Discovering Mossel Bay

Reconnaissance First

Mossel Bay (Mosselbaai) is a small port city of ~60,000 people on the southern South Africa coast, midway between Port Elizabeth and Cape Town. We've sailed into yet another province, the Western Cape. It was here on the shores of Mosselbaai that the Portuguese explorer, Bartolomeu Dias and his crew first set foot on South African soil in February 1488 … the first Europeans to do so. He named the bay, Angra dos Vaquieros (Bay of Cowherds?), but thankfully, it was later changed by the Dutch to Mossel Bay because of the plentiful supply of mussels and oysters found here. By the way, Dias and his crew didn't explore much on their first foray ashore. They made a hasty retreat when the locals threw stones at them.

After a restful night, we woke mid-morning to a sunny, gorgeous day. We launched the dink and dinghied inside the breakwater for a tie-up at the small marina dock. This required us to go through the Port Control gates to exit on foot, but after a short explanation to the guards, they let us come and go without a hassle.

Our stomachs dictated our first stop. The Sea Gypsy, claiming to have the “freshest fish on the water”, is right at the port gates and looked like a lovely place for a seafood lunch … and it was.

We sat outside under a tent at one of their blue and white picnic tables and watched gulls jockey for the best position to watch us eat our lunch.

We had a great view of Cups from our table.

Today was a reconnaissance trip. I'd read a bit about Mosselbaai, but we wanted to get the lay of the land. After lunch, we stopped at the friendly Mosselbaai Yacht Club where they offered us all the amenities the club had to offer. The Tourist Info building was just up the hill from the port. We picked up a city map and several brochures. This is a tourist town on South Africa's Garden Route and there's lots to see and do.

It was too late to visit the well-known Dias Museum Complex, but it's on our list to visit before we leave. Several craft shops caught our (my?) attention and we peeked inside to see what was on offer. I was taken by some fine needlework which embellished individual notecards and bought a couple.

Another craft shop ended up being a warren of individual artisan's shops with a wide range of crafts and souvenirs on offer. We purchased a couple of unique postcards from Taj and had a nice chat with him. At another shop, the artists were taken with Nine of Cups which they could see from their window. They gave us a tiny decorated matchbox fridge magnet as a friendly token. Lacking a fridge for it to cling to, I intend to fashion into a Christmas ornament for our collection as a souvenir of Mosselbaai.

The local Checkers Supermarket was large, modern and well-stocked and just across the street from the tourist bureau and craft shop. We picked up dinner ingredients and while shopping received a call from the yacht club. The wind had picked up in the late afternoon and one of the members was pretty sure Nine of Cups was dragging. That got our adrenaline flowing. A quick visual check and it looked as  if Cups was just fine. Still, we finished up our shopping quickly and headed back to the dinghy. Sure enough, as we exited the breakwater, there was Cups, still anchored, but not exactly where we'd left her. It appears we dragged and the anchor reset itself. We hastened aboard, hauled anchor and re-anchored closer to our original spot. Whew … another tragedy averted although we later rationalized that if Cups had to drag, this was the spot with 40 miles of bay behind her.

Need to re-read David's book on Anchors and Anchoring techniques again, I guess.

Visiting the East London Museum

It was a little overcast when we left Nine of Cups bobbing peacefully in the Buffalo River. We hadn't launched the dinghy in ages. The Yamaha outboard fired up on the first pull. (Hooray!) It felt good to have the dink in the water again as we headed the short distance across the river to Latimer's Landing. We checked in with the national police quickly and got permission to tie up the dinghy at their little floating dock.

The city is too far away to walk and we were advised that “elderly people” (did they mean us?) were especially targeted for mugging and theft in the area. Being prudent (and lazy), we hopped a cab and headed to the Vincent Shopping Center about 10km (6 miles) away. With lunch and free internet under our belts at the Mugg & Bean and a new dongle from Vodacom for on-board internet, we took another taxi to the nearby East London Museum.

Established in 1921, the East London Museum is considered to be one of the most interesting natural and cultural history museums in the country. It was much larger than we expected and its primary claim to fame is the coelacanth (pronounced seel-ah-canth … who knew?), a “funky fish with limb-like fins” presumed to be extinct 50+ million years ago and caught in a nearby river in 1938. Two rooms of the museum are dedicated to the coelacanth as are t-shirts, Wedgwood commemorative plates, stickers, banners and various and sundry other souvenir items. According to National Geographic, “Many scientists believe that the unique characteristics of the coelacanth represent an early step in the evolution of fish to terrestrial four-legged animals like amphibians.” Very cool, indeed!

There was even a steampunk coelacanth on the museum's front lawn!

After much to-do and hoopla following the discovery of the coelacanth in South Africa, marine biologists discovered they weren't really extinct after all. They, of course, put out a reward for the capture of any others. These deep-sea creatures are elusive and reclusive and though they are now considered endangered, they are still found in the Indian Ocean near the Comoros Islands and near Sulawesi, Indonesia.

