At the start ofAll is Lost a solo sailor far from land in the Indian Ocean gives a brief farewell message – maybe writing a letter – to unseen recipients that we assume must be his family. We then flash back eight days, to when he strikes a semi-submerged shipping container with his yacht. The rest of the film deals with his attempts to save his sailboat, and then ultimately simply to save himself. There are a couple of lines of dialogue, but no other people appear in the film and the sailor, played by Robert Redford, is alone for the duration of the movie.
Some people will find the spare nature of the production infuriating or boring – be warned. In other ocean films that we’ve watched, and even in the Deadliest Catch series, the ocean itself appears almost as an auxiliary character, full of sound and texture and power. In All is Lost, there are long periods during which Redford’s craft is becalmed, with a featureless ocean and distant, cloudless horizon almost fading into obscurity. During the storms the camera remains closely focused on him, not giving the waves and wind an opportunity to dominate the screen.
An interview with the director reveals how he relished the opportunity to cast Redford in a role in which he could not much use his voice – which is widely recognised and commands attention. His performance is gripping and disturbing. At no point could we guess how the unnamed yachtsman’s ordeal would end. The build up of tension was almost unbearable. I dreamed restlessly about sailing after watching the film.
There are interesting reviews at the New York Times and The Guardian. Tony, who has a bit of a sailing past, critiqued some of the decisions made by Redford’s solo sailor as being rookie errors (such as trying to put the storm sail up in the middle of a storm). Other sailors agreed with the points Tony made – Vanity Fair has an article here (but it’s likely to spoil the movie for you).
You can get the DVD here if you’re in South Africa, otherwise here or here.
We have had a couple of spectacularly windy weekends in a row, and have had the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the weather. We have a weather station at home, and for mobile use we have a WeatherFlow Wind Meter. These are widely used by para-gliders, sailors, windsurfers, kite surfers, and others who need to know what the wind is doing at a particular location. This miniature anemometer plugs into the headphone jack on iPhone and Android devices, and takes wind readings via an app.
The app allows you to save readings, which makes them available on the internet. If you see a facebook post with a wind reading, it’s from our Wind Meter, and Tony is probably on the boat. If the wind is very strong, he’s more likely on land! An example of a recent reading (taken when I snapped the above photo of Tony) can be viewed here.
We find this very useful to correlate wind speed and direction to sea conditions. A southerly wind, for example, is particularly uncomfortable for diving in False Bay. Using his mini anemometer, Tony has been able to establish at approximately what wind speed it becomes too unbearable! One of the effects that global warming is going to have on our local weather in Cape Town is increased windiness, so I think we’ll have plenty of opportunity to play with the Wind Meter and go FULL WEATHER NERD. Watch out…
Sunday: Boat dives from OPBC or Hout Bay if conditions permit
Midweek launch: From OPBC to see the Volvo Ocean Race yachts arriving in Table Bay
Dive conditions
The wind is forecast to do some real south easterly blowing over the next few days, so False Bay is messy but the Atlantic is a bit cleaner. There is too much wind on Saturday for any kind of pleasant diving or boating, but Sunday has less wind (according to some of the wildly contradictory weather forecasts) and I think the odds are good that Table Bay will be a better option than Hout Bay, if the water cleans up enough to make dives worthwhile. It is difficult to say for certain where would be best but we will make that call on Saturday afternoon. The plan will be to dive North and South Paw if conditions permit. Let me know if you’d like to be on the watchlist!
Baby basket star by Georgina Jones
Last weekend we dived out of Hout Bay, visiting the BOS 400, Star Walls and then Tafelberg Reef. The water was less clean than expected: 8-10 metre viz and a very cold 9 degrees. Thanks to Georgina for this picture of an itsy bitsy basket star! On Monday I was out along the Atlantic seaboard for a film charter and despite the fog we found dolphins, a sunfish, a whale, hundreds of seals, and incredible bird life once we were far offshore. There’s an album of photos on facebook.
Volvo Ocean Race
The Volvo Ocean Race first leg comes to an end next week and the yachts are expected to arrive at the V&A Waterfront from Tuesday onwards. There is currently less than 9 nautical miles between the top four after several thousand miles of open ocean racing. The finish will be really exciting and we plan to launch as many days as possible next week to hopefully catch a glimpse as they race by… And perhaps a photo or two. Let me know if you think you’ll be able to take a midweek day of leave to go out on the boat.
Diversnight
Diversnight is an international night diving event that we try to participate in each year, just because. This coming Thursday, 6 November we will meet at Long Beach in Simon’s Town at 7.30 pm with the aim of starting the dive at 8.00 pm. We must be in the water at 14 minutes past eight to “count” and the aim is to set a new world record. There are currently 16 countries participating in this event. You can RSVP to the event on facebook, and read more about Diversnight here. There is no charge apart from any gear you may need.
If you need to rent gear, please let me know by Wednesday morning. You don’t necessarily need to be an Advanced diver to do a night dive, so give me a call or send me a mail to talk about it if you’re unsure. If you’ve been thinking about an Advanced course, though, this is a good time to get started.
