The Rainbow Warrior is an environmentally friendly campaigning ship that was built especially for Greenpeace. She is the third Greenpeace vessel to bear that name, and the first one that was purpose-built. She is one of the most environmentally friendly vessels afloat and was first launched in 2011. On 12 August Tony, Christo and I had an opportunity to go aboard (after waiting for hours) while she was moored in the port of Cape Town.
Looking up at the masts of the Rainbow Warrior
The Greenpeace website describes all the ways that her designers constructed her to use minimal energy other than wind power, and how waste materials and water are treated, recycled and repurposed so that the ship leaves as minimal a footprint as possible. The ship (really a motor yacht) has two A-frame masts and five sails, and an electric drive engine is used when wind power is insufficient. Even the paint on the ship’s hull is carefully chosen to be as non-toxic as possible.
The Rainbow Warrior in Cape Town harbour
The bridge of the Rainbow Warrior
Rainbow Warrior
We weren’t allowed belowdecks, as the amount of public interest in boarding the ship had been woefully underestimated and tours were being run quite quickly. We received brief lectures from a couple of crew members, who described the history and function of the vessel. They also explained how there is usually someone on board whose primary role is to write blog posts, make podcasts, take photographs and otherwise publicise and report on the activities of the Greenpeace team while they are at sea. This reminded me of the media-savvy Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd.
The ship’s bell
We were interested to hear how vigorously the Greenpeace folk on board the ship distanced themselves from the Sea Shepherd campaigns we’ve observed in the Whale Warsseries, but to me the actions they described – such as putting themselves in between whales and the harpoons of Japanese whaling vessels – sounded pretty similar to what Paul Watson and company are doing. The differences in philosophy are too subtle for me to appreciate!
The weather forecast for the (long) weekend of 9-12 August was grim – and this after a series of winter storms that made Tony and I wish we’d scheduled our trip to Denmark to visit family for July, rather than December! The weekend was notable for being the dates on which the Cape Town Dive Festival was originally planned to take place, but the predicted wind (gusting up to 80 kilometres per hour), swell (up to 9 metres late on Saturday), low temperatures and heavy rain led the organisers to postpone it to 8-9 September instead.
Simon’s Town yacht basin looking grim
Tony and I were keen to see what the storm would do to False Bay. Also, he had a bad case of cabin fever, having been trapped indoors with the cats for days by the weather. We thus took two drives down the peninsula, on the morning and late afternoon of Saturday 11 August. There are a number of pictures from that day here, and this post contains some more.
Muddy water at False Bay Yacht Club
Runoff from the mountain had made many of the inshore sites spectacularly muddy. The yacht basin outside False Bay Yacht Club looked like milky tea, with a distinct line further out (just visible above) marking the boundary of the murk. As we ate breakfast at the yacht club we listened to the sailing race scheduled for that day being cancelled – the wind was so strong that the sailors feared breaking things off their yachts!
Froggy Pond, Miller’s Point, and many sites in between suffered the same fate. The picture below was taken during a vicious hailstorm. I sacrificed picture quality for camera integrity.
Muddy water around the slipway at Miller’s Point
The venue of the dive festival, the Cape Boat and Ski Boat Club, was waterlogged and battered by strong winds and hail when we stopped by. The lawn area where the sponsors’ gazebos were to be erected was soaked. Shark Alley, where shore dives were to have taken place, was the colour of Coca Cola.
Tony paddling on the lawn outside Cape Boat and Ski Boat Club
This picture was taken the day before (10 August). The swell was fairly large. The extremely large swell promised by the weather sites did not materialise at all in False Bay, although the sites on the western side of the Cape Peninsula did experience some swell that day. The direction was very westerly, which perhaps spared the bay from the full force of it.
Big swell at Shark Alley on Friday 10 August
Late on Saturday afternoon Christo alerted us to a deep sea trawler, the Andromeda, sheltering in Smitswinkel Bay. She joined at least two other (much larger) ships hiding from the storm near Muizenberg, with a Smit Amandla tugboat to watch over them.