Enough about weird fish ... the museum had much more to offer. Plaster casts of human footprints dated at 120,000+ years were on display, providing evidence of the earliest homosapiens in Africa. In all honesty, we had to use our imagination to determine these were human footprints at all. But we leave the imagination to the paleontologists.

Also on display was the 36,000 year old Hofmeyr skull, more compelling evidence that Africa is the birthplace of modern man.

There was a small maritime history section with a display of “great guns” salvaged from old Spanish and Portuguese shipwrecks off the coast.

The rest of the natural history display was kind of tired. Some of the info placards were missing and, in some cases, the displays were missing altogether with torn, yellowed signs indicating they'd be replaced shortly. Some displays were tucked in dark corners. There were several discrepancies in the information provided between one display and another. Though on the one hand we appreciated seeing animals we'd not seen in the wild before, it was disconcerting to see the specimens in such sad shape … faded, missing feathers, a hole in a crocodile specimen, thin, lusterless fur on some mammals, faded butterfly wings. Like most museums, however, we assume lack of funds plays a big role in the museum's ability to maintain and upgrade.

One photo on display showed a whole drawer full of Cape Parrot specimens proudly tucked away for posterity. Seems it would have been better to let them live in the wild and multiply, so they wouldn't be on the endangered list in the first place. Of course, it's loss of habitat that's the culprit, but still … Another display provided insight into old versus new taxidermy and preservation techniques. It's seems a shame to kill in order to preserve. But that's just us …. moving along.

On the cultural side, the displays of period costumes, furniture and early life in Eastern Cape was well done.

We especially like the extensive and very distinctive beadwork collection and exhibits on the Xhosa people, native to this area in the Eastern Cape. The isiXhosa language uses “clicks” as part of its word sounds. As we were leaving the museum, we asked a Xhosa man to pronounced “Xhosa” for us. It's (Click)-oh-suh. I tried. He repeated. I tried. He chuckled, then repeated. This might take awhile. Want a lesson in isiXhosa?

Life on the Buffalo River

East London, Eastern Cape

With our sail down the coast from Durban to East London, we've moved from Kwa-Zulu Natal province to Eastern Cape. The city of East London was founded in 1836 as the result of a survey of the Buffalo River by Royal Navy Lieutenant John Bailie. An old picture illustrates life on Buffalo River in about 1875.

The town logically grew up around the river's mouth. In fact, the whole metro area including surrounding towns and East London as its hub, is now referred to as the “Buffalo City”.

East London is South Africa's only river port and it's a busy one since it's a new car terminal for Mercedes. Huge car carriers move in and out of the port day and night, and the turnaround is quick … sometimes less than a day. In the few days, we've been here, we've seen no less than four car carriers. They load new Mercedes-Benz C-Class cars destined for the USA and the ship is off  the dock within hours, their holds loaded with Mercedes consignments to Baltimore, Brunswick and Long Beach.

We've watched the loading process. It's fascinating. Two pick-up trucks run continuously up and down the gangplank. Eight guys drive eight new cars aboard where a pick-up truck is waiting. The truck picks them up and brings them back down to the new car lot and the process starts  again. In the meantime, another team of eight guys is in the process of driving eight more cars aboard. We figured this would be a fun job for about a day and then we'd lose interest.

We've got an excellent view of the whole process, but not quite as close as it appears from this picture taken from shore.

Nine of Cups is limited in its exploration of the river since there's a railroad trestle/traffic bridge just ahead of us that would definitely not clear her mast. This unusual double-decker bridge over the river was completed in 1935 and  is the only bridge of its type in South Africa.

The Buffalo River Yacht Club, with its local boats trot-moored in front, is located to port just before the bridge. The yacht club will probably be more active towards the end of the week and we're hoping to have a chance to duck in and say hello.

Latimer's Landing, a small complex with a few shops, is to starboard before the bridge. We could hear the strains of a singer and guitarist from the Footprints Restaurant at the Landing when we arrived over the weekend, but during the week, it appears to be closed. The national police also have an office at the Landing. We'll need to file a flight plan (we'd call it a float plan since we float rather than fly, but they call it flight plan) with them before heading out of the port.

The harbor is, of course, on the Indian Ocean just inside the entrance to the river, protected by a large breakwater that keeps the waves and swells at bay. The breakwater, by the way, is lined with huge dolosse, interesting, odd-shaped concrete block creations that remind me of children's jackstones that we played with as kids. We've seen them in other harbors, but didn't realize they were first designed in 1963 right here in East London, by Eric Merrifield, Harbour Engineer. The word “dolo” (singular) seems to be from the Afrikaans origin meaning “knuckle bone”, referring to the shape of the structures.

We haven't anchored in a river in quite awhile. I think our last river anchorage was up the Gordon River in Tasmania and that was actually moored to a decrepit old wharf, not really an anchorage.  Hmm … I guess Panama was our last real river anchorage. No matter, here we are now, our first anchorage in months, and it's quite pleasant.  The Buffalo is about 78 miles (126km) long and we had thought to explore a bit upriver with the dinghy, but it's been raining cats and dogs. If the sun appears before our next weather window, we might just take a self-guided river cruise up the Buffalo.