Woles: Town

Showing posts with label Town. Show all posts

Sunday, 9 April 2017

The wreck of the Seafarer off Moullie Point Cape Town South Africa

A new picture, to myself at least!

My continued interest in this wrecking that happened in 1966 was that it was two years before I arrived in Cape Town and that my good friend Notty had all his household belongings on this ship, he was not insured and lost the lot!

The fact that the Rootes Car Company, Scotland had also shipped an order of Hillman Imps to Stanley Motors, the then Rootes agents for South Africa was not lost on me either. There were no more Imp imports excepting private ones after this event.

Roy

Taken off a Facebook page and posted by Heather McQueen Shand (many thanks)

The year 1960 on the top of this card is incorrect, the accident happened July 1st 1966 (roy)

In this photo of the Seafarer you can still see the remnants of the word "welcome" on the side of Signal Hill, just above the treeline. Who remembers that? I was told that when the Royal family visited in 1947 hundreds of school children dressed in white stood there to mark out the word WELCOME. Presumably trees (or shrubs?) were planted there afterwards. There is no sign of it today.

Read all about the incident in this link. http://www.historicalmedia.co.za/?p=848

And news just come in today, Sunday 26th January 2014.

I was on the seafront wall with my father an hour after the Seafarer grounded. She had not yet fractured but the air was thick with the smell of leaking heavy fuel oil. (She was an oil-fired steam turbine ship). My ship was in port at the time and I was spending the night at our Camps Bay home. Our ship’s scheduled departure late that morning was specifically deferred by a few hours to enable the crew to have a gander at the wreck. By daybreak the ship had already broken ahead of the superstructure. A good friend of mine was a Cadet officer on Seafarer at the time and related how within hours of the stranding his cabin on the port side had been smashed open by the pounding seas.

She was a good, well-found ship and was carrying a record import cargo, both in terms of deadweight and value. Terrible waste.

Rob

Thursday, 30 March 2017

Cape Town a view from Blouberg

Seen here and looking across Table Bay is the Table Mountain with the city below it.

Nice beach and very popular for wind surfers.

Thursday, 16 March 2017

Visiting Town

I start out in the early afternoon not long after low tide under a sky of mostly dark clouds with little threat in them. There is an east, or maybe northeast wind, an onshore wind, and it comes across 10 or 15 miles of open water. The wind stagnates against the shoreline and it appears near calm to me, but the wind waves still exist.

I roll my pants to my knees and wade out to keep the canoe off of the rocks while I load my gear. I end up wading in thigh deep. The rolled up pants are just futile extra credit. With my pack clipped in (I lanyard my gear on flat water - in a capsize it will float free, but stay connected to the boat) I quickly take a kneeling position and paddle out into deeper water.

I ride and roll on aft quartering waves until I pass Pond Point. There, the shallow bay calms some and I can take off my shoes and rinse them clean of the broken shells and gravel that make up what little beach there is where I put in. The waves pick up as I reach the far end of the bay, Merwin Point, but after rounding it everything is rather calm.

Milford Harbor

I take a turn up and back in Milford Harbor if only because I haven't been there since spring. It is, once again, filled with sailboats and cruisers. Tomorrow it will be a busy port, but today it is somewhat sleepy with a few oystermen tending to their boats and some pleasure boaters prepping for Labor Day weekend mayhem. The highlights are three osprey turning lazy circles above and a black crowned night heron perched ten feet up in a tree on the shore of Webster's Forest.

Black crowned night heron

That chore finished, I turn up Gulf Pond. The pond and the harbor share the same entrance to the sea. There are still some egrets and herons at the edge of the grasses, the tide not yet submerging all of the mud flat. At the top end, I ride the flood into the Indian River, although I don't feel like going up it too far. I sit and watch, for anything.

I challenge the flood current to get back into the pond and lose. It takes wading and stumbling and swearing and lining the canoe for about 15 feet to get past the fast water and back into the pond, where I take out and portage the mile and a half home...just because I feel like walking.