The Andromeda III shelters from the storm in Smitswinkel Bay
The weather has really been out of whack recently and I have not found the predicted conditions matching the actual conditions more than once over the last two weeks. Despite the cold, wet and windy conditions there have been some good days and I have had the boat out as often as possible. Last weekend was really busy at the Yacht Club as the Lipton Cup was due to start , a week long regatta, so there was a hive of activities in preparation. The slipway at Miller’s Point has also been extremely hectic as the snoek are running in the bay, so every boat in Cape Town seems to have been launching there every day and some days it has been difficult getting into the parking lot!
Yacht being removed from the water in preparation for the Lipton Cup
Yesterday we dived at Partridge Point and then with the sevengill cowsharks and the water was 13 degrees with 6-8 metre visibility. During the seal dive the viz was far better at depth and a little further out but closer to the rock it dropped off to about 2 metres. The was a fair bit of surge.
Miller’s Point on Monday morning
This weekend
Tomorrow will be a flat, calm, sunny blue ocean day in False Bay, but it’s Friday and far too many people seem to want to be at work. I will dive at Long Beach with students and will then have some idea of the conditions closer to shore as all the dives we have done recently have been off the boat.
Saturday will once again be a howling 50 km/h windy wet day but it’s from the right direction to improve the viz, and the swell is around 3 metres which is just bearable. Diving will be best on Sunday as the wind drops off somewhat and it’s north westerly so the bay will be flat.
I will make a decision on Friday evening whether we launch on Sunday once I see an updated weather forecast. If it’s going to be too windy we will dive at Long Beach or A Frame. Let me know if you want to do a shore dive or a boat dive, so I know who to contact about diving on Sunday once I’ve seen the weather.
Cape Town Dive Festival & International Coastal Cleanup Day
There are some spaces available at the festival (taking place on 8-9 September), and the reduced rate of R100 for dives applies until 31 August. Visit the website for more information.
The following weekend, on Saturday 15 September, is International Coastal Cleanup Day. We plan to support OMSAC at their cleanup dive in Kalk Bay Harbour – more information here. These cleanupdives aren’t always scenic, but they are always interesting, and it’s a very worthwhile project to be involved in. If you’re interested in participating, either chat to me or go ahead and register directly with OMSAC. Clare and I are moving house next week and will only have headspace for more admin after that!
March: nothing here but a blank tinker-toy city of docks,
and one revved-up loon piercing the watery center
with its sharp, ancient beak. All alone, it locks
and unlocks the depths. I remember to think how weird
for a bird to fly through water. Meanwhile, little pings,
mooring rings nudging shoulders with the pilings,
and I’m shifting foot-to-foot on the balcony, waiting
for the loon to show, wondering why it divides itself, how
it knows how. I wonder if it’s mocking me.
A fishing boat comes through. Red and blue
jackets emerge, attach tough lines. Way out, dashing
along: eight wild sails. If the sea were thrashing,
we’d be saved by that exclamatory wall of posts. It’s
all dangerous: water, air, these railings and thermal
doors. It’s a wonder anyone leaves the womb, that we haul
our sails up into this. Notice how far I’ve come, though—
I want credit, here—to swing this far out between one
thing and another. It’s hard, given my dumb,
uncontrollable impulse toward harbor. I like to go down
and pull the covers over, but here’s the loon again, rhyme
leaps up. It’s a radical world, a boat pitching around
at its lines, that one there cheerily named Lost Time.
The vast majority of new divers in Cape Town know where Long Beach in Simon’s Town is. Irrespective of the dive school you choose for Open Water training it is in most cases quite likely you will do at least one dive at Long Beach. There is a very good reason for this: it is diveable in most conditions as is usually the last place on the coastline to be blown out. It is a safe environment and a perfect place for training as it is by far one of the easiest shore entries around.
Divers enter the water as a rubberduck speeds past
Although it is known to all dive trainers as a training site, very few visitors know this and not all water users (boaters, kayakers and paddle-skiers) are aware of your presence in the water. The average boater does not know the tell-tale signs of bubbles divers make, and why should he? But being struck by a paddle-ski, a propeller, or the keel of a sailboat is going to hurt you and it could easily kill you.
It is not too often that boats buzz by the beach, but on occasion the Navy boats as well as paddlers, and fishermen drive by as well as visitors to the coast with their recreational boats. Even the NSRI uses this beach for training of their boat crews on occasion. Part of a skipper’s training is to be aware of things floating on the surface: buoys could indicate nets, for example, that would snag the propeller, and thus boaters are trained to avoid or approach carefully any such flotation device.
