An account - Escape to Robben Island 09 / 05 / 08

We had agreed to give Barend a call half an hour before we were to pick him up. I rang him from my place at 5:02am and went down the road to pick up Christian. We had the boat on the roof since the previous night. Barend followed us in his bakkie to the free parking lot near the pier at the Waterfront where he climbed into my car – Christian got in the back for the trip to Bloubergstrand. We left his car there because we anticipated being able to hitch a ride back to the waterfront with one of the ferries or the supply vessel in the afternoon.

We arrived at the small parking lot near the Blue Peter restaurant/hotel at about 6:20 to assess the sea conditions. The 5:30 weather report had said there would be a fresh N Westerly with a 60% chance of rain, the weatherman had floundered. There had been quite a gale on the previous Tuesday but the sea seemed to have calmed significantly since then. We left the beach and headed to the Engen garage in Tableview to get some food and water supplies for the trip as well as batteries for the GPS and smokes for Christian. We got four 5 litre bottles of Aquelle, some sandwiches and three energy bars. There was still a mist so thick that one couldn’t see much outside of a 100m radius but we headed back to the beach and waited. Some surfers in their twenties arrived and headed into the breakers a bit north of where we planned to launch. When the one that had parked next to us returned we asked him what the sea was like and he’d told us there was a lot of wash and that there was a junior surf competition happening that day and over the weekend. It was about 8:15 and Barend had overheard the loudspeakers at the surf club saying that the mist was expected to clear in a while and that the wind might pick up a bit.

We waited. Unloaded the boat and started preparing her for the trip. We put strips of initiation blankets (that Barend had given us late the previous year) onto the three benches and covered them in green gambling table felt that we had pilfered from our landlord at the studio. All was stapled on. Until then the only other steel used on the boat was the single coach bolt in the keel for securing the rope ladder. I also stapled strips of the felt onto the handles of our oars, the handles were quite fat.

By around 9:45 the mist had lifted and we started moving the boat to the sea and asked a middle aged guy who’d been watching us to film the first stage of our departure. We pulled her out and as soon as the keel was free I jumped sideways into the bow of the boat, there was nothing elegant about the maneuver. I started paddling and Christian and Barend pushed from the stern until the water was too deep and they climbed in from the ladder at the transom. I was paddling to keep her nose into the waves while the others got on the oars. We started forging a way forward and made it through the initial wash relatively easily but beyond that things got a bit tricky. There were sets of 8-11ft waves coming in through our “calm” gap in the rocks, the first of which crashed right over our nose and swamped us. We gradually inched through the breakers with me in the bow trying to steer with the paddle and shouting directions (orders) to Barend and Christian behind me (TOWARDS TOWN! TOWARDS TOWN! … Ok, we’ve got another set coming in - BIG WAVES, BIG WAVES! ... TOWARDS TOWN! ROW! THE OTHER WAY! AWAY FROM THE ROCKS! OK, ROW! ROW! WAVE! WE’RE GOING UP NOW. ROW! ROW! TOWARDS TOWN! TO THE LEFT! ROW! FUCK! Ok another two I think! ROW! …)

