can put an offer in on her. Also anything smaller than 35 foot is not really a good idea. The South African coastline is one of the most treacherous in the world. The average wave height is about 12 to 15 foot with winds averaging 40 knots and gusting up to 70 and 80 knots.
A small boat can be very uncomfortable in seas like that.

The other option is to find somebody else who will be doing a similar trip and who will be willing to take me with. Easier said than done and not something I would really like to do.

My third option is to find an old cheap yacht that I can go and work on during the December holidays. This will mean that I cannot do my milage trip or the course in January but hopefully I will then have a boat that I can do my milage on during the course of next year.

The final option is to put my dream on hold until such time that I can afford it. A time which may never come.

On the 3rd of September 2009 the three of us joined the Wits Underwater Club to go scuba diving.

I thought it would be quick quick but I was wrong. WUC belongs to CMAS which is the international body for all underwater sport started by the famous Jacques Cousteau. Because of this they have a very stringent training programme that a person must go through to qualify as scuba diver.

We had six classroom lectures before we were even allowed in the pool!
There's lectures on diving equipment, diving physics, diving anatomy and physiology, dive planning, open water enviroment and open water diving and finally diver rescue and resuscitation. In a lecture by Dr. Pat about the respitory system, she had the lungs of a pig there which she blew up with her mouth! Karin stormed out of the class! She couldn't watch this!

At our first pool session, Francois Bain our instructor told us that we had to swim 200m in under 8 minutes! This is one of the requirements of the course! I am so unfit I can't even run 200m let alone swim it! We were not allowed to wear wetsuits or fins during this exercise. Marais did the 200m without a problem, Karin managed 150m before she gave up got out of the pool. I hardly made one length of the pool which is 50m. I started walking when i got to the shallow end! On my second lap I only did about 25m when I couldn't go anymore! I had to hold on to the side of pool! I nearly died!

After this grueling exercise we had to put on our wetsuits, what a sight!
We looked like the Three Stuges with our wetsuits, fins and masks on!
During this and the following weekend, they taught us how to put our kit together, check each others equipment, use a snorkel, do all sorts of manuvers in the water, do buddy breathing etc. Now we were ready for the real thing!

On the weekend of the 3rd of October we went to Miacle Waters for our first open water dive. Miracle Waters is an old opencast mine that got flooded when the miners hit an underground water vain. It has since been developed as a scuba diving training centre. It is about 32m deep at its deepest end but because we are only one star divers we are not allowed to go deeper than 18m. The owners have place various items all over the bottom to make it more interesting for divers. There is a bus, a aeroplane, a yacht and even a army helicopter with a skeleton in it!

Our first dive was great and the visibility good all the way down to 18m.
However on the second dive the water was very murky due to the vast number of divers kicking up dust from the bottom of the dam. The next day we did another two dives but on both occassions visibility was poor due to the murky water and the fact that is was overcast and the sun couldn't penetrate the water.

Karin and I are always diving buddies but on our final dive the instructors let us buddy with other people so we could get used to having different diving partners. On Karin's dive they went down to the bus where they were supposed to do buddy breathing exercises. This involves taking the DV out of your mouth, then grabbing your buddy's spare Octo to breathe from. Unfortunately for her, the mouth piece on her buddy's spare octo was cracked so that we she inhaled she got a mouth full of water! The instructor saw that she was in distress and promptly shoved his spare octo into her mouth. Unbelievable, his octo was also leaking! She got another breath of water! Fortunately she managed to get hold of her own DV again and was able to get some air! Quite a hair raising experience but again showing us how important it is to check your buddy's equipment thoroughly. Your live depends on it!

The following weekend we went to Bass Lake for our final open water dive. You have to do five dives to qualify as a one star diver. Bass Lake is also an old mine that flooded. Again the water was very murky and visibilty very bad. Karin and I did the first dive and then went to the pub for a drink while Marais and the others did a second dive. I don't think I will dive in inland waters again... not much fun.

