Circumstantial evidence 04

A few days ago Douglas Gimberg, Barend de Wet and I spent a few hours out at sea off the coast of Cape Town.

A loiterer took this picture. He had also been on Blouberg beach since early that morning. Later he, let us call him Rick, videoed the three of us dragging the boat down the beach. As we were about to leave Rick asked when we would return, we discussed it quickly and agreed on five or six hours. “OK, maybe I’ll be here” said Rick.

Getting beyond the breakers took us a mind-fucking 20 or 30 minutes with Douglas shouting “town, town”. Sounds funny now but I had no idea what he meant, eventually I shouted “what town?” All I could do was row not think just row.

Friday 13th, the eve of our Hell Yeah show last year, flashed through my mind- the price of Diesel was R6.66 a litre and Gold was $666 an ounce. Somehow that mattered. Then another thing struck and made me smile- master illusionist Crispian Plunkett was simultaneously making a composite photographic image of us heading out into the ocean as we were doing exactly that.

Once on the open seas I grabbed the bilge pump and started pushing, pulling, pushing and pulling. Nothing happened. I asked Douglas for his knife and cut the inlet pipe shorter. Still nothing. The boat was bogged down with water and we needed to get moving faster, I cut open one of our five litre water containers and it emptied into the boat, stupid. Scooped, chucked, scooped, chucked, scooped and then I lost my grip and the container disappears. Douglas and Barend were rowing as best they could. I cut open a second one, tied a rope to it and scooped, chucked, scooped, chucked, scooped… Damn, that was half our fresh water.

I hoped Barend got some pics of our entry. With the boat considerably lighter we headed off at what seemed like a rate of knots. I felt sick and wonder out loud if they would mind if I puked in the boat. I chose to turn around and share it with the ocean. Gulls were circling us like vultures. I hadn’t felt that way since I was into H. The next two and a half hours were a blur of trading seats, rowing, puking, filming, words and shedding a few tears.

I thought of my god-child Rubens, my family, friends and Kathryn who was flying back from London and wasn’t aware of my departure. It felt absurd risking everything in pursuit of nothing.

The ocean was not yet rough. We still had time to beat it. We passed container ships that would usually hold my interest simply because of their size, no luck. A few helicopters and small planes passed overhead. The mainland faded, as did my stamina. All this time Douglas was going like a Boeing and Barend was pulling faces. Robben Island seemed closer as I spotted the ferry heading in, we all waved back at the tourists as they took their photographs. By the time we rowed into the harbour the ferry had just headed out again as we waved goodbye.

At this point the wind picked up and we were fighting again. We headed across the harbour to a small pier that looked small enough to not have a huge ferry pull up alongside and crush us and we clutched onto it. Thank fuck, thank fuck it was over.

Sadly this was not the case- we were turned back. Other shit happened; I bummed a light off the coast guard, we tried to hitch a ride with Peter or Paul to no avail, we were given an emergency phone number in case of emergency, had a bite of an energy bar, sip of Coke and a moment to reflect. And then off we went for a couple more hours on an ocean that was now looking petulant.

As I recall this journey my thoughts cross to Willem Boshoff’s opening lecture at our show, probably because Anon has just come over for a quick bit o lovin’. I was quite taken by his stories but something bothered me- If the boatman’s boat is now fucked how do people cross the river Styx to leave these earthly confines? Have Douglas and I inadvertently suggested that the idea of having a soul is defunct?

Anyways, on our re-entry into Blouberg the national surf competition was cooking and Rick was there, I can’t recall if we spoke with him.

Christian Nerf 2008-05-13