Sailing the Straits of Salamander

Smooching girl sailors                                        

It’s not often one gets invited aboard a yacht called Salamander by a lesbian sailor with a bottle of whisky. “She’s an ace skipper”, said her girlfriend, a journalist, so I armed myself with a stiff Hankey Bannister and climbed on.

We started our adventure with a hearty breakfast at the Yacht Club at the Ebenezer Dam which is near Haenertsburg village in Limpopo. Not many people have heard of Haenertsburg, never mind the Ebenezer Dam, which is one of the area’s most beautiful and underrated water holes. Deep, clean, crowd free and encircled by moody mountains.  

“But the Yacht Club is for members only”, I began my witty repartee with the lesbians…  Yes indeed someone has to be a member haha, and so it turned out that Ace Skipper was, and had borrowed the yacht from a friend. Full of of faded photographs, not-so-shiny trophies and the odd needlepoint painting, the clubhouse has been around forever and is an old and somewhat shabby Deco style building overlooking the dam. But with a fringe of creeper and the right light on the distant bobbing yachts it feels vaguely European, possibly even Eastern European. 

Gracious views from the yacht club terrace

It took quite a long time for us women to get on to Salamander who is a rather small girl herself. But we did eventually set sail, with assorted cooler boxes, cameras, cell phones, ipods, speakers, sarongs, hats, sunblock and nary a man in sight. Sadly I am from that rather old-fashioned school that thinks sailing is something men do for you while you worry about your hair and your wineglass. This time however, my skills were going to be required and Ace Skipper was very patient and explained carefully what a cleat was and also why we all needed to sit at the back of the yacht on take-off.

A good breeze, a sunny day, we headed out towards the waterfall which is at the western end of the dam. We chugged past the old community hall, various holiday homes and newer developments on the shore. I have to say there’s not a lot of taste going down here, and there are a bit too many clubs for my liking - the boat club, the yacht club, the trout club, the angling club and so on. I am a bit Groucho Marx about clubs (won’t belong to one that will have me as a member) so I settled into the Monaco Position (lying on top of the yacht with a drink) and just chilled out.

Reflections on a sailing salamander                                            

What a glorious day. It scored very well on my Whisky Index - proper short glasses, endless ice, soda water – which is always a good thing. We loved the mountain view, swam to the waterfall, endured a brief cloudburst, shared a lot of stories about boats, yachts, sailing. My sailing skills are abysmal but my story was impressive thank goodness– I had recently sailed the bay of Waikiki in Hawaii which is part of some wanky Conde Naste magazine bucket list, so we drank a bit more and decided I should do a story on Yacht Clubs in Africa, starting with the Ebenezer Yacht Club. 

I have already done the Maputo Yacht Club, as it were, which is jaunty and retro-nautical and has a steel band in floral shirts that plays Afro-Mediterranean beat as the waiters prance around dispensing plates of prawns and cold beers . So that's two. And Ace Skipper’s lovely friend’s husband has a yacht in Lagos apparently, so it looks like I may be onto something ... 

Wild times at the Ebenezer Yacht Club in Limpopo