At the end of November we are going down to Sodwana Bay which is on the Noth East coast of South Africa. There we will do our first sea dive which everybody tells us is something to see. We'll see! The place where we will be diving is in a nature conservation area and we had to take out licenses for this.

I will update this blog on our return from Sodwana.

In order to skipper a yacht in South African waters, the minimum requirement is to have a day skipper's ticket and a VHF radio license. That allows you to skipper a yacht during daytime only and no further than 15nm from your home port.

After my and Karin's near capsize, I decided that we needed some professional training. That would give us more self confidence and also get me on my way to becoming a yachtmaster which is the qualification required to sail to other countries and do ocean crossings.

We enrolled with enrolled with the Offshore Sailing Academy in Durban owned by Chris and Libby Bonnet (sailing legends in our country).
The course started on Saturday 9 May 2009 and lasted for 9 days.
It was a combo course consisting of a 4 day yacht hand/crew course and a 5 day skippers course. We had to live on one of the academy's yachts for the duration of the course. The yacht was a 35 foot Benetau.

We were six people doing the course. It was us three and another couple from Zambia and their son. On the first day we met at the Academy's offices which is just across the street from the Durban marina. After all the introductions we were put in a classroom and told to wait for our instructor.

A youngster of about 20 walked in and introduced himself as Luke our instructor! I almost fell off my chair! I expected a seasoned sailor with a grey beard and sun tanned face and here's this kid the same age as my son and he is our instructor! I thought to myself "Oh boy, you just threw thirty thousand rand into the water"

But was I pleasantly surprised! Turns out that Luke is an accomplished sailor and qualified yachtmaster! And what a pleasant guy! And he is really passionate about sailing. In the afternoons when we had finished our lessons (which consisted of one hour in the lecture room and the rest of the day out at sea) he would go out sailing his hoby cat until dark!

Anyway on the first day he showed us everything on the boat and how to get it shipshape as they call it. Then he took us out into the harbour to show us how to put the sails up etc. The wind was blowing at 40 knots and the waves were 5 foot high in the harbour. We had our lifejackets and harnesses on and held on for dear life! Meanwhile Mr. Luke looked as calm as if he was out on a stroll along the beach! He actually walked to the front of the boat with his hands in his pockets! No lifejacket, no harness, nothing!
After that first day he hold us that we would be going out to sea the following day. I thought "Oh my god!"

The next day after our lecture we did go out to sea and every day after that and the whole time the wind was blowing 40knots and the waves were about 4-5 meters high! That's 12-15 foot! It wasn't very pleasant but in hind sight it was actually a good thing because it showed us that the boat and we ourselves were able to handle such conditions.

We did all kinds of exercises during these outings. We did tacking, gybing, mob drills, heave to, anchoring, compass and navigation exercises and reefing of sails. I quite enjoyed the exercises but the rest of the time we were just sailing around and in this weather that was not very enjoyable.

To qualify as a day skipper you have to do one night entry into your home harbour. The night we did it, the weather was so bad that port control actually closed the port for the large ships! When we asked for clearance to leave the harbour the guy at port control wanted to know if we were out of our minds! I decided to take the wheel as I could see that working the sails in these condition were going to get somebody very wet! I was right!
We had the main and genoa up but it was soon clear that we had to get the genoa down as the wind was much too strong. Marais went forward to let the sail down and I pointed the boat into the wind and into the waves.
At this stage the waves were 5 to 6 meters high (15-18foot) and as we hit them the entire bow would disappear under the water with Marais holding on for dear life! Anyhow we only went out about half a mile and then turned back, but what an experience!

