Viva la Difference!
* Late snowfalls
* Signs of the times
* 2025 calendar
* Alwyn Vincent - the tug that can.
* Featured Pass
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Late Snowfalls
The winter of 2024 has been a humdinger with more snow that I can remember in decades, not to mention huge amounts of rain that fell over the Western Cape, Garden Route and Eastern Cape. Port Elizabeth's looming "Day Zero" water crises has been averted, but the cost of damage to infratructure has been heavy.
Many damaged roads and bridges have yet to be repaired. We refilmed the Franschhoek Pass a few weeks ago with our new GoPro 12 Black, supported by drone footage and were left gobsmacked at the level of damage to the pass. It's going to take time to get the damaged sections repaired. There are about nine self-policed stop-go's in place and authorities have put a 5 ton mass limit in place. This was completely ignored on the day we traversed the pass as the N2 was closed at Grabouw due to protest action, which meant all the normal trafiic on the N2 routed via the pass, which included large pantechnicons. No traffic officials were anywhere to be seen.
2025 Tours Calendar
We have begun work on the task of producing our 2025 calendar. The office walls are adorned with huge spreadsheets as we study the jigsaw puzzle of school holidays, public holidays, Easter and special events that we need to take into consideration (eg the Sardine Run attracts thousands of visitors to the Wild Coast and KZN which makes it nigh impossible to find accommodation for our tour groups).
All tasks begin by taking the first step, so we are already making progress. We have some innovative ideas being introduced in 2025. All will be revealed in a few week's time when we publish it. On our most popular tours (Lesotho, Wild Coast, Swartberg and Ben 10) we will be offering two tours running back to back with a two day gap between them. We have some new guides joining the MPSA team who are currently receiving training and who knows, might even be better than the grand master?!
Included in 2025 is a planned tour of the Cederberg and we are reinventing our popular Seven Sisters Tour with fresh destinations to replace the tour of the Huguenot service tunnel which is no longer available to us.
The Katberg Tour was very successful and we have a lot of interest in the 2025 version, which will also be a double up tour (back to back) to meet the demand.
We started working on a new tour - the Great Karoo Tour - which will include the Bedrogfontein 4x4 Route, Cradock, Mountain Zebra, Nieu Bethesda and Graaff Reinet. More details will be released as soon as we have them.
The one thing we've learnt about tours, is that winter is an excellent time to run a tour, which flies in the face of what most people would think, but we have experienced generally good, crisp, clear weather during our winter tours, which makes for excellent visual enjoyment and good photography without the heat fatigue that plagues summer tours. For example, the proposed Great Karoo Tour would be a prime example of a well placed winter tour.
Signs of the times
About a year and a half ago, an inebriated youngster in a VW Polo took out one of our signs on the Kaaimans Pass in George. The car and our sign were completely written off as the vehicle careered over the concrete barriers at the Dolphin Point view site and ended up in a tangled heap on the railway tracks some 40m down the cliff. As so often happens in these cases, the driver escaped with only minor injuries. We were unable to trace him to recover the costs of a new sign, so we launched a crowd funding project to raise the necessary funds.
That was a struggle! If it wasn't for one very generous donation of R10,000, we would probably not have reached the R20,000 needed. It took over a year to get to the target amount. We engaged CAW Signs in George to build and erect the new sign. It was erected during August and we are very happy to have our newest MPSA sign looking neat and spiffy for all the tourists to enjoy.
Our heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributed.
The new sign at Dolphin Point (with typo's) To be fixed.
The story of the Alwyn Vincent
Mountain passes are the life links to a vast array of topics and subjects. In this case we follow the route of a steam driven tug from Table Bay Harbour in Cape Town via "line of least hills" through the Nuwekloof Pass near Tulbagh to reach its final resting place at the Villiersdorp Steam Tractor Museum.
