They don’t call it the Cape of Storms for nothing. I’d arrived in Cape Town, South Africa, with some of my fellow nautical journalists–Chris Dixon of Power & Motoryacht and Passagemaker’s Jeff Moser—to check out Robertson & Caine’s manufacturing facilities and drive the Leopard 40 PC, the company’s latest power catamaran. But as it would turn out, the weather gods would not cooperate during our five-day visit.
On our first day, which started out sunny, our hosts gave us a tour of the production plants while the 40 PC was being commissioned at a Cape Town marina.
Robertson & Caine was founded in 1991 to build custom racing yachts and production cruisers and quickly made its mark when Broomstick, a 70-foot Maxi, won the 1993 Cape to Rio International Yacht Race, and Orion Express, a Fast 42, impressed international racing enthusiasts on the world circuit. The international exposure drew the attention of The Moorings, which in 1994 entered into an agreement with R&C to have them manufacture sailing catamarans for its global charter fleet. Since then, the South African yard has built more than 2,500 cats. It now exclusively builds catamarans, both sail and power, which are sold to The Moorings and to private owners under the Leopard brand. Leopard was created in 2000 after people kept asking how they could own a R&C charter cat privately.
The Moorings liked that R&C built hulls tough enough to withstand the rigors of the South Atlantic, and for a long time all R&C cats were delivered around the world on their own bottoms. That practice was curtailed about eight years ago. Nowadays, the majority of R&C cats are delivered by freighter.
A Leopard catamaran is built on the same hull as a Moorings catamaran, but Leopards offer larger owner staterooms, more storage and options like washers and dryers, watermakers and expanded electronics. Leopard and Moorings cats are built side-by-side in the same factory, but while a Leopard owner gets to pick different layouts, options and colors, a Moorings boat has a nonnegotiable list of features to keep the charter fleet uniform.
Currently, Robertson & Caine builds six models for The Moorings and Leopard: three sailing catamarans (a 42-, a 45- and a 50-footer), and three power cats (the 53, the 46 and the 40, which is slated to debut at the 2023 Miami International Boat Show).
At the six factories, the predominantly non-white workforce, which numbers more than 2,000, placed newly constructed hulls on carriages, moved them through the factories on tracks and added the various systems, decks and details. Forty percent of the company’s builds are power cats and 55 percent of all the cats are sold to private owners. In 2023, R&C is slated to build more than 200 catamarans. Nearly all the boats are exported.
Because the air inside the buildings did not smell of epoxy I asked Rob Kamhoot, one of our South African hosts, about the ventilation systems. Rob said that R&C uses vacuum bagging to create all its fiberglass hulls and decks, which dramatically reduces epoxy exposure to the air. I’d been in American factories that used vacuum bagging, where despite large ventilation systems, the factories still smelled of epoxy, but because most of R&C’s buildings were repurposed manufacturing structures—some dating back 50 years or more—and because all the factory doors were open, the wind was naturally ventilating the facilities.
That’s possible in Cape Town because it is one of the windiest cities in the world. The Cape Peninsula has a Mediterranean climate with dry summers, but on some days the wind can blow up to 75 mph. During the southern hemisphere summers, between October and March, a southeasterly wind constantly blows across the Cape Peninsula.
“The wind is called the Cape Doctor because it blows all the pollution away,” Peter O’Hanlon, one of our other South African hosts, told us. The wind not only clears up the city’s air but takes the edge off the summer heat and is responsible for the “tablecloth” effect that can sometimes be seen on top of Table Mountain. Its low-moisture content condenses into a massive cloud that sometimes drops octopus-like tentacles down over the mountain’s edges, creating a dramatic visual effect.
After touring the plants, we had a lovely lunch on the Royal Cape Yacht Club terrace. We then hopped aboard a Moorings 464 with the intent of making a short run to Clifton, one of Cape Town’s upscale oceanfront communities, and anchor off the beach to watch the sunset and enjoy what the South Africans call a sundowner. King Neptune was not on board with our plans, though.