One day we were given a lecture by Chris Bonnet the owner of the academy. At 70 still running the academy and he is also the local agent for Fontaine Pajot Catamarans in South Africa! He gave as a lecture on surving at sea during adverse conditions but what I liked most was when he told us how he and his wife Libby built their own 32 foot yacht and then sailed it to the Bahamas! He told us that we must decide whether we want to become boat builders or sailors. He reckons that you cannot count the years it takes you to build a boat but rather how many wives it takes! Took him three or four if I remember correctly! The thing I remember most about his lecture was when he said that if you wait for everything to be just right before you go cruising, you will never do it. There will always be something that is not 100% right. It will either be the boat, personal circumstances, a shortage of money or whatever. Just get on the boat and go!
Chris also said that he does not care whether we pass the theory exam or not just that we know how to sail when we finish this course. That is why we had to spend every possible minute sailing during the course. Like I said before it wasn't always enjoyable but I now understand his reasonong because all that sailing gave us a lot of confidence.

All in all it was a great experience and all three of us are now qualified Day Skippers! Next step.....Coastal Skipper.

My name is Henry Marais, age 43, construction manager for a property company in Johannesburg, South Africa.
I am married to Karin, also 43, home executive and apprentice cabinetmaker!
(So she can built us a yacht!)
We have a 20 year old son Henry (Jnr) I call him Marais.

Marais finished school in 2006 and in 2007 we bought a new home closer to my office. Instead of travelling 65km to work everyday I now only had 6km to travel! The only problem is that the area we moved to is much more expensive than where we came from which meant that we had to get a big bond to buy the house which wasn't in great condition. I then spend my total savings on fixing up and improving the house. Bad idea! I now had all my money tied up in the property and if I cannot repay the bond I will even lose my savings that I spend on it! Stupid! Then as per Murphy's Law the whole world hit a financial brick wall.

The worlwide economic downturn in 2008 as well as strict new credit laws affected the building industry in our country badly. It was a terrible year and the prospects for 2009 didn't look any better either. At the end of the year I had used up what little savings I had left just to survive. I knew that 2009 wouldn't be any better so I sold one of my cars and my motorbike to see us through the next year.

The building industry here closes down for a month over christmas every year and that is when we take our annually leave and go away on vacation as it is also the middle of summer over here. This time there was no money for that and we had to stay home. With nothing to do and lots of time to think I took stock of my life.

I was 42 years old and had been working for a boss the most of my life.
The money that I earned was hardly enough to pay the bills.
The savings that I had spend on the house was money that I made out of a property deal not money saved from a salary.
I have so far not realized any of my dreams, I was too busy trying to stay alive. I realised that I wasn't getting any younger and that if I wanted to do something about it, I had to do it now.

I have always had this dream of "one day" being able to travel and see the world. Only problem was "one day" never came. I have only been out of the country twice. Once to Mozambique and once to Botswana, both times to work! One day I was watching TV and I came across a show called "Distant Shores". It was a documentary about a couple travelling the world on their yacht Two Step which they had built themselves. I immediately fell in love with the idea of cruising the world on a yacht. This is what I want to do!

I got all excited until reality set in. I don't know a thing about sailing, I have never been on a boat at sea, I don't have any money and even if I could somehow afford a boat, what the hell will we live from? I don't have any investments. I don't have any passive income and I don't have a retirement plan. All I had was a huge bond on the house and because of the new credit act I couldn't even apply for a second bond!

Mark Twain wrote "Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than those you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the wind in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." When I read this for the first time, it made me realize that the time to act was now, come hell or high water....and they came!

I started reading everything I could find on the internet about yachts, yacht building and sailing. I ordered a sailing training dvd, I drew up plans of my ideal boat. I looked at plans of all the designers I could find on the net, I read up on the different methods of boat building. I found a website about ferrocement boats and being in the building industry this made a lot of sense to me. I read up on the stitch and glue method which sounds easy and which I think I can do. But I know myself, I will never be able to build a boat in my spare time. It will take too long and I will lose interest. I cannot afford it anyway, so I had to make another plan.