There is no evidence of a surface marker buoy
So why do most divers dive without any form of warning to a boat that they are there, and why would they do so when part of what they are teaching new divers involves ascending in random spots all over the area? “We seldom ascend during a dive” is most often the answer as to why yet there are several surface skills, training ascents and the constant risk of an unplanned ascent by a new diver coming to terms with buoyancy (or in some cases having a mild panic attack and dashing to the surface).
The simple answer is that it is not required by law in South Africa to tow a buoy or alpha flag… But then it’s not law that as an Open Water diver you can’t go to 50 metres during a dive. You are taught not to exceed your training level, your logic will also most likely tell you it’s a risky plan, but if you are foolish enough to try who would stop you?
More divers entering the water without a buoy or flag
It is fortunate that the dive industry is largely self-regulated and as divers we are free to explore the ocean at will. Scuba diving is a very safe sport and provided you stay within the guidelines of you training agency you will have thousands of safe and enjoyable dives. When doing a boat dive, the skipper will typically erect an Alpha flag to indicate to other boats that he has divers in the water (if your skipper doesn’t do this, it’s time to switch dive charters to one that’s more safety conscious).
You could dive without a pressure gauge – but that would be foolish – you could dive without a mask, but then you would see very little, and you could also dive without an alpha flag, but none of the surface water users would see you or know you were there. Would that not be foolish?
Tony has been ragging Grant incessantly about the existence (or lack thereof) of a yacht that lies at Klein Tafelberg, so when we visited Klein Tafelberg Grant dropped the shotline practically on top of the hapless Patti. Klein Tafelberg is characterised by a pinnacle that extends from the sand at about 34 metres, up to 15 metres.
Wreck of the yacht Patti
Next to the pinnacle lie the remains of Patti, the yacht, at a precipitous angle (my pictures of the yacht aren’t great). I can attest that she does exist, but is missing her propellor. We explored her for a few minutes, and then swam north east to a sandy patch where Cecil did some skills.
Yacht wreckage
There are a few things that make this a magnificent dive.
Visibility
Both times I’ve dived the Tafelberg Reef complex, the visibility has been magnificent. The water is cold (very cold!) but so clean you almost feel dizzy when you fall over the side of the boat. Clean water means that even below 30 metres, light penetrates. There isn’t so much colour loss, and it isn’t dark like the dive we did on the SAS Fleur a couple of weekends ago. The day we did this dive was sunny, which made for a very beautiful experience.
Topography
Side of the pinnacle at Klein Tafelberg
The Tafelberg Reef complex is huge, and very spectacular. The clean water allowed us to appreciate the massive granite boulders and pinnacles, some split dramatically. The yacht wreck stands almost vertically with lots of railings and piping lying around her.
Marine life
This is an Atlantic dive site, and is characterised by a fair amount of kelp and the usual red seaweeds that we found on the Maori and BOS 400. Because the reef is so spectacular, my focus wasn’t so much on hunting for nudibranchs (though I’m sure they’re there) as appreciating the awesome landscape we found ourselves in. I couldn’t miss the many West coast rock lobster hiding between the boulders, though.
There are two really special inhabitants of Tafelberg Reef I’d like to mention.
Basket stars
Basket stars at Tafelberg Reef
Basket stars are related to starfish and brittle stars. They are usually found in deep water and last time we visited Tafelberg Reef I (with no camera) was totally enchanted with their beautiful curly arms. They extend them into the water column to feed. I was determined to find myself a basket star on this dive, and I located several. They are so extravagantly beautiful that it’s hard to believe that they’re fully functional creatures as well!
Basket star feeding
Seals
We were doing a dive for Cecil’s Deep Specialty course, and needed to do two things: one was to let him breathe off an alternate air source (Tony took a 7 litre stage cylinder along for this purpose) and the other was to do an eight minute safety stop, as a simulated deco requirement. Our computers were all set on air, although we were all using a fairly rich mix of Nitrox, so although our computers went into deco and demanded the safety stop, it wasn’t actually required. As part of Cecil’s training, however, it was essential.
