Cruising Kid

By Dominic Goncalves

Dominic Goncalves led a normal life until he was nine then his parents sold their house and business, bought a boat, and set off to sail around the world. So began an epic adventure of sailing aboard their thirty-seven-foot Endurance, Indigo from the tip of Africa across the South Atlantic Ocean to the magical islands of Saint Helena, Ascension, Brazil, French Guiana, and the Caribbean. This book is for all those who have a deep yearning, a restlessness, to explore and discover new lands.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 7, 2002
• ISBN: 9781475902112

Dominic Goncalves

Dominic Goncalves was born in Durban, South Africa in 1987. Since writing this book, he has sailed across the North Atlantic Ocean to Europe, and is presently on a voyage through the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean to South-East Asia.

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All Rights Reserved © 2001 by Dominic Goncalves

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

Writers Club Press an imprint of iUniverse, Inc.

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ISBN: 0-595-20989-0

ISBN: 978-1-4759-0211-2 (ebook)

Contents

Acknowledgements

Durban to Cape Town

Hout Bay & Cape Town

Cape Town to Saint Helena

Saint Helena

Saint Helena to Ascension

Ascension

Ascension to Salvador

Baia de Todos os Santos

Rio Paraguacu

Morro de Sao Paulo

Joao Pessoa

Natal

Fortaleza to Kourou

French Guiana

Tobago

Grenada and the Grenadines

Saint Lucia

Martinique

Dominica & Guadeloupe

Saint Martin

About the Author

In Memory of Richard Longmore

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Barry Weaver and Oliver Staiger for allowing me to use their photographs on Saint Helena and Ascension Island

1

Durban to Cape Town

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Joshua, a tame baby seal in Port Elizabeth, South Africa

Durban Natal South Africa

It was late in the afternoon on a dreary rainy day when the good old ship Indigo sailed out of Durban Harbour, the largest harbor in Africa and the eighth largest in the world, for the Caribbean. It had taken us nearly two hours to chug out of the marina, past the port, and into the harbor mouth leading out to sea.

The breakwater to the south and the pier to the north had boulders jutting out the sides and falling into the sea to break the usually pounding surf which would send up a white spray forty feet into the air like fireworks, now consisted of a flat milkpond mirrored by the gray sky above, with hardly a ripple breaking the water—quite uncommon for the seas around Durban.

Our family and friends were waving us goodbye from a seafood restaurant and bar on Fisherman’s Wharf, overlooking the channel and the tall bluff in the background. The music from the restaurant was a song called Goodbye, and my grandparents and my mom burst out crying while my Dad was beaming from ear to ear. Somewhere in the middle of this, I felt a mixture of sadness and excitement, sad to say goodbye to all my family and friends, yet tremendously excited for all the adventures that lay ahead. Our first stop would be East London, 240 miles down the South African coast, then on to Port Elizabeth, Mossel Bay, Cape Town, and across the Atlantic passing through St Helena to Brazil, French Guiana, and the Caribbean.

Slowly Indigo chugged out of the harbor and sailed into the distance, until the tall buildings in the center of town became a mere speck on the horizon. There was still no wind, so our motor was plodding us along at four knots.

When we were only eleven miles southwest of Durban, our bilge pump back-siphoned because we were so heavy-laden, and water was gushing into the bilge! We dived down the companionway and opened the floorboards. Water was rushing up the six-foot deep bilge fast, and we all turned a shade of gray as we realized we were sinking! Barely a second later, seawater started sloshing through the floorboards, and we just managed to stop the flow of water before it flooded the batteries, which would have shorted out all our electrical systems: GPS, SSB, autopilot, and numerous other vital electronics. We quickly turned the bilge pump on which reversed the action and sucked the water out while taking turns on the manual pump as well.

It took a good half hour to drain all the water out, and we didn’t think to test the motor to see if it survived the swim, as a strong gale arose and stayed with us the whole way to East London. With a little help from the Agulhas Current and some large waves on our tail, we were soon cruising along at six knots.

