A Sail on False Bay
The long weekend began on a Friday afternoon.
It was the final weekend of April, and South Africa was approaching Freedom Day. For weeks we had combed through the plant and the Paarden Eiland warehouse by day, checking incoming stock against packing manifests, then sat up until two or three in the morning in our sea-facing flat over laptops and spreadsheets.
Everyone's eyes and neck ached from the glare. At three that Friday afternoon, the factory gates were chained shut, and the pungent styrene tang of cured resin was swept from the air by the salt wind blowing off the bay.
A little before eight on Saturday morning, a car horn sounded, brief and peremptory, on the pavement below the apartment block.
I slid the balcony door aside. A white double-cab pickup sat idling at the curb, its load-bed stacked with two large red-and-blue cooler boxes and several pairs of long free-diving fins. At the wheel sat William with his window rolled down, waving energetically up at us.
William had returned to South Africa not long before, following his months on the shop floor in Fuyang. Beside the Fuchun River he had spent long days working alongside Zhou, Chen Liansong, and Qian Tao, the four of them bent over the same hull drawings until all ceremony had worn away. Now back in Cape Town with a long weekend of clear skies ahead, he had resolved the afternoon before to take us out onto the open water.
He was wearing a pale grey cotton T-shirt washed almost white, loose khaki shorts, and soft-soled sailing shoes stained with salt rings. In his twenties, tall and straight-backed, his forearms were tanned a rich wheat tone by the African sun, and he carried the brisk confidence of a young man at ease in his world.
"Larry!" he shouted through the open window. "Get everyone moving, because we need to clear the breakwater before nine while the wind is holding."
Qian Tao, Chen Liansong, Zhou, and I gathered the canvas bags we had packed the evening before and went down. It was a rare day of rest, and we had left our heavy work jackets, stiff with resin dust and oil, hanging behind the wardrobe doors.
Qian Tao was bundled into the dark green sweatshirt he practically lived in. Chen Liansong wore a dark blue sun hat pulled down to his brow. Zhou had put on loose, faded cotton trousers and lightweight shoes, his weathered face looking peaceful for once.
The four of us piled into the rear bench of the cab, which smelled richly of diesel exhaust, coconut sunscreen, and warm rubber.
The pickup sped southeast across the level scrubland of the Cape Flats. With all four windows down, the morning air surged through the cabin, bringing the scent of sun-baked grass and fynbos with the sharp brine of the ocean just beneath it.
After forty minutes the tarmac curved around the shoulder of a low ridge, and a vast expanse of dark blue water burst into view. This was False Bay. Tucked against the sheer mountain wall at its northeastern crook lay the sheltered anchorage of Gordon's Bay.
The yacht lay moored alongside the walk-on pontoon.
She was a forty-foot catamaran, newly launched and barely shaken down, her twin white hulls rocking gently on the green tide. The morning sun glanced along her broad sweep of deck, catching the polished stainless steel stanchions in sharp points of white fire. Her aluminium mast tapered into a cloudless sky, the wire shrouds singing with a faint, dry hum in the breeze.
The skipper was a white man in his fifties named Neil, his skin cured to the colour of weathered copper by decades of sun and salt. He stood barefoot on the cockpit teak with an unlit plastic cigarette holder clamped between his teeth, greeting us with a slight jerk of his chin.
"Step aboard," he said, nodding toward the companionway. "Shoes off, and leave your bags down in the saloon."
Zhou slipped off his shoes behind Chen Liansong and stepped onto the cool, scrubbed teak. As he reached the deck edge, he could not resist kneeling to run a calloused thumb over the chamfered edge of a stainless steel mooring cleat, his gaze narrowing with the quiet reverence of a master craftsman inspecting flawless metalwork.
The dock lines were cast off, twin thirty-horsepower diesels thrummed low beneath our feet, and the bows cleaved the green surface, easing her through the narrow breakwater mouth.
Once past the stone harbour wall, the open sea unfolded before us.
The water transitioned from the pale jade of the shallows into a fathomless, ink-dark blue. A cold wind blew directly off deep water, washing over the foredeck.