Anyway… During our extremely long safety stop we were visited by several frisky Cape fur seals from the nearby colony at Duiker Island. They came to investigate the boat when we arrived at the dive site, and stuck around until we surfaced.
Cape fur seal silhouetted from below
Seals are lots of fun in the water. They’re like dogs. Sometimes they bare their (large, yellow) teeth at you and bark, and sometimes they like to bite things. Fortunately, as long as you keep your fingers out the way, they can’t get a proper grip on any sensitive body parts.
Dancing Cape fur seal
Tony had his head munched, as well as one of his fins, and Cecil nearly lost part of his buttocks and had his pillar valve investigated thoroughly. I was torn between laughing and taking photographs, and wondering whether the seal needed me to bitch slap it to show who was boss.
Colonial ascidians
Dive date: 10 April 2011
Air temperature: 24 degrees
Water temperature: 10 degrees
Maximum depth: 37.1 metres
Visibility: 20 metres
Dive duration: 36 minutes
We descended and ascended through a beautiful cloud of tiny jellyfish, illuminated by the sun.
We have had some amazing diving days of late. Friday saw conditions at Long Beach that we have been longing for for months. Warm, clean water with an abundance of life. The ocean’s seasons are very interesting aspects of diving for Clare and I, and thanks to Clare’s logbook and amazing photos we have a much better idea now than we had a year ago of what you can find and when.
Pint size octopus at Long Beach
We have been fortunate enough to see tiny octopus, warty pleurobranchs spawning egg ribbons, klipfish mating, huge rays feeding and shysharks having a feeding frenzy. We visited the cowsharks, watched sadly as injured and hooked sharks struggled to adapt to the harm inflicted upon them by man, and watched a juvenile jutjaw and a doublesash butterflyfish grow from 2 centimetres to close to 6 centimetres before they moved off from their tiny safe house to brave the ocean.
Carpet flatworm at Long Beach
On the weekend Clare found a juvenile sole so small and so well camouflaged it almost avoided her beady eyes. We always find something new and interesting in the ocean. We have watched our small artificial reef go from bits of wood and plastic to a small colony of life. The list is endless.
Transparent anemone at Long Beach
Diving at this time of year is not to be missed. (That applies all year round!)
Recent dives
Basket star on Tafelberg Reef
We dived the Atlantic early Sunday, Grant taking us to the yacht wreck on Klein Tafelberg reef. We were looking for depth to continue the Deep Specialty and our maximum depth was 37 metres in 10 degree water with amazing visibility, 15-20 metres. We had to perform a simulated emergency deco stop for 8 minutes and during this time we had seals nipping at Cecil and I, and a jellyfish bonanza. We had a dive time of 36 minutes and we dived on Nitrox.
Cecil and a curious seal
From Hout Bay we dashed to Long Beach to dive with the two Divemaster candidates and continue the Advanced Course doing navigation. Back in the water once more for a Refresher, and home to download the photos. The ocean was warm at Long Beach, 17 degrees, calm and the visibility was 5-6 metres.
Part of the yacht wreck on Tafelberg Reef
Atlantic diving should start to fade soon as the seasons change and the prevailing winds come from the north west. This cleans and cools to False Bay area and the visibility gets better and better.
Side of the pinnacle at Klein Tafelberg
Trips
We are off to Sodwana on Saturday for a four night/six dive trip, and the group, 13 in total, are all looking forward to this. We will post photos and video when we get back. I think we have five or six cameras for this event so there are bound to be loads of good photos.
Planned dives
We are hoping to book two launches for the Friday after we return from Sodwana, that being Easter Friday and booking is essential. We will plan to go to a wreck for the first dive and possibly a barge wreck or reef for the second launch. I need to give Grant some numbers before I leave for Sodwana so please let me know as soon as possible.
Courses
I am starting a new Deep Specialty course as soon as we get back from travelling. It’s a good idea to do the enriched air/Nitrox specialty at the same time. This combination qualifies you to dive to 40 metres, and gives you longer bottom times and safer diving.
There’s a romance and fascination to the structures that we build to try to tame the ocean, and a sense of awe demanded by the scale and industry that modern harbours project. Learn about the development of modern shipping, about lighthouses, and more with this list of book recommendations for the shipping buff.