About a day and a half later after a rough sail of which we were all seasick, probably due to the awful smell of the diesel-soaked floors, the diesel coming from the bottom of the bilge with the seawater, the wind died abruptly at two o’clock in the morning, and we tried to start the motor. Nothing. My dad soon found the culprit: the solenoid. The starter motor had shorted out from the water.

We drifted with the current until daylight when a southwesterly started blowing and shortly afterward, found ourselves at the mouth of the Buffalo River leading into East London. We would have to risk limping into the snake-like river with no motor, tacking across the channel. To further complicate the mission, a huge dredger was anchored with half of it sticking out into the channel, and shoals on either side.

Buffalo River East London South Africa

We tacked slowly into the river mouth with just enough wind, but on the nose. The silly dredger wouldn’t move out the channel, and we barely missed it on our tacking course. We passed all the ships in the port and continued another mile downriver where the small sailboat jetty was located.

Just when we started talking about our amazing stroke of luck, not a hundred meters from the marina the wind died! We soon started drifting towards a sandbank and a bridge, which our mast probably couldn’t get under, but thankfully some yachties towed us to the jetty with a dinghy where we tied up safely.

The next few days went uneventfully, and after getting our starter motor fixed, we departed for Port Elizabeth, a day down the coast.

Port Elizabeth Eastern Cape South Africa

After a short, sunny sail from East London, we arrived at the Port Elizabeth Harbour entrance situated on the southwestern corner of the huge Algoa Bay, Cape Recife.

This pleasant beach town of slightly over a million inhabitants, a midway point between Durban and Cape Town, is blessed with fine beaches and a nice coastal area, as well as a good marina and yacht club. Port Elizabeth, or PE for short, was named after the late wife of Sir Rufane Donkin, who was in charge of the British colony when it started here in 1820.

After helping to dock the boat, I ran along the concrete jetty to shore but stopped dead in my tracks when I found a seal clambering onto the jetty right ahead of me. He seemed quite at home, and as soon as he saw me he toddled over clumsily and outstretched his flipper, as if to shake my hand. I kneeled down to his height and shook his hand a little cautiously, as a seal can deliver a mean bite, but he took my hand heartily and almost pumped it out of its socket! He then let go and whacked me playfully across the head and almost sent me reeling into the water!

By this time some yachties were walking up the dock and stopped by to pet him. They said his name was Joshua, a baby fur seal that had been badly wounded by a shark and tamed by the passing yachties. He lived in the marina and spent his days climbing aboard boats, especially the catamaran Joshua, which gave him his name. On this particular boat he would actually climb inside and wreck all the pots and pans and make an absolute ruckus!

We went ashore and without a car, took a shortcut to the supermarket on the edge of town, passing over some railroad tracks and up a steep hill. The town was quite nice, bigger than I expected, and so was the main beach, where a pier extended out into the sea.

We spent a week here waiting for the weather with a whole flock of boats, which would be going in the same direction, before departing for Mossel Bay.

Port Elizabeth to Knysna

We left PE for Mossel Bay at eleven o’clock in the morning with bright sunny weather and moderate seas. Once out at sea, I cast out the fishing rod and let the lure trawl about 150 meters behind the boat. Almost instantly a fish swallowed the bait and tugged on the line. My dad reached for the rod in its holder and started to reel it in slowly, when a seal appeared out of nowhere and pursued the fish. At the same time, the blood trailing from the fish attracted a mob of bloodthirsty white-tipped reef sharks, which closed in on the fish and the seal. The seal, realizing that he was also being pursued by a higher member of the food chain, decided to leave the bloodthirsty fish to the sharks and made tracks. In the last second, we hoisted the fish onto the boat just in the nick of time just before a shark lunged for a chunk of the juicy meat. The sharks shrunk off unhappily.