William and Neil handled the boat with the shorthand of seasoned sailors, slipping the main halyard around the drum of the electric winch. To the steady drone of the motor, the white mainsail climbed the mast track and filled fifteen metres above us with a hollow crack, followed by the headsail unfurling forward like a vast, ribbed fan.
"Kill the engines!" Neil called toward the helm.
The ignition key was turned, the vibration beneath the deck died away, and an immense silence settled over the boat. There was no engine thrum at all. Only the rush of wind, the occasional creak of rope through a turning block, and the long, shearing hiss of twin hulls parting the swells.
The boat heeled a few degrees to leeward beneath the fresh breeze on her starboard beam and settled smoothly into the ocean swells.
Looking back, the Hottentots Holland Mountains reared up behind Gordon's Bay like a dark stone wall a thousand metres high. Their sheer sandstone ramparts stood square against the coast, the deep crevices of the rock casting razor-sharp shadows across the dark water.
"Get out on the net!" William called, walking along the side deck and gesturing toward the wide trampoline slung between the bows.
It was the standard forward trampoline of an offshore catamaran, woven from heavy, high-tensile polyester mesh and lashed taut to the aluminium crossbeam, suspended above the rushing sea.
Qian Tao stood by the forward beam with both hands clamped to the pulpit, staring down at the water churning two metres beneath the webbing, his feet frozen in place. Chen Liansong leaned against the saloon coachroof and shook his head with a wary smile. Zhou knelt by the main beam, gave the tensioning line a vigorous tug, and muttered that the weave was sound enough to bear several tons.
William let out an easy laugh. He kicked off his deck shoes, stepped barefoot onto the center of the netting, and dropped flat on his back with his hands clasped behind his head, shutting his eyes against the blue sky. The webbing groaned faintly beneath his weight and cradled him without giving an inch.
I pulled off my shoes and socks and stepped out onto the mesh. The coarse fibers felt sun-warmed and prickled against the soles of my bare feet. I edged into the center and sat down, suspended directly above the racing foam.
As the catamaran gathered speed and her bows sliced into the ocean swells, bursts of cold spray punched up through the mesh, atomizing into a fine mist that stung against my shins, my arms, and my face. The midday sun baked the crown of my head while icy depths surged just beneath my thighs, that sudden shock of heat and cold flushing my skin until every pore seemed to draw breath.
After a few minutes, Qian Tao ventured out on hands and knees, tested the mesh with a flat palm, and dropped heavily down beside me.
He wiped a handful of spray from his face and let out a nervous chuckle. "Good lord, if you slipped through here, they would never find a trace of you."
Zhou crawled out to join us at the inboard edge, resting his forearms against the crossbeam with the wind tossing his hair, wearing a look of unburdened ease that none of us had ever seen on the shop floor.
The catamaran surged forward, cutting deeper into the open expanse of False Bay.
Suddenly Neil, perched up at the helm station, stuck two fingers between his teeth and let out a piercing whistle. "Whale! Two o'clock, off the bow!"
Every heart leaped, and every face snapped toward the open water.
Less than two hundred metres away, the dark blue surface warped into a wide, glassy hollow, and an immense, glistening black ridge broke the surface.
Before anyone could speak, a deep, hollow sigh rolled across the water like the bellows of a forge. A tower of white vapor shot several metres into the air, fracturing in the hard sunlight into a momentary, pale-gold rainbow.
Then a massive black fluke rose out of the swell, spanning the width of two iron gates. Water sheeted from its scalloped trailing edge as it hung suspended for a single, weightless second, before sliding down into the dark abyss without a splash.
Nothing remained on the surface except a broad, glassy slick expanding across the chop.
The four of us stood frozen, staring at the empty water.
Qian Tao remained with his mouth open. Zhou gripped the aluminium beam with both hands, his knuckles white and his throat moving silently. Chen Liansong stood with one hand arrested midway to his sun hat.
"Southern right whale," William said, propping himself up on an elbow with a grin. "They love sheltering inside False Bay. That one was fifteen metres if it was an inch."