I decided to take it one step at a time. The first priority was to learn how to sail. I had a foreman working for me who I knew was a sailor for many years. Frank Davis Hanniball. Frank had been sailing for about 50 years. He is a honorary member of the Florida Lake Yacht Club. Frank used to sail oppi's, lasers and I don't know what else on the dams and lakes around the country. He invited me over one Sunday and organized for me to go sailing with a friend of his who had a boat at the lake. It was a tiny little boat, I can't remember what type but we constantly had to duck under the boom as we tacked and we had to balance the bloody thing with our weight! I didn't enjoy this one bit. This wasn't my idea of sailing. I wanted to sit behind a steering wheel with a beer in one hand!
Frank and his mates told me that I first had to learn to sail a dinghy before I could go sail a yacht. I wasn't convinced and it wasn't long before I found a website of a guy who's very first boat was a 38 footer! I also came upon the Macgreggor site where they acually have instructions for sailing their 26' trailer sailer. I decide then and there that I had to get a yacht, a small cheap one but nevertheless a yacht.

In March 2009 we bought a 25' Flamenca for the pricely sum of twenty five thousand rand (US$2500)which we later named Knot-a-Clew because we knew nothing about yachts or sailing. (See her story elsewhere) The previous owner gave us about half an hour's instruction on how to sail her with the genoa only. He said he never used the main but he sort of showed us how to hoist it. The following weekend Karin and I went out to the dam and went for our first sail. It was scary shit! We used the genoa only but after a while we got the hang of things and it became quite enjoyable.

We worked on this boat every weekend. Whenever the wind came up we would stop doing what we were busy with and go sailing. We were out sailing one day in April when the wind became really strong, about 20 knots.
We raced from one side of the dam to the other with a helluva speed. When we got to the other side we had to turn around but by this time the waves on the dam were about 3 foot high. I panicked and instead of turning into the wind I gybed and she broached. I shat myself! We immediately dropped the sails, started the outboard and headed back to our mooring. End of sail! This was when I realized that we needed some proper sailing instruction.

Because my ultimate goal is to go sail the seven seas, I decided that we should attend a sailing school at the sea. The closest one was in Durban about 600km(370miles) from where we live. In May of 2009 we attended a competent crew as well as a day skipper course with the Offshore Sailing Academy owned by Chris and Libby Bonnet.

The course lasted 10 days and we also did our VHF radio licenses. (More about the course elsewhere). Back home our new found confidence made it a real pleasure to sail our yacht. We now actually tried to capsize her!
We would sail her at such an angle that the water washed over the cabin windows! Great stuff! However, sailing around in circles on a dam soon bored the shit out of me. It was time to move on. We had done what we could to the boat without over capitilizing and it was time to sell. I wanted to go sailing in the sea!

I placed a couple of ads and soon we had a couple of enquiries. One day a man by the name of Mike (I think his surname is Brown) came to have a look at her and we got tallking about our plans for cruising. He suggested that we do a scuba diving course so that we can go and dive in all the wonderful places we plan to visit. Mike is a member of WUC (University of the Witwatersrand underwater club) and he invited us to join and do a one star diving course with the club. (More about that elsewhere).

Mike didn't buy the boat but a couple of weeks later Tony did. And now we are boatless once again. My plan was to look for an affordable boat at the coast. I don't know what I was thinking. I sold Knot-a-Clew for fifty thousand rand. The cheapest ocean going yacht I can now find is about twohundred and fifty thousand! And that is a little 30 footer. Not really the best size to sail around the world with! Even if I could afford it.