As the 464 motored out of Cape Town’s harbor, we could see the tablecloth, but the wind on top of the mountain was blowing so hard that it was pulling the tablecloth apart. Once outside the harbor’s protection, we learned why the Portuguese explorers who first sailed around the Cape of Good Hope didn’t bother to stop there.
The Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias was the first known European to sail around the southern tip of Africa in 1488. He named it the Cape of Storms. By the 16h century, the Portuguese were annually sending fleets around to the Indian Ocean, which until Dias’ voyage had been believed to be landlocked. The Portuguese built bases for the slave trade in West Africa and in East Africa at Mombasa and Mozambique, but they occupied no territory south of Angola or Mozambique.
The Portuguese and other European sailing ships had avoided southern Africa because the South Atlantic Benguela current flowed in a northerly direction that prevented an easy approach to the Cape. The Portuguese eventually learned to also fear the Cape’s navigational hazards, tempestuous seas and the perilous shoals that wrecked ships. And even though the Cape Peninsula had two natural harbors—Table Bay on the western side and False Bay on the eastern side—Table Bay was exposed to winter gales from the northwest and False Bay was subject to summer gales from the southeast.
Eventually, the Dutch, English, French and Scandinavians who followed the Portuguese landed on the Cape Peninsula to get fresh water and to barter with the native Khoikhoi. But it wasn’t until 1649, when a Dutch ship was wrecked off the Cape and its crew wintered on Table Bay, that the Dutch East India Company realized the Cape would make a good resupply point for some of its 6,000 ships. The Dutch built a fort in 1652 and quickly started importing slaves, first from Angola and Benin, and soon after from their possessions in the east. In under a decade, they had created a racially stratified society that would last for almost 350 years until apartheid ended in the early 1990s. The Dutch, in what seems like a marketing stunt, called it Kaap De Goede Hoop, a name that had been coined by King John II of Portugal who had renamed it Cabo da Boa Esperanca, or Cape of Good Hope.
But aboard our Moorings 464 power catamaran, the conditions in the Atlantic were far from good, and there was no hope of anchoring off Clifton’s beaches. A 15- to 20-knot northwesterly wind and 3- to 4-foot waves were blowing in off the Atlantic while an 8-foot swell was coming up from the Southern Ocean making for less than tidy seas. The swell is produced by often distant weather systems south of the African continent, which combine with local winds and produce waves of their own. Offshore winds will flatten the sea, but strong onshore winds will produce a short chop, which is what we were getting. The only available refuge from the Atlantic was in the lee of Table Bay’s Robben Island, where during apartheid, Nelson Mandela spent most of his 27-year prison sentence.
The 6-mile ride to the island, straight into the oncoming waves, proved to be wet. At 5 knots, the ride was rocky and rolly. Taking the 464 up to 18 knots made the ride more pleasant, but Capt. Martin Lourens and his mate Theodore January needed only a few salty showers on the flybridge before they opted for the much drier and comfier confines of the lower helm station.
Most of the dozen passengers joined them in the capacious salon, but even though some of the spray was still coming over the flybridge, some of us stubbornly hunkered down on the large comfy sunpad at the aft end of the gigantic flybridge. The cat’s 24-foot beam handled the sloppy seas nicely, and when we got into Robben Island’s lee, we enjoyed a respite from the waves.
The downwind run to Cape Town was far more peaceful and turned idyllic when long lines of African sacred ibises flew overhead. The wind also calmed down enough for us to anchor off the iconic Cape Town Stadium that was built for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The sunset, however, failed to materialize. Clouds rolled in and Table Mountain disappeared completely.