Last weekend we took the boat down to Buffels Bay in the Cape Point Nature Reserve to join OMSAC for a day of snorkeling, diving and braai-ing.. The conditions were terrific and both the shore divers and those on the boat had great viz. We took the boat to Batsata Maze and to an unnamed site just on the outside of the exclusion zone around the reserve. We were very fortunate to have a whale cruising by during the safety stop, fascinated by the divers’ SMB, and then hanging around as the divers surfaced. It is a stunning setting for a day out and even the tidal pool was filled with interesting creatures.
There are some photos on facebook, and a nifty little time lapse video of us putting the boat onto the trailer at the slipway. I usually wind the winch much faster than in the video, though – I must have been having an off day on Saturday…
Waiting to put the boat on the trailer at Buffels Bay
On Monday we enjoyed fantastic visibility at Partridge Point, where we snorkeled with seals, and at Shark Alley. There are still a lot of cowsharks around – the time of year when they usually disappear is approaching, so we are watching with interest.
This weekend
A southerly swell rolls into False Bay in time for the weekend. The Kalk Bay Shootout surf competition participants are all excited. When surfers are excited, divers are not. We share the ocean… Just not always at the same time. There is also the False Bay Yacht Club spring regatta taking place on Saturday and Sunday – more info here.
I doubt there will be anywhere pleasant to dive in False Bay. The south easter only starts blowing on Saturday so I doubt that the viz out of Hout Bay will improve enough for good diving. That leaves the Atlantic seaboard. Twenty four hours of strong south easter might clean the water close inshore enough for good diving.
I reckon the best options will be North and South Paw or Justin’s Caves and surroundings, so that’s the plan for Sunday. If the south easter makes it over the top of Table Mountain, and cleans the water sufficiently, we will launching from OPBC at 10.30 am and 1.00 pm. If you’re keen to dive let me know and I’ll contact you on Saturday afternoon to let you know if conditions are good enough.
Early morning at Cape Point Nature Reserve
If you are at a loose end on Saturday, an excellent way to spend your time is at the coastal cleanup dive in Hout Bay harbour. We attended a few years ago, and it is great fun and good for the environment. Just wear a kilogram or two extra of weight if your weighting is usually marginal – the water is not very deep!
Cape Town International Boat Show
In three weeks’ time the CTICC comes alive with the Cape Town International Boat Show. This year there will be a new addition in the form of a “dive village”. Collectively a bunch of local dive centres and operators have come together to make this happen with the goal of showcasing the incredible diversity of diving we have to offer in Cape Town. The village will have a pool in the centre and we will offer non-divers an opportunity to breathe underwater and hopefully come to enjoy the ocean as much as we all do.
The show is on from 10-12 October at the Convention Centre. Come down and visit the representatives of your local dive operator and bring a friend who needs convincing that diving is the best thing ever, and amongst everyone in the dive village we will do our best to get them in the water. SURG will also be there showcasing some of the best photos taken in and around Cape Town’s waters. There are also bound to be a bunch of interesting course options, gear sales, camera displays and the like. Plus the rest of the boat show, which is well worth a look!
Conditions that make for great surfing generally mean poor diving, and vice versa.
The second point above is exactly why reading a book on what makes waves turned out to be an extremely enlightening experience.
Dr Tony Butt lives in Spain on the exposed north Atlantic coast (good waves), but apparently spends the southern winter in Cape Town, surfing Dungeons where possible I imagine! He is a physical oceanographer. In Surf Science he explains where waves come from, and what leads to different kinds of surfing conditions.
His explanation of the origin of the waves that reach the coast starts at the very beginning, with an explanation of the drivers of weather systems. This section caused me to jump up and down with excitement, and to speak many long sentences to long suffering husband Tony. His expository method is easy to follow at each step, and for the first time I feel that I have a grip on . First we build up a mental model of the earth as a stationary globe with no land, and then gradually add rotation about its own axis, rotation around the sun (seasons), and the presence of continents to the model. At each step further understanding of the average world weather patterns (north Atlantic high, roaring forties, and so on) is improved.
The book goes on to cover the propagation of swell, and what happens when waves arrive in shallow water, break, and possibly allow surfing. Butt also deals with water temperature, tides, and rip currents, and concludes with a few chapters on surf forecasting models and how to read them. Throughout the concepts are illustrated with straightforward diagrams, and end-of-chapter boxes contain formulae for the mathematically inclined.
This is a shorter and more richly illustrated book than The Wavewatcher’s Companion, serving a different audience. Both surfers and divers can benefit from Surf Science, as well as the yachting fraternity, NSRI crew members, and anyone else who has an interest in the mechanics of the ocean. This volume has more the flavour of a textbook, with no unnecessary information, anecdote or humourous asides. There is a place for both books!
You can get a copy here or here, or here (if you’re in South Africa).
Having turned our attention to the mighty Gulf Stream current yesterday, let’s think about the kinds of phenomena that the warm current can give rise to. As weather systems such as thunderstorms move over warm water, they draw water into the lower atmosphere by causing the seawater to evaporate. This water vapour is pushed up, leaving space for more, and the storm grows in power as long as it stays over the warm sea. The Gulf Stream is a warm current in a cold ocean, and is thus a major generator of hurricanes. NOAA explains it properly.
