Yak

I have been fortunate enough to own not one but two Endurance 37 yachts. Both went transatlantic and with myself as an owner/ builder / skipper status.

I was fortunate to have some of the best crew possible on each trip.

On Ocean Planet the trip  was back from Rio Do Janerio to Cape Town and with my good friend Alex Notman (notty) as the only crew, we came back in thirty two days, not bad really, twenty nine was very possible until we had a South Easter gale, we ended up in Saldahna on that trip.

Ocean Planet started with a bare hull and at a cost of R4500, the cockpit cost another R920 and both options were worth every cent.

Then some years later and after we had sold Ocean Planet, I bought another Endurance 37 and for a similar amount of money, being R5000, that purchase had a catch though.

Gulliver of Knysna was wrecked off the coast near Slangkop lighthouse, on its way to Cape Town and from Knysna.



I bought the wreck, stripped by another who bought her from the yachts insurance company, all I got this time was the hull and deck with a big hole in it.

The yacht was bought at a place further out and in the surf than it is in my picture, the risk to me  was great and as I now owned the wreck, the liability to move it had become mine.

I hired a man named Dennis Gentry of Tandem Rigging, he and his crew camped on the high ground and near where I was standing to take the picture. Dennis was there about five days and almost gave up but in the end he managed to drag the wreck up the rocks and load it onto a large low bed trailer.

We then took the trailer and wreck up and over Chapmans Peak Drive, that is no longer possible and even back then it was tight on the many corners.