As Ambassador to South Africa for Global Wind Day on June 15, 2012 and returning home was an opportunity to create a new series. “It Was” are a series of self videos and interviews returning to places, people and times of my past. Many of these videos reflect parts of “Journey of a Hope Merchant” bring my story alive visually. There are visits to my childhood home, the harbors where my nautical life began, and the schools I attended. I hope you enjoy your walk down my memory lane. Here we will post over twenty videos below.
This is the road I grew up on. Many neighbors still live here after 40 years. I met three, one who has been following me on FaceBook. My childhood house has changed substantially, with the trees and gardens completely gone and replaced with concrete, two car garage and a swimming pool.
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Just minutes walk away up the street is my maternal grandmothers home. Also the gardens are gone. As a child it felt like a much larger house. The structure has not changed much. I still remember the entrance, but the house has seen decades of neglect. The two palm trees are still there, still as tall bending in the wind.
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On Friday afternoons I worked in Mr. Dennis’s pets shop selling birds and fish. I was paid in animals, mostly fish. On a Saturday morning now and again I worked and if it was a busy morning, I got R2 pay and would spend it on a bird. I found that pet shop again.
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Around the corner from our home was the Wynberg Swimming pool where I swam on regular basis. I was enrolled in a swimming club, but the rigors of training conflicted with the television series “Black Beauty” the story of a horse. Structured swimming was not a part of my life.
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After school I walked several times a month to this public library. Our libraries were segregated and this was the “white’s only library” but one librarian gave me the break of a life time.
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As a young boy I went to Kalk Bay to fish from the pier. Later I went out on the boats, one in particular…”Suidersteer”. It was here that I learned my basic nautical skills, took my first diving experience and built memories with my late father whose ashes are floating in these waters.
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Simonstown where the sailing all began.
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Snorkeling and spearfishing in False Bay.
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Scuba diving and the wrecks off Ouderkraal on the Western side of the Cape Peninsula.
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Rodger, my childhood friend who took many of the photos of building my boat and the Cape Town stop over.
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The Cape of Storms…Cape Point.
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Mrs. Herbs was our Standard 2 teacher. At age nine she had me speak to the students in this very room. Here is where my speaking career really began.
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A student of Mom.
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Meeting one of my primary school classmates who now teaches at Rosmead Central Primary school. We were in Standard 1 to Standard 5 together here.
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The Quad at Livingstone High School where we held assembly, protest meetings or games.
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Mr Bruinders is the current principal of Livingstone. He taught me Afrikaans and has been a long part of the schools history.
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Table Mountain divides the Cape Peninsula and creates on of the most majestic land falls in the world.
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Each day at noon, the noon gun fires over the city bowl from Signal Hill. It is accurate to the second, but if one is in the city, the sound arrives a few seconds late. But this was not always so. It was not fired as a clock, but to announce the arrival of a ship in the bay.
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Diamonds have been mined off the West Coast of South Africa in Port Nolloth for a long time. There have been many stories of the mining, and I met a new friend who dived diamonds the same era as I did. He married a good friends daughter and we caught up on old stories.
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It was Royal Cape Yacht Club that played host to the BOC Challange and where the dream to race around the world was born.
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“Die Burger” an Afrikaans language news paper that gave me my first media coverage in Cape Town. Eban Human was one of the journalists that followed me over a decade. We caught up at RCYC.
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Rob Kamhoort worked on sponsorships with me in the preparation for the race and during. He secured the NetCare sponsorship and spent time in Charleston at the finish working the South African media coverage. We caught up at his home.
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Ronnie Muhl climbed Everest and leads expeditions to Everest. We meet when we both spoke at Million Dollar Round Table in Toronto, CA and now in Simonstown.
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We returned to our house in Knysna where Philip du Toit grew up and launched his sailing dreams. Today Phil is first mate on a mega yacht, but this is where his dreams were born.
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Darlene and I have traveled the world, and our root brought us back to where it all started for me. We hope you enjoyed seeing these places and hearing these stories bring them alive as I have described them in Journey of a Hope Merchant and on the speaking circuit. Here is the address I gave to my Alma Marta, Livingstone High School on June 12, 2012.
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