Victoria & Alfred?
Casamara
John & Susan Simpson
Tue 20 Jan 2026 14:12
| Cape Town was a fabulous stopover with lots to do and a comfortable marina berth right in the centre of the city at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront marina. If you’re thinking, as I did, that V&A should stand for Victoria and Albert, the city’s docks were named after Queen Victoria and her son, Prince Alfred. He visited Cape Town in 1860 and the first dock to be built there was named after him. The Queen Victoria dock was a later addition and the V&A Waterfront area was born. We had a lovely evening celebrating New Year’s Eve on the waterfront with new friends from the World ARC rally fleet. Soon after the New Year celebrations were over we were delighted to welcome old friends Andrew and Traci on board Casamara. As testament to the fact that lifelong friends are made on the ARC sailing rallies, we first met Andrew and Traci in Baiona, Spain in 2021 when they arrived on a mooring alongside us having just crossed the Bay of Biscay from the UK. We soon discovered that they were on their way to Gran Canaria to cross the Atlantic with the ARC, as were we. One thing led to another and we ended up sailing alongside them all the way to Australia where they sold their boat. When we were looking for crew for the final legs of our circumnavigation we asked whether they might like to come along and it didn’t seem to take much to persuade them to join us all the way from Cape Town to Grenada in the Caribbean. Together, we made a good attempt at ‘doing' Cape Town and the surrounding area. We toured local vineyards to taste the wines, hiked around the Cape of Good Hope, hauled ourselves up through the Platteklip Gorge to the top of Table Mountain and visited Simon’s Town to see the penguin colony close up. John and I joined a huge crowd at the impressive DHL stadium to see a Super Rugby game where the DHL Stormers, narrowly beat local rivals, the Vodacom Bulls. John with Andrew and Traci at the Cape of Good Hope Rugby at the DHL stadium, Cape Town You won’t see this sign often! It amused me that these penguins appear to be looking at some humans in a wooden cage Having visited the Australian Scarborough, here we have Scarborough, South African style - both somewhat warmer than the UK version on a January day. Departure day arrived in a rush of last minute boat jobs and food shopping, and on 10th January Casamara was on the start line for the World ARC leg north to Walvis Bay in Namibia, a voyage of some 800 miles taking about five days. It was a wild and windy start close to shore but we were pleasantly surprised to find the weather soon settled down to a smooth sea and fairly constant winds from a good direction. Seals and dolphins frolicked in the sea around us and we thought often of our Indian Ocean crewmates, Ian and Chris, imagining them complaining that their experience hadn’t been what had been promised in the brochure! The Indian Ocean had been unpredictable and uncomfortable by comparison. We saw this comical sight many times - seals resting in the sea by lying on their backs with their flippers in the air. They are able to shut down half of their brain so that they can rest whilst also keeping their senses alert for predators. Andrew turfed out our little used fishing equipment and soon snared a couple of Cape Yellowtail fish. |