In this issue we are taking a short leave of absence from our usual newsletter format to bring you a very interesting story, which we stumbled upon whilst filming in the Villiersdorp area. We spotted a tug on a cradle standing next to the road on an open lot just outside Villiersdorp. We immediately thought it would make an interesting photographic subject and used 'Thirsty Kirsty' our MPSA Land Cruiser as a prop to show the size difference.
Well that photo generated a lot of interest including a tale of love, defeat, enthusiasm and some crazy ideas. The story ends where our photo starts. So here it is, warts and all. Enjoy the trip. (Reproduced courtesy DiscoverSedgefield.com)
From Sydney ro Sedgefield by Martin Dellagiacoma (June 2012)
Until 2011 ST Alwyn Vintcent belonged to an Australian businessman, but after efforts to locate him proved fruitless, she has been rescued from an ignominious end by “a bunch of crazy farmers”, the Villiersdorp Branch of the West Cape Tractor & Engine club, assisted by a vast array of other interested parties.
Massive efforts were undertaken on many fronts from fund-raising to raising the tug out of the water, cutting and dismantling it for an epic road trip to Villiersdorp - no part of this journey was for the faint-hearted.
In 1983 I responded to an advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald that was going to have far-reaching consequences for the rest of my life. In the immediate future it was going to thrust me into an adventure I could never have anticipated and one I would never forget - or regret.
I joined a last ditch effort by a group of Australians to save two old South African steam-driven pilot tugs from an ignominious end by preserving them as working museum pieces – prime examples of the by-gone age of steamships. This however, would necessitate a voyage across 10,000 kilometres of open ocean to get them to Australia.
I signed on as 2nd Engineer and was one of fifteen individuals who participated in the exercise. All of us were promised on the job training in all the skills required for seamanship, not to mention an adventure.
The story got underway in June 1983 when a dozen of us flew from Sydney into Johannesburg Jan Smuts Airport and boarded a (steam!) train for Cape Town.
There we were joined by a septuagenarian Californian looking for adventure, a farm boy from Iowa, a journalist from Cape Town who’d abandoned the idea of going “Cape-to-Cairo” to join us instead, and a crazy old man who said he had a pocket full of illicit diamonds and had to leave the country but couldn’t do so “officially” and so tried to hitch a lift with us.
We boarded the steam tug “RA Leigh” in Cape Town Harbour, which we’d bought from the South African Railways and Harbours for a Rand over the scrap merchants’ bid – R5001.00.
Half a dozen of us went up to Luderitz in Namibia to fetch the other tug, the “SJ Harrison”, similarly purchased. After some weeks in Cape Town sorting out paperwork, we departed on board the two tugs with much fanfare, and were soon rolling and plunging in the notorious high swells off the Cape coast of Africa.
The journey took us along the Garden Route – stopping at Mossel Bay to collect our third vessel, the “Alwyn Vintcent”, a sister-ship to the “SJ Harrison” - and on up the east coast of South Africa until we literally limped into Port Elizabeth harbour – low on coal, stoking the boilers with furniture from the captain’s cabin to try and maintain some steam pressure, and all very tired and fully aware of just what a mammoth task we’d taken on. It had nearly been the end of the story, my story!
The passage of just a few days at sea saw a good deal of the on board equipment fail and made us realise just how inadequate were our plans for a long-distance voyage to Australia.
After a few nerve-racking events it became clear that it would be not only dangerous but foolhardy in the extreme to sail a trio of antiquated steam-driven tugs designed solely for calm water harbour work across the wild seas of the world’s southern oceans. The whole salvage effort had to be abandoned and the story for the tugs was over - I thought!
There is more to read about the events of 1983 and how they were the catalyst for the still ongoing efforts to save the last remaining Steam-powered vessel in South Africa, the tug “Alwyn Vintcent”.
After a few weeks of living on board the tugs in Port Elizabeth Harbour, I returned to Cape Town spending time with friends I’d made there and not long after that I flew back to Australia.
The story continues....