The catamaran glided onward before the easing breeze, rounding the mouth of the bay and clearing Cape Point at the foot of the peninsula onto the Atlantic side. The water turned cold and charcoal-dark almost instantly, and the breeze took on a sharper edge. We motored slowly into a quiet, sheltered cove.
High granite headlands sheltered the anchorage, flattening the surface into an oily calm. The water here was deep, dense, and the colour of dark bottle glass. Looking over the gunwale, one could see only the glassy film of the surface and impenetrable darkness below, with no hint of the bottom.
We doused the sails and dropped anchor a couple of hundred metres offshore, the galvanized chain rattling through the bow roller into the deep.
Neil had already stripped down to swimming shorts and dragged a heavy mesh catch bag from beneath the cockpit bench, together with a diving mask, snorkel, and long black fins.
"Hungry yet?" he asked, flashing a weathered grin.
"You going to spear a fish?" Qian Tao asked, leaning over the rail.
Neil said nothing, merely smiling as he spat into his mask and rinsed it in the sea. He pulled the strap over his head, bit down on the snorkel mouthpiece, rolled smoothly over the guardrail, and slipped into the water with barely a splash. His long fins stroked with slow, effortless power, and within seconds his dark silhouette had dissolved into the green gloom.
Only a faint ring of ripples disturbed the calm.
The depths revealed nothing. Leaning over the side, there was no telling how many fathoms lay beneath us, or what a man might encounter down among the kelp. There was only the gentle, rhythmic lift of the cove.
Zhou held tight to a wire lifeline, leaning far out over the water to peer into the dark. After a long silence, he asked in a low voice whether it was truly safe down there with zero visibility.
"Do not worry, these coastal people are practically born in the water," Qian Tao said, though he never took his eyes off the spot where the skipper had vanished.
We waited at the rail in silence. Two full minutes crawled past, and then a cluster of massive bubbles broke on the mirror surface like porcelain bowls, followed by Neil's head bursting into the sunlight. He shook the brine from his eyes and thrust both hands triumphantly into the air.
In each fist, thrashing with fierce energy, was a massive, spiny creature.
They were South African rock lobsters, heavy and glistening with sea water.
Their thick carapaces were a dark reddish-brown, armoured with vicious spikes, lacking the heavy claws of northern lobsters but armed with long, whip-like antennae that lashed through the sunlight. Their wide tail fans snapped against the air, scattering bright beads of spray.
"Heads up!" Neil shouted, kicking over to the stern swim platform and tossing them upward. The two beasts landed on the wet deck with a heavy slap, their armoured tails beating and their legs scratching against the non-slip gelcoat.
Qian Tao hopped back half a pace. Zhou and Chen Liansong hurried over to inspect them. Zhou reached out cautiously to brush the back of his fingers against the spiny shell, observing with genuine wonder that the casing was tougher than the vulcanized rubber sheets in our workshop, and that the whip-like antennae possessed the spring of high-tensile wire.
Neil did not bother climbing aboard. He clamped his teeth back onto the snorkel and submerged again. Five minutes later the water parted a second time, and he tossed up two more lobsters, even larger than the first pair.
The four rock lobsters lay grouped in the shadow of the deckhouse, their antennae clicking and knotting together.
William stepped forward, seized two of the lobsters without hesitation, and carried them aft to the cockpit galley counter. He tapped the glass panel of the induction hob, illuminating the red heating indicator, then opened the freshwater tap and filled a deep stainless steel stockpot from the yacht's storage tanks.
The water reached a rolling boil in minutes. Without pausing, William took the first live lobster and plunged it headfirst into the steam.
The creature vanished with a sharp hiss, its dull brown shell blooming into vivid scarlet the moment it hit the boiling water. All four lobsters went into the pot, and William clamped down the heavy stainless lid.
The induction hob maintained an even heat, and soon a rich, sweet aroma drifted across the cockpit on the wind. Neil rinsed off under the transom shower, pulled cold cans of Castle and ginger beer from the icebox, and began passing them around.