It took us just over a half hour of excruciating rowing to get past the breakers allowing me to take over the front oars from Barend, hence enabling Christian to take the back seat and start bailing us out, he had to cut one of our water bottles open for a scoop because the pump we’d brought wasn’t designed for the amount of water we’d taken on board. Almost immediately the scoop went overboard and Christian had to cut open another bottle, which he wisely tied onto the ladder (now under the back seat). When half the water was out of the boat he swapped places with Barend. We alternated between rowing with all four oars and just one oar from each pair. It was far easier for me to remain in synch when rowing with all the oars but Christian and Barend did not have the stamina to maintain the style for long on each shift. By about 10:20 we were in a position where it was possible to open one of the dry bags to get the waterproof disposable cameras out to get some shots of the situation. There were about six large cargo carriers anchored off to our port side, the nearest was around 6 kilometers South at this point. Christian and Barend continued to take turns on the back seat and we all took momentary breaks to photograph or film our surroundings. By now the mist had cleared enough that we could see the island ahead of us. Whoever was on the back seat would direct the rowers to maintain a steady bearing on the island, it soon became apparent that there was a gentle current pulling us South towards the anchorage. The GPS informed us of an average speed of about 2.4 knots for those brief periods along the way for which it was switched on, the temperature in it’s ziplock bag was between 17 and 18 degrees. There was a fairly long and gentle swell which encouraged Christian to relieve himself of the burden in his stomach at around 11:40, from which point on Barend spent less time on the bench and more time rowing. He probably rowed for about 65% of the trip there, with Christian taking care of most of the documentation. At about the half way mark we were joined by a few inquisitive or hungry birds; big brown gulls of some type. We continued with our routine of me rowing in the front and trying to maintain the rhythm and momentum while Barend and Christian took turns on the back seat until needing to rest.

At about the 3 quarter mark we first saw the tourist ferry jetting towards the island and at the same time the sea rescue helicopter circled around the island. As we got closer they passed overhead but made no indication that they’d seen us. By the time we were 500m from shore the ferry was leaving the island so Christian and Barend filmed and photographed the tourists in return as they motored past. Barend and I rowed the last stretch into the harbour, coming in very close to the northern pier to avoid any potential traffic. As we drew close to the island the N westerly had started to pick up to around 10 – 13 knots so we were glad to be in the shelter of the breakwater. We moved past the first of the concrete piers and saw a small low floating jetty, to port was a tourist ferry docked parallel with our path. We moored up and climbed off the boat and unloaded some things, drank some coke - the time was about 13:10.

Almost immediately we were joined by two of the island security guards and one of the NSRI pilots, the senior guard asked us what we thought we were doing and why had we come and explained to us that it was impossible for us to be on the island as we needed to have permits and that all boats entering port had to have prior permission and all sorts of other officious crap. He said it was impossible to come to the island without having to pay. We asked if it would be at all possible to hitch a ride with one of the ferries or perhaps the island supply vessel which Thando Mama had informed us departed each afternoon. By this stage his curiosity had entirely disappeared and his only priority was to get this strange anomaly out of his life. He seemed unwilling to follow the correct protocol which seemed to involve phoning the police and having us arrested, and having us pay for the boat that they would have to charter to come and arrest us. I think his words were that we had best just get in our boat and row back where we came from before the “big boss” was aware of our presence. The big boss was also once referred to as “the Owner” of the island and as the CEO. While we were in the middle of the end of our interaction with this moron another unannounced vessel cruised into the harbour – a monstrous, fast and ugly fucking motor cruiser, our guards immediately rushed off and we set off at full speed across the harbour to see if we could hitch a ride with this new offender in his fifty five foot fucking jetski before he too was sent off.

The asshole skipper of the jetski was there on orders of the big boss so we had no luck getting a lift back to the Waterfront, we did however get to meet with the big boss which was mildly satisfying if only because it would mean that someone might get in trouble.

We left in the wake of the monstrous motorboat and rowed our asses off for another two hours. For the return voyage the N Westerly had picked up a bit more, and fortunately was now on our stern so the return was a lot quicker than our escape to Robben Island, also we were greatly assisted by the now massive rolling swells that were heading directly towards shore. The last 200m of our trip was spent surrounded by breakers, I gave Barend and Christian a crash course in what to do should anything go amiss, something that was seeming more and more probable as we approached the beach. Abandon ship was the theme. As quickly as possible. There could have been some swearing. The spot we’d picked to come in, and our timing, couldn’t have been better. After one close call (a massive breaker crashing against our stern, twisting us almost 90 degrees to the next oncoming wave) I straightened her out and we surfed the next wave all the way to shore. We had just enough energy to walk angasi nkosi, angasi nkosi through the wash to the car and then it was back onto the roof and back to "normality".