Anyway we started our scuba course and I browsed the net to find a cheap yacht. At one stage I found a 39' Hartley Ferro advertized for only onehundred and fifty thousand rand! I know ferro's are normally cheaper than other yachts but this was rediculous! I contacted the owner who it turned out had build the boat himself. By the pictures he send me it looked like a very decent boat, roller furler and all! She was lying in Mossebay wich is about 1300km(807miles) from where we live. I took a couple of day's unpaid leave and we drove all the way down there. When we got to the marina I got a bad feeling about the whole setup. The marina gate was unlocked, there were only about thirty or forty boats in the marina and the place looked bad. As we walked up to the boat I could immediately tell that we wasted our time and money. She had just been repainted... with a roller....around the name... not even bothering to cut nicely around the letters. The old faded paint was still visible around the name. You could see that it was a home made boat from 50 yards away. The inside was totally bare except for a heads in the forepeak and a galley that I wouldn't let my dog eat out of. Anyway, this trip cost me ten thousand rand in costs and lost wages.

Back home we concentrated on the scuba but I still kept a look out for a yacht. I still had no money but I kept looking anyway you never know.
One day I found an ad of another ferro yacht which the guy was using as a liveaboard in Richardsbay (about 200km north of Durban). It was a 39' Samson double ender with quite an extensive inventory. It was professionally build and had all the nesseccary equipment. He wanted a hundred and sixtyfive thousand rand for it or to swop for a campervan or car-caravan combination. I have a Mercedes Benz worth about onehundred and fifty thousand. I contacted the owner and he was willing to swop if I could give him a caravan as well as he had nowhere else to stay. I shopped around and found that I could pick one up for around fifteen to twenty thousand rand. One weekend Karin and I jumped in the car and drove down to Richardsbay to go and have a look.

Dissapointment again! It was obvious that the boat was professionally build but the same cannot be said of her maintenance. Again the boat was painted with a brush and roller...over the windows, over the stainless stanchions, over the timber! with what I later learned was Plascon Double Velvet an exterior wall paint! The guy reckoned that since the boat is made from cement he might as well paint it with house paint!
The inside was disgusting to say the least. The owner invited us to sit down in the saloon while he told us all about the boat. Karin put her arm on the armrest between the saloon and the galley. When we got up she couldn't move her arm! She got stuck on the oily dirt on the armrest!
That was the last straw and we left him there with a promise that we will think about the deal... Yeh right!

So as not entirely waste the trip we decided to visit the Zululand Yacht Club and see if there were any prospects there. We met with Charles the manager who told us about a yacht that was for sale at a bargain price.
According to him the boat was worth about sevenhundred thousand rand and the owner was asking only threehundred and fifty thousand. Apparently he had financial difficulties(Don't we all!) and had to sell quickly.
As soon as I saw her I knew I had trouble. She was a 45 foot Van der Stadt centre cockpit in immaculate condition. According to Charles she had been completely revamped. She had new sails, motor, electronics and fridge. The hull was newly repainted. She had a bimini and spray dodger, all safety equipment for category A clearance... THE WORKS!

That's where my trouble started. We had to buy her, it was the bargain of a lifetime! I called the owner and he agreed to give me seven days to come up with the money. On our way back home all I could think of was ways to raise the money. I had onehundred thousand in a fixed deposit and that is it. I had an offer on the Mercedes for a hundred and ten thousand which would still leave me short onehundred and forty thousand! Even if I did manage to get the money together there are other costs involved which I must take into consideration. We would have to haul her out and have a hull inspection done and get her antifouled, the liferaft needed a service and I wasn't sure if the flares had expired. We would also have to join the new club and pay mooring fees. What's the use of having a yacht if you can't afford to sail her?

The next couple of days I pulled all the stops to try and raise the funds.
I tried to negotiate a better price for the car, I spoke to everybody I know that could possibly help. All to no avail. Nobody wanted or could afford to help me, I could not apply for finance because it would take too long.
The banks would want a proper survey done and there was no time for that. I even got hold of a guy that used to sail with us at the dam to see if he would be interested in a partnership in the yacht. He was very keen but could also not raise the cash. I missed the deadline and that is that.
Back to square one!

I wiil keep you posted on my plans and progress in a new blog (Whereto from here?)