Qian Tao and I cracked open the beer. Neither Zhou nor Chen Liansong drank alcohol, so each took a frosty can of ginger beer instead.
"Time," William announced, checking his wrist and lifting the lid. A cloud of fragrant steam rolled away, revealing the four lobsters resting motionless in the bubbling water, their shells glowing brilliant vermilion and pulled tight against the meat. Using long tongs, he transferred them one by one onto a large stainless platter and brought them to the folding teak table.
Next he retrieved a bottle of cold-pressed olive oil and a glass bottle of light soy sauce from the saloon locker. These were the simple provisions foreigners kept aboard. He set out several shallow plastic dishes, poured in an inch of dark soy, spooned in two generous measures of golden olive oil, and swirled each dish until the oil took on the amber hue and rich aroma of fermented beans and pressed fruit.
Four enormous rock lobsters lay arranged on the platter, yet the four of us Chinese were the only ones who fell upon them.
William and Neil had grown up on this coastline and had seen far too much seafood over their lives to treat this as a feast. William did not take a single bite.
He took a lobster in both hands, twisted the carapace with a firm snap, separated the tail, and ran a small utility knife down the thin inner membrane. Slipping his thumb inside, he peeled the shell back in one effortless motion, lifting out a thick, intact cylinder of pure white meat to show us how it was done.
Then he rinsed his hands, cracked open a cold beer, and leaned against the cockpit coaming with a satisfied grin, watching us dig in. Neil leaned barefoot against the helm console, sipping from his can with half-closed eyes.
The rest, four whole lobsters, belonged entirely to us.
We abandoned all formality. We tackled them with bare hands, juggling the scalding shells from palm to palm until we found purchase to wrench the armoured segments apart. The meat emerged from the crimson shell in firm, immaculate slabs, dense as mutton fat and coated in a sheen of sweet, hot liquor.
We tore off thick morsels and dragged them through the mixture of soy sauce and olive oil, letting the dark amber emulsion coat the pale flesh before lifting it to our mouths.
The meat gave way beneath our teeth with a crisp, muscular snap. Wild shellfish reared in these cold Atlantic depths had none of the woolly softness of farmed crustacean.
The fragrant olive oil struck the tongue first, followed immediately by the savory depth of the soy, which met the sea-salt of the meat perfectly and drew out its intrinsic sweetness rather than smothering it. With each chew, the sweet liquor of the wild shellfish blended with the rich bean paste and fruity oil, building layer upon delicious layer.
There was no ginger, no garlic, no splash of Shaoxing wine. There was only fresh water from the ship's tanks, a dip in the foreigners' soy sauce and olive oil, a mouthful of scalding lobster, and a deep swig of cold, bitter beer.
Qian Tao chewed with his cheeks bulging, exclaiming between breaths how magnificent it was. Chen Liansong, the quietest among us, kept his head down and ate until his fingers shone with oil, polishing off more than half a tail on his own.
Zhou chewed a large piece of the sweet white meat deliberately, the tension completely gone from his weathered brow. "This meat has real substance to it, far firmer than any river prawn out of the Fuchun. Dipped into that oil and soy, the more you chew, the sweeter it turns."
The four of us feasted around the cockpit table. Beside us, William and Neil leaned back with their cold drinks, chatting and laughing while sea gulls etched long white arcs against the sky.
The afternoon sun warmed the teak deck, and the cove sparkled like shattered glass. Behind us, the Hottentots Holland range spanned the horizon like a timeless, dark screen.
By the time the last shell was picked clean, it was well past two in the afternoon.
The empty cans and mounds of discarded shells were bundled into a rubbish sack. Neil stretched out on the cockpit bench for an afternoon doze.
William got to his feet, stretched his back, and peered down at the three-metre inflatable dinghy swinging from the stern davits.
"Who wants to take a run outside?" he asked. "There is a seal colony sunning on the rocks beyond the headland, the tide is turning, and we can catch some good spray."
Qian Tao sat up instantly. "Seals? Let us go!"