The second day was far windier. Even though it was early summer in the Southern Hemisphere, only one of the many hundreds of sailboats in Cape Town’s harbor dared to venture out on the water. By midday, the southeasterly wind blew the white caps off the tops of the waves, creating solid sheets of white spray that flew across the surface and obscured the black ocean waters below. When halfway down the western side of the Cape Peninsula we got out of the car at Chapman’s Peak to admire the view of Hout Bay, my wife, who’d joined me for the trip, feared she was going to get blown off the mountain. Only a single ocean-going vessel was rounding the Cape of Good Hope.
On the eastern side of the peninsula on False Bay, the wind blew so hard that only a handful of the several hundred African penguins entered the surf. The others turned their backs to the wind and closed their eyes to keep the blowing sand out.
Day three served up a massive thunderstorm that turned day into night. It included two hours of impressive lightning strikes, wicked winds and torrential rain that continued throughout the night and seeped into everyone’s cottages.
When on the fourth day a giant black cloud flew over the top of the Boland Mountains and pelted us with unrelenting hail, South African tongues were wagging. “This never happens,” Rob said, and Peter told us that the weather conditions we were experiencing were well beyond the norm.
Fortunately, by the fifth day, the weather was calm enough to go out on the water, but there was bad news. Due to the foul weather, the commissioning of the first Leopard 40 PC had fallen behind schedule, and in order for Robertson & Caine to get her onto a freighter in time for the Miami show we would not be able to test the boat. Instead, we hopped aboard a Leopard 53, which among its other expansive spaces had a massive master suite that spanned the starboard hull from stem to stern.
While we waited for the bascule bridge and the marina swing bridge to open so we could get the 53 and the Moorings 464 into the ocean, we entertained ourselves by watching the Cape fur seals who snoozed on the Victoria & Alfred waterfront docks, groomed themselves with their hind flippers and lollygagged in the water.
The Cape fur seals can do whatever they want because they are protected, as are Cape Town Harbour and the waters around the Cape Peninsula—they’re part of the Table Mountain National Park Marine Protected Area. But the local marine environment, and the seals in particular, have been showing signs of distress. In 2021 and 2022, thousands of Cape fur seals died mysteriously. Many were malnourished, but domoic acid (released in some algae blooms because of warming waters and agricultural runoff) was suspected to be the main culprit. However, a lack of predation may also be a factor. In 2015, two male orcas started killing the Cape’s great whites by smashing into them, ripping out their livers and leaving the rest of the fish to float up on the beaches. Since then, most of the great whites have moved away, leaving the seal population to swell to the point where it may no longer have an adequate food supply.
Once out on the Atlantic, while dodging the seals who were raising their flippers out of the water to thermoregulate their body temperatures, we found the water less turbulent, albeit not calm. Despite the heavy overcast that only left the top of Signal Hill’s 1,148-foot peak visible and obscured most of Table Mountain and Lion’s Head, one of the mates called the conditions “nice.” This is “as good as it gets,” he said, without a hint of sarcasm, which made Jeff, Chris and I look at each other with raised eyebrows.
After running the 53 and the 464 down the western side of the Cape Peninsula toward Hout Bay while pushing the Yanmars hard, one of the skippers told us it was time to return to Cape Town. On the way back to port, we spotted a whale. It rose out of the water to breathe, raised its fin tail high in the air, and then disappeared into the depths.
It was just one more example of what a truly beautiful and mesmerizing place the Cape Peninsula can be, but between the incessant wind and the nasty storms, I was not as much blown away by the Cape as I was blown over.
The next day, while most of our group was flying back to the States, Rob sent us a photo. It showed monohull sailboats on Table Bay during the Royal Cape Yacht Club’s Wednesday evening races. The crew on Rob’s boat was smiling broadly as an offshore wind sent them on a lovely beam reach across flat seas with Table Mountain, Lion’s Head and Signal Hill clearly visible against a sunny, blue sky. “And now we have OK weather!!!,” Rob wrote.
Apparently, once in a while, even the Cape of Storms needs to take a day off from work.
This article was originally published in the March 2023 issue.
