It hasn't rained like this in Cape Town for what must be years. The sea off Kommetjie is mountainous and I can't tell if there is any shipping due to the cloud and rain. If they are sensible, all vessels will have pulled into port by now, although perhaps large tankers don't feel the swells - I certainly wouldn't like to take a cruise ship from Cape Town to Durban. It's no wonder that our coastline is littered with the wrecks of those sailing ships of old, whose crews braved the unknown to bring spices and other treasures to Europe from the East. Today we scoff at their methods of travel, with our GPS and automatic pilot and every conceivable navigational aid, yet they must have been cleverer than us because they sailed into the blue with basic navigation by the stars and still mostly came home again, even though it was years later.
I have a photograph of the replica of the caravel that Bartholomew Diaz sailed on his voyage of discovery, which I took from above Slangkop lighthouse here in Kommetjie, on the same route that he would have taken, and the ship is so small that you can barely see it. It would have been terrifying to sail in that in today's weather and their only warning of an approaching storm would have been a rising swell and a bank of clouds on the far horizon, and if they were lucky they would have time to get to the shelter of False Bay before the storm broke.
If it weren't for those early adventurers, most of us would be living on a very crowded piece of land in the northern hemisphere, so we have a lot to thank them for, not least for braving this magnificent Cape of Storms.
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