It wasn’t until we’d reached the rhinos that I thought maybe we needed to get the heck off this South African savanna. The rhinos themselves weren’t the issue. The trio of dinosaurian pachyderms stood contentedly munching on hay, ignoring not only our vintage six-wheel-drive Land Rover, but a looming desert thunderstorm. The storm, though, was impossible to ignore. Colleagues Jeff Moser, Pim Van Hemmen, and I had joined a crew from Cape Town’s Robertson and Caine, builders of Leopard power and sailing catamarans, for a safari in the spectacular 28,000-acre Inverdoorn Game Reserve. Gray clouds that had threatened for the previous couple of hours as we trekked through the unusually muddy backcountry had now organized into a formidable gust front that tumbled down the mountains to our northwest and torched the sky with webs of lightning. We’d spent a couple of hours among the park’s sizeable contingent of lions, giraffes, wildebeests, cape buffalo, zebras, hippos, and antelopes, but had yet to see a cheetah or, well, a leopard. That, unfortunately would have to wait. During a typical South African summer, this normally parched veldt is an easy trek for the reserve’s experienced guides and venerable Land Rover Defenders. But not this summer.
We abandoned the rhinos as a wall of wind and rain slammed into our open-sided lightning-rod vehicle a couple miles south of the safety of the lodge. Our excellent guide, Johannes, mashed the throttle.
I’d never been to South Africa, but lord knows, I’ve always considered it a holy grail. As a former editor at Surfer magazine, I’ve long marveled at images of the country’s scenery and waves. It’s here along the “Cape of Storms” that the cold Atlantic and warm Indian oceans meet, fueling globe-circling storms from the Roaring 40s to create ship-sinking tempests and mammoth swells.
When asked if I was up for a trek that might permit surfing, a proper safari, and a few days not only checking out the remarkable factories where Robertson and Caine builds Leopard and Moorings catamarans, but testing them amid these storm-tossed seas,