Chen Liansong was feeling slightly seasick and waved a dismissive hand, preferring to remain on the yacht for the quiet air.
Zhou smiled and waved us off as well.
"I am a creature of dry land and a poor swimmer," he said. "I will sit right here with him, so you boys go on and just be careful out there."
William operated the manual winch, lowering the dinghy onto the placid water of the cove. Qian Tao and I strapped on bright orange life vests and climbed aboard. The fifteen-horsepower Yamaha two-stroke was clamped securely to the rigid transom.
William sat astride the starboard pontoon with the tiller in his left hand, picking up the coiled red kill cord with his right. One end was fastened securely around his wrist with a Velcro strap, while the other held a flat plastic clip. He slotted the clip into the kill switch on the engine head with a firm snap.
He checked the fuel line, pulled out the choke knob, and gave the starter cord a sharp pull. The outboard fired with a tiny puff of blue two-stroke smoke and settled into an urgent, metallic rasp. He engaged the forward gear, twisted the throttle, and the little craft surged ahead, slicing through the calm water like a razor.
The wind hit us like a wall. With no cabin to shelter us, we were practically flying across the surface, salty spray striking our cheeks like gravel while Qian Tao gripped the lifeline and hollered with joy.
The dinghy swept around the sheer granite headland guarding the north side of the bay. The moment we cleared its shelter, the open ocean reared up beneath us.
The water below turned an impenetrable black. Long, rolling swells driven by the open Atlantic rose over the submerged reefs, lifting the three-metre craft a full metre into the air before dropping her down into the troughs. Whenever our bows climbed the crest, the horizon widened, only to plunge away an instant later as my stomach dropped into my boots.
William sat sideways at the tiller, carving across the backs of the rolling waves without ever easing the throttle, the bows slamming down against each green face with a dull, hollow thud. Just ahead, clustered across a cluster of wave-washed rocks, dozens of sleek seals lounged and barked into the spray.
"Look at that! Seals!" Qian Tao shouted back over his shoulder.
Once we had watched them circle and dive, William swung the tiller to head back toward the cove, keeping the throttle wide open.
He banked hard to set the bows squarely across the back of an incoming swell. The dinghy skated sideways into the face of a rising roller, and the starboard tube lifted entirely free of the water.
"Ease off!" Qian Tao managed to scream.
The entire starboard pontoon reared toward the sky, exposing the hull bottom with the spinning propeller screaming in open air. In an instant the heel passed seventy degrees, the momentum of the turn and the lifting swell combining into an irresistible torque, and the three-metre craft capsized cleanly, bottom up.
There was a dizzying second of free fall. Then the icy ocean slammed over my head, extinguishing all light, sound, and air, while salt water surged down my nostrils and locked my windpipe shut. I tumbled into the dark, enveloped by spiraling columns of white foam and cold blue shadows.
The instant my head submerged, a chilling memory flashed through my mind. Andre, standing beneath Signal Hill beside his rusted bakkie with a half-smoked cigarette, saying with grave detachment that these cold waters off Cape Town were prowled by great whites, one of which had bitten a fisherman's arm clean off. If you ever fall in, do not thrash.
The phantom terror lurking in the cold depths weighed far heavier than the chill of the sea.
Yet William's reflexes proved faster than thought.
As he was hurled from the stern into the rushing water, his right hand never clawed for the gunwale. Instead, his arm whipped outward with violent precision, ripping the coiled red kill cord from his wrist.
A sharp, metallic snap echoed through the water.
The red plastic clip slotted into the kill switch was yanked free before the engine cowl even touched the sea. The shrieking outboard died instantly. By the time the capsized dinghy struck the surface, the razor-sharp propeller blades had lost all drive, spinning down into a harmless piece of dead metal.
The buoyant life vest dragged me toward the surface. My head broke out into the daylight, and I gasped for air, coughing violently and spitting mouthfuls of brine.
I wiped the sting from my eyes. Two metres away the water parted as William surfaced, shaking his blond hair back, the red kill cord still clenched firmly in his right fist, looking completely unruffled.
