South Africa to Florida
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TINA A Family Voyage – South Africa to Florida Bruce Whiteley This book is dedicated to Bruce and Dave and John and Nancy and Mary and Dale and Sally and all of the people who helped us on our way, but mostly to my Lampie, who didn’t want to come along, but did anyway. Crown Publishing Group, 1977. Paperback edition David McKay Company, Inc., New York, 1979. © 1979 by Bruce Whiteley ISBN 0-679-51378-7 1 Getting Tina Ready At the university where I work in Durban, South Africa, the academic staff has a coffee room in which we sit and discuss such esoteric topics as the price of potatoes (and of everything else) or the quality of the meals in the cafeteria across the quadrangle (low, lower, lowest ever). Once at such a gathering someone mentioned the actions of one of my colleagues' neighbors, a woman who left her house by the front door every morning, walked around to the back door, came through the house, and exited by the front door again. She repeated this circle throughout the day, every day, with truly remarkable dedication, not even pausing for meals. She would eat in the evening after the sun went down and retire thereafter, presumably to gather her strength for the next day's journey. The psychologist in our midst immediately diagnosed the lady's behavior as "abnormal" and suggested that she could be cured if she were strapped to a bed in a locked room and had lots of electricity shot through her body every week. My own reaction was one of sympathy. Nothing is insane if you do it yourself; did I not leave my house by the front door every morning, drive the usual route to the university, follow the same route to my office, my lectures, and the coffee room, then return to my front door every afternoon? True, my routine was a trifle more complicated than the lady's, but might that not indicate a greater degree of sanity on her part? To balance her advantage, however, I did have contact with my students, whose brilliance and stupidity have always amazed and excited me. The only significant difference between the wandering lady's life and mine lay in the fact that she was constantly alone, while I had a wife, Walda; twin son and daughter, Philip and Karin; and Ouma, my mother-in-law, who usually spent the winters with us in Durban to escape the cold of her home in the Orange Free State. These people made that part of my life hectic, confused, chaotic, and entirely worthwhile. The problem was to find some activity that would be exciting and challenging and that could be combined with family life. What better solution than to go sailing? There were inevitably a few complications inherent in the realization of such a dream. Both Walda and I had teaching jobs. We were encumbered by the usual possessions – house, furniture, car – and we had never sailed out of sight of land. But these hurdles could be overcome if we put our minds to it. We had leave due and could apply for coincidental vacations of a year's duration. The possessions were only things that could be sold or stored. The business of sailing could be mastered easily. After all, we had owned a thirteen-foot dinghy ten years before, and we had crewed on larger yachts a few times. If we could arrange everything, we could travel over to visit my mother in Titusville, Florida, U.S.A., a nice long sail If you want to go sailing, the first thing to do is to get yourself a boat. This is perfectly obvious and sounds simple, but getting a boat is a long, complicated process. This is mainly because boats are expensive. Some are more expensive than others, but none is cheap. If the purchase price is relatively low, you will make up for it by having to spend on equipment and repairs, and if the boat is in perfect condition for a circumnavigation, the price will be high. Further, “perfect condition” will have been defined by the present owner, not you, so you’ll still have to spend to make her fit your requirements. If you have plenty of money, you can have your boat designed and built to suit you exactly, and then you will still have to spend because not even you know exactly 2 what you require. You will find yourself modifying this and adapting that and adding the latest thingamaboo until even plenty of money is not enough. That is why the big ocean races are won by rich millionaires. The poor millionaires don’t stand a chance. So, if you want to go sailing, you will have to reconcile yourself to spending money. How much you spend will depend on how much you have, and then you can try to borrow some more. My wife and I did not have much money. Teachers never do. But we wanted to go sailing so we counted up our savings, decided that we might be able to afford a boat, and started to inspect what craft the market had to offer. Every weekend we would check out the ads, bundle the twins into the VW van, and then break the news to Ouma that we were going to look at a boat, and would she like to come along? Ouma was about eighty at the time. She stands nearly five feet high in medium heels, weighs about ninety pounds fully dressed, and has more energy than you can find on the playground of a large elementary school. She also talks to plants. Ouma talks to plants because she wants them to grow under her care. And they do. Twigs that are obviously dead begin to blossom after a conversation with her; tomatoes overcome diseases and bugs and glow with health; carrots must be planted well away from the house or the enthusiasm with which they grow might endanger the foundations. Early in the morning Ouma makes her rounds of the garden with a cup of tea in one hand and a knife in the other, chatting to the flowers and attending to the weeds with the knife. In the evening the garden gets another pep talk to help it through the night. Ouma always joined us on our boat inspection trips, leaping into the ferry that would take us out to the boat, climbing over safety lines, into cabins, poking about in lockers, and frightening all who saw her because little old ladies just do not have the agility she displayed and she was certainly going to fall overboard eight or ten times from each vessel we examined. Because Ouma did not approve of small boats, she kept up a steady stream of derogatory remarks while she clambered about the decks of someone's pride and joy. These comments were delivered in Afrikaans, which she erroneously believed no Natal resident could understand, even if he happened to be an Afrikaner, and in what she thought was a whisper but which, since she is just a little deaf, was clearly audible for fifty or sixty yards. So, while an owner would be explaining to me the beauties of his boat's rigging, Ouma would be bellowing at Walda, a foot away from her, that the cabin stank, the lockers were full of roaches, the coach roof was about to fall off, and she wouldn't take the boat if they gave her the purchase price with it. We inspected boats for about a year and a half. We looked at trimarans, catamarans, and monohulls. We looked at wrecks that were barely afloat, partially completed craft, and luxurious yachts that we could not afford to maintain, let alone buy. We looked at boats made of wood, fiberglass, steel, Ferro cement. We listened to the spiels of owners and brokers and the advice of people whose knowledge of boats ranged from expertise to a vague idea that they were some how connected with transportation and water and the sails had something to do with the wind. Sometimes we almost bought a boat. We wanted to make an offer on a lovely little cat, but found that there was already a higher offer in. We had a demonstration sail on a nicely finished Water Witch and then insulted the owner by offering far less than he thought his boat was worth. We haggled for a week with the owner of a very sweet steel 3 sloop and finally reached an acceptable figure, only to have the sale canceled at the last minute by his wife, who decided that she would never replace her boat for the money we offered. It would have been a very discouraging business but for two facts: First, boats are fascinating. No matter what the condition or design, it is immensely interesting simply to poke around and see how things are arranged. One never tires of it. Even people who live on boats – and who, one would think, have seen it all – love nothing better than to "come aboard and have a look around." And, second, we were learning the market. If funds are limited, it is necessary to know the value of a given boat in the context of a particular market so that you will not be too badly cheated. Compared to yacht sellers, used-car dealers are virtuous, straightforward, and honest, and we had to educate ourselves simply to survive. We also had to learn about a 10 percent sales tax that the South African government levies on yachts registered outside the country.