Hankering after South Africa, I returned to Johannesburg in the autumn of 1984 and found work in Braamfontein. Fourteen months later I took a holiday down to Cape Town stopping over in Port Elizabeth. I found the old tugs pretty much where we’d left them at the PE quayside - rusting, sad and neglected.
The story takes an unexpected turn......
Single and footloose, I travelled back and forth between Australia and South Africa. It was on a flight from Heathrow to Cape Town that I found myself sitting next to a very attractive girl. She turned out to be Briony Lidstone – she was sitting in the wrong seat but it turned out to be the best mistake she had ever made!
The irony of this was that in 1985, Briony and I had almost crossed paths before - we were within the same 10km radius. I was working in Braamfontein and she was studying at Wits University!
I even drove through Sedgefield back in 1984 and yes, the only thing I can say that I can remember with any certainty from that time is “THAT Horse Fence”! (Sorry Briony!)
We would eventually meet 5 years later, in the spring of 1990 on that flight from the UK to South Africa. On Valentine’s Day of ’91 I tore up my return ticket to Sydney (Briony says it was the most romantic gesture a girl could ask for!)
The story moves to Sedgefield…....
We moved from Cape Town to Sedgefield (Briony’s home town) in the late spring of ‘93 and have been here ever since. I have always retained a love of the sea and have spent many years working in the marine industry in Sydney, Cape Town and Plettenberg Bay.
In the heyday of the hand line Hake export industry on the Garden Route, 1996 to 2006, I was the official Volvo Penta Dealer, looking after the fishing fleet mainly in Plettenberg Bay comprising over two dozen vessels, as well as vessels in St Francis, Mossel Bay and Knysna. The Hake caught by the fishermen on these boats was highly sought after by many European countries, especially Spain.
The Plettenberg fleet was moored off Beacon Isle at Central Beach. In a cowboy-like affair, the only way to reach the boats was by rubber duck launched from the beach. Supplies for the crew, bait, fuel, spares and some times even engines - everything went to and from the vessels via rubber duck though the Central Beach surf break.
This was a hazardous affair as one had to time surf-launching to perfection, otherwise one would be drenched and possibly overturned by a rogue wave..... I always kept a change of dry clothes in my bakkie (that I had to use on quite a few occasions!).
Emma, our Dalmation/ Border Collie, grew up on that beach and was quite accustomed to riding the surf with me. The fishermen loved her and would always make room for her in the rubber duck!
These days I still take my dog to the beach – different dog (Nelson), different beach (Myoli) – but we both still enjoy the sea as much and remember Emma who loved it so much too.
The Story Continues...
On 4th September 2010, Briony and I were married in Sedgefield by the Reverend Angie Pickard of the St Francis United Church. It was 20 years to the day of our meeting on the aeroplane (as Briony says, “it was a long engagement!)
A tale of people, one very special person, dogs, ships and the sea. That’s my Sedgefield Story. Next year I will have lived here for twenty years. I have enjoyed every one of them.
A happy ending to the story.....the one that began it all!
After nearly 20 years, I’m so glad to discover that at least the “Alwyn Vintcent”, a small but tough little tug who’d spent her days working in Mossel Bay and was the last steam vessel to be on the South African Shipping Register - and remains the last coal-fired steam ship in this country - is to be saved.
FEATURED PASS
As this newsletter had a largely nautical flavour, we thought it would be fitting to feature a pass that leads to a pretty harbour. Simonstown fits the bill and the pass is Red Hill Road, a steep and hairpin peppered tarred road that connects Scarborough with the old naval town. Red Hill Road is 7.6 km in length, packing a fantastic scenic punch into that distance, with most of it in the final 3.4 kms of descent.
The new videos were filmed with the latest equipment and includes some drone footage to add perspective. Enjoy the cyber-drive.
* * R E D H I L L R O A D * *
Trygve Roberts / Editor
"It is with our passions, as it is with fire and water ~ they are good s"ervants, but bad masters" ~ Sir Roger L'Estrange / Aesop's Fables
