Cruising World - November - December 2016

november/december 2016

cruisingworld.com

UNDER THE

TABLECLOTH: A VISIT

TO CAPE TOWN

ONNE VAN DER WAL

15

W

hat is it about Cape Town?

One of the world’s great landfalls under any cir-

cumstance, it’s all the more so when the Tablecloth

— that seasonally permanent cloud that continuously spills over

the side of Table Mountain — is set.

Generations of westabout circumnavigators have faced a

consequential choice when they reach the Indian Ocean: keep

Africa to port and transit the Red Sea to Europe, or turn left

and eventually tangle with the treacherous Agulhas Current

until rounding the Cape of Good Hope, also known as the

Cape of Storms.

Readers of Dove will recall that Robin Lee Graham originally

chose the Red Sea route. But the 1967 Six-Day War, between

Israel and Egypt, sent him south instead, spurring nine months

of South African travel with his new bride that constitute some

of his classic book’s most idyllic passages. By the early 1990s,

most voyagers, including participants in the early World ARC

round-the-world rallies, bypassed South Africa in favor of the