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by Richard Crockett To a large degree the Buccaneer is a scaled down version of the Royal Cape One Design, with the Van der Stadt designed Buccaneer arriving in this country in the mid-sixties although it was then known as the Primaat. Yachting World magazine adopted the Primaat design and renamed it the Buccaneer. Interestingly I have the minutes of the first Buccaneer Class Association meeting to formalise the class and also to adopt the Class Constitution. That was on …

By Richard Crockett As I recently scanned some fascinating old photos of America’s Cup yachts, I knew that I needed to share them. The featured image featured ‘Endeavour II’ caught my eye for several reasons, one being the lengthy caption which reads as follows, and which was dated 1958: The ‘Sceptre’, the 70 000 Pound yacht which Britain has pinned all hopes on for the race against American Yachts at Newport next September for the elusive America’s Cup, is expected …

By Richard Crockett I feel that the best way to comment on this event, which was 28 years ago now, is to reproduce verbatim the Log Entry I wrote in SAILING Magazine at the time as it’s still relevant. “An interesting situation arose with the dissemination of results during the recent Admiral’s Cup regatta off Cowes. “All results went out stating the name of the owner, or charterer, of each boat, and not the name of the skipper. This is …

By Richard Crockett It appears from editorials that the SA Teams were all far better organised this time round, probably being the third consecutive time that the country had competed in the event. However there do appear to have been some cracks which were quickly plastered over thanks to sponsorship. South Africa did not have a competitive third boat – that was until Ian Haggie stepped in as follows: Mr. Ian Haggie, Deputy Chairman and Chief Executive of Haggie Rand …

by Richard Crockett Today we continue with the Admiral’s Cup thread by covering the 1973 event where our South African team finished 12th out of 16 teams. The yachts used were Hans Berker’s ‘Omuramba’, ‘Jakaranda’ skippered by Bobby Bongers, and ‘Outburst’ skippered by Bill O’Reilly. The team were as follows: 1973 TEAM MANAGER: Pim Penso Omuramba H. Berker (Owner/Skipper) Team Captain. Lt.-Cdr. D. Joyce (Navigator) P. Muzik . P. Cardwell (from Durban ). J. Kipps. Gotz Klohn (from Windhoek). Jakaranda …

By Richard Crockett I do enjoy capturing some real gems when scanning and digitising old archive material as I come across some treasures like the four Admiral’s Cup competitions South African teams competed in. Today I will concentrate on the 1971 team, but sadly do not have a full team list available, so followers of this blog will have to glean that info from the photos used. 1971 was our first foray into the Admiral’s Cup, and a real eye-opener …

By Richard Crockett While scanning and archiving recently I stumbled across a series of photos ‘Datsun Skyline’ – a yacht being built by Richard Glanville for the 1982 – 83 BOC Race. She was dubbed as “innovative and space-age” and was to be skippered by Greg ‘Maori’ Coles, a New Zealander, despite being built in Cape Town. Besides a big pre-launch hype, there is little else to glean about her performance in the race other than she started some 12 …

By Richard Crockett As promised, another selection of photos that have not been seen before. This is purely a random selection of images I have recently scanned so include dinghies and keelboats. Please COMMENT, SHARE and LIKE.            

by Richard Crockett Maybe this should be “Seeing Sailing” rather than “Talking Sailing” as there is another batch of pics from yesteryear to share! And here’s a promise, there will be no L26s tomorrow as I have unearthed more gems from the old days. Please remember to COMMENT, SHARE and LIKE as these images have never been seen before. Back in the day when one shot on slide film, it was a case of looking at each sheet with a …

by Richard Crockett I have spent an inordinate amount of time recently scanning a box full of slides. It’s something I have been meaning to do for several years, and once I put my head down and got into the task, I uncovered some real gems – most of which have never been seen by anyone other than myself. So today enjoy this small and random selection of photos which will hopefully bring back some good memories. More will follow …

By Richard Crockett Apologies for the late posting today, but fibre coms have been down for the past 12 hours! Old seadogs should clearly remember the 110-foot steel schooner, ‘Sean Paquito II’, that was built at the entrance to the Sturrock Dry Dock in Cape Town harbour. It was a fixture for many years, and often talked about. Today there is a delightful story about the man who commissioned her design, and built her. He shared his thoughts on the …

By Richard Crockett The Rio races have certainly always created news and excitement while igniting the fires of those with a keen sense of adventure. Today it’s about Douglas Makhafola who competed in the 1973 race, and again 20 years later with the same skipper in 1993. In 1973 he helped build Dando’s yacht and was offered a crewing berth. A crewman on the yacht ‘Realty I’, launched recently in Table Bay for the Cape to Rio race, he formerly …

By Richard Crockett Oh for the glory days of the Whitbread and Volvo Ocean Races! Those were the days, especially the old Whitbread Race days as the fleets were always very diverse with a healthy mix of those hell-bent on winning combined with those just happy to survive the rigours of a tough race in a relatively safe environment with a bunch of mates. Back in the early days of the Whitbread Race crew took guitars aboard, there was booze, …

By Richard Crockett The newspapers loved our sport back in the day as there were always varied and interesting things happening in the sport, plus many a good pic to be had too. With newspapers so thin these days there is little space left for the so-called non-glamour sports – and too much space give to the “hit it or kick it sports”. So back in 1986 there were plenty of column centimetres given to sailing, and specifically the BOC …

By Richard Crockett It’s difficult to believe that it was 29 years ago today that JJ Provoyeur sailed in to Cape Town to finish the first leg of the BOC singlehanded round-the-world race. It was our singlehanders back in the day who brought us glory and had the full backing and admiration of yachties and landlubbers alike throughout the country. JJ’s finish was no different as reported in the Cape Argus: “Cheers, whistles, hooters, sirens and cries of “We love …