The poor fish, which was also stalking a meal, was a six-kilogram skipjack tuna that now lay flapping on the cockpit floor. We had it for dinner later that night. It was delicious.

The next morning we turned on our SSB (Signal Side Band, long-range radio) to discover a big storm was heading our way and would reach us early in the afternoon. By one o’clock we noticed all the seagulls and birds were heading to land and the wind and waves had started rising. An hour later the wind had reached thirty knots and the waves were already four meters.

We radioed the Knysna Harbour Radio, which directs boats through the tricky entrance of the Knysna Lagoon, the closest anchorage to us twenty miles away. The radio usually closes in rough weather, and the operator said he would keep the heads open for a little while longer to see if we could make it.

Knysna Western Cape South Africa

Three hours later we arrived at the mouth of the Knysna Lagoon. The wind was about 45 knots and the waves were five meters high, but thankfully the Knysna Radio was kindly staying open to guide us through the tricky entrance to the lagoon.

On either side were two beautiful, towering, rugged cliffs called the Heads, where massive waves crashed against the vertical rock cliff with a force that seemed to shake the earth with its power. Once the waves collided with the cliff the spray launched fifty feet in the air, yet was lost by the wind carrying it off into the distance. Around the cliff huge boulders also rose four meters above the surface, but they all seemed to magically disappear as each wave came in and momentarily swallowed them.

We were guided by the Knysna Radio on top of the West Head, who directed us close to the head, between two boulders, around a corner and into the lagoon, where we took down the sails and picked up a buoy around the northwestern shore. Later that night the winds exceeded 65 knots, hurricane force winds, and the waves inside the lagoon were a meter high.

The next afternoon the storm had subsided, and we went ashore to explore the town. Knysna is a quaint little town, with a population of about 350,000 people. The cobbled sidewalk on the main street has an acorn tree every ten meters or so, with squirrels running between them. The lagoon is also very nice in good weather, and if we had have had more time, we would have climbed The Heads, but we were rushing to get to Cape Town for Christmas. After spending a few days here, we departed for Mossel Bay.

Mossel Bay Western Cape South Africa

Eight hours later we tied up to a small marina in Mossel Bay. The next morning we went to explore the town. Bartolomeu Dias discovered it in 1488 as the first European to set foot on Southern Africa. He missed the Cape in a storm, but landed here by a small freshwater stream that still flows today. He carried on sailing up to the Great Fish River where his crew refused to continue, and on his way back to Portugal, discovered the Cape. Nine years later in 1497, Vasco de Gama sailed around the southern tip of Africa, stopping here for fresh water, and reached India.

In 1500, Pedro d’Altaide commanding one of the ships in the first trading fleet to India under Pedro Alvarez Cabral left a letter in a shoe under a great milkwood tree next to the stream. Juan de Nova Castella picked it up a year later in 1501, and the first post office in Southern Africa was born! For hundreds of years sailors left letters for their friends under the huge milkwood tree, which still stands today, 500 years later.

Today, the tree stands in the center of town next to the maritime museum which contains a life-size replica of the caravel Bartolomeu Dias sailed here in 1488, and other information on the East Indian route and these explorers. As the towns’ population is about 400,000 now, they have long since moved the post office into a building next to the museum.

After spending a few days here, we set sail for Hout Bay.

Mossel Bay to Hout Bay

Indigo left once again being followed by a storm and rough weather as we surrounded Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point in Africa where the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean meet. The weather was bleak; the wind was howling and the huge gray-blue seas loomed above us like mountains.

The next morning we passed over False Bay and around the Cape Peninsula, the huge peninsula stretching from Cape Town south to form the western tip of False Bay. The peninsula is made up of many capes and points, the two most prominent being the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point. The peninsula was first seen by Bartolomeu Dias and named the Cape of Storms, later renamed the Cape of Good Hope, known to sailors as one of the most dangerous capes in the world.

Although the sun had not risen yet at