Three metres off, a splash erupted as a sodden, dark-green figure emerged. It was Qian Tao, coughing until tears streamed down his cheeks, his wet sweatshirt plastered to his ribs like a drenched cormorant dredged from a pond, blinking in disbelief. "Did the boat just flip?"
William took one look at him and burst into a great roar of laughter across the open sea.
His laughter was bright, fearless, and infectious, rolling away over the cresting swells. The cold dread that had seized my chest vanished like mist in the sun.
I began laughing too, wiping salt from my lips. Qian Tao looked down at his ruined sweatshirt clinging to his stomach and started chuckling as well, until the laughter caught in his throat and triggered another fit of coughing.
"Everyone is in one piece!" William called, treading water toward us while waving the red clip. "The engine is cut and we are all fine."
"My fault," he admitted, swiping water from his face. "These small inflatables will flip the second you whip them around. I threw her over too hard."
The three of us swam to the capsized hull, gripped the heavy rub-strakes along the pontoons, and threw our weight backward as a swell rolled beneath the craft. With a collective shout, we righted the boat, half-swamped with water but buoyant and stable.
William swung a leg over the pontoon and scrambled aboard, clicked the kill cord back into the switch with a solid snap, and gave the pull-cord a vigorous yank. The engine sputtered back to life. Qian Tao and I clambered over the tubes, crouching knee-deep in the swamped bilge while William kept the throttle at a low crawl, guiding the dinghy slowly back toward the mother ship.
As we approached the catamaran's transom, Neil was already leaning over the guardrail, looking down at us. Chen Liansong and Zhou hurried aft to meet us.
Holding two dry bath towels in his hands, Zhou leaned over the safety lines, took in our dripping forms, and broke into a broad grin. "So. Did you two go out there just to take a bath?"
Zhou and Chen Liansong reached down to haul us onto the teak swim platform. Qian Tao and I stood on the solid deck, our teeth chattering in the breeze.
Zhou wrapped a heavy towel around my shoulders and tossed another over Qian Tao's back, laughing as he bundled us up. "Half an hour without a glimpse of you. We wondered if you had jumped in to catch fish with your bare hands."
Hot fresh water from the stern shower washed away the sticky salt, driving the deep chill from our stiffened limbs. We ducked down into the saloon and changed into dry sweatshirts and trousers. Qian Tao wrung out his dripping green top, still muttering about great white sharks.
"This is the Atlantic, where the water stays cold," William said, shaking out his damp hair by the saloon companionway. "Great whites do not care for it here. If you want to run into them, you would have to head back into False Bay, into the warm water on the other side."
Zhou chuckled and handed each of us a can of warm malt drink, shaking his head at the sight of us.
Once everything was stowed and secured, the electric windlass hoisted the anchor chain, and the catamaran turned slowly out of the cove. We rounded Cape Point once more, gliding back into the calm expanse of False Bay toward Gordon's Bay.
The sun was sinking toward the broad horizon west of the Cape Peninsula.
The setting sun contracted into a crimson sphere, setting the quiet waters of False Bay ablaze in deep, molten gold, the swells shimmering like burnished copper silk. Along the eastern shore, the Hottentots Holland Mountains captured the final rays in shades of dark bronze and rust, deep black shadows pooling within the rugged ravines as the cliffs plunged sheer into the sea.
No sails were raised for the return leg. The catamaran motored steadily home to the quiet, rhythmic pulse of her diesels. The water on deck evaporated under the wind and the fading warmth, leaving a fine frost of white salt across the dark blue non-slip tread.
The four of us sat together along the cockpit bench, cans of ginger beer in hand. The mountain ridges gradually faded into black silhouettes, and the ocean darkened shade by shade into night.
Zhou crushed his empty can against his knee, stood up, and walked aft to the galley counter. He rinsed the stainless steel pot twice inside and out, set it upside down on the draining board, and wiped his wet hands against his trousers. Nobody spoke, and nobody felt the need to.
I have seen southern right whales a few times since. None of them were ever as close as that day.