Outside Magazine published a detailed analysis of the sinking of the Bounty during Hurricane Sandy in late 2012. The Bountywas a replica of HMS Bounty, an eighteenth century three masted sailing ship. She was built in 1960 for a Marlon Brando movie about the mutiny that led to the establishment of the pit of despair that is the settlement on Pitcairn Island. (Why pit of despair? Read this.) After the movie was completed the vessel passed through several owners, all of whom struggled to finance the constant repairs and maintenance required on a wooden ship of that scale. Her story concluded in the glare of the world’s media attention, as the ship struggled to stay upright while sailing into the eye of Hurricane Sandy (for reasons unclear).
As the drama of the Bounty’s final hours unfolded on CNN and the Weather Channel, seamen and landlubbers alike were asking the same question: what was a square-rigged ship doing in the middle of a hurricane—a storm that had been forecast for days?
…
But the full answer to why the Bounty sank was much more complex than a captain’s rash decision. It was a story decades in the making, a veritable opera of near misses and fantastic schemes involving a dogged captain, a fiercely loyal crew, and an owner who was looking to sell.
This is a story of a nautical disaster told with a strong focus on the personalities involved. It’s quite a terrifying read.
The Gulf Stream: Tiny Plankton, Giant Bluefin, and the Amazing Story of the Powerful River in the Atlantic – Stan Ulanski
The Gulf Stream
Stan Ulanski is an academic with a special interest in the Gulf Stream, both as an oceanographer and meteorologist, and as a keen angler. I was drawn to this book because it reminded me of a book I took out of the school library when I was twelve, also about the Gulf Stream. I remember devouring that book, and have been trying to find it again for much of my adult life. I haven’t succeeded, and this isn’t it.
The Gulf Stream is a fast flowing, warm current that runs from the Carribbean up the east coast of the United States, past Canada, and across the Atlantic Ocean. It is responsible for about ten percent (popular opinion has always held this number to be higher, but it’s not) of the warming of England’s climate, transporting heat from the tropics up into northern latitudes. At the surface, where its flow is fastest, it can move at up to 9 kilometres per hour and the water in the current may be ten degrees warmer than the water surrounding it. Oceanographer/cartographer Matthew Fontaine Maury called it a “river in the ocean”, as it is so distinct from the water surrounding it:
There is a river in the ocean. In the severest droughts it never fails, and in the mightiest floods it never overflows. Its banks and its bottom are of cold water, while its current is of warm. The Gulf of Mexico is its fountain, and its mouth is in the Arctic Sea. It is the Gulf Stream.
The Physical Geography of the Sea, 1855
Ulanski divides his book into three parts. The first section provides an oceanography lesson, as well as a history of how we came to know what we know about ocean circulation. The second section, which I felt could have been beefed up significantly, has a chapter on the plankton, sargassum weed and other small life in the current, and another dedicated to bluefin tuna. I know from Richard Ellis’s tuna book how incredible these creatures are, and I felt that Ulanski could have made more of them. (He may have felt that since tuna have been so extensively eulogised, he has nothing to add – fair enough.)
The final chapter of the second section grated my goat and I struggled to read it – it’s about fishing, a sport of which Ulanski is a keen proponent, and profoundly smug (he “feels no remorse”). I cannot understand sport fishing (or hunting) of any kind: if you’re going to release the animal after fighting it, exhausting it, and injuring it, what have you achieved? The inflicting of a prolonged, possibly fatal wound on a creature at a significant disadvantage to you in your motorised boat with expensive fishing tackle and crafty lures? How manly. We can appreciate how marvelously put together earth’s creatures are without damaging them with our ego in the process. (I realise that other people feel differently, with equal forcefulness.)
Ulanski concludes with an examination of the history of the exploration and colonisation of the New World, both aided and impeded by the Gulf Stream. It seemed that at times he wanders far from his main subject, but it is instructive to be reminded of what was involved in crossing an ocean before the advent of GPS and the creation of detailed charts. The section on piracy is fabulous and created in me a strong urge to re-watch Pirates of the Caribbean.
While my personal preference would be for a heavier focus on the oceanography and marine biology of the Gulf Stream, Ulanski is quite right to include a comprehensive section exporing humans’ relationship to this massive current. It has shaped the settlement and economies of all the lands adjacent to it.
Here’s an incredible visualisation of ocean currents – you can see the Gulf Stream prominently in the Atlantic. What is it like to be adrift on the Gulf Stream? Find out here.
The Perfect Storm deals with the 1991 nor’easter, a storm (not uncommon in the western United States) generated by the interaction of the warm water of the Gulf Stream with atmospheric phenomena. The Gulf Stream is the “weather-maker” of the western Atlantic, according to the author, and these interactions between the current and the atmosphere will become increasingly important and explosive as the global climate changes (and let me clarify, the change has come about because of human behaviour).
If you’re in South Africa, get the book here, otherwise here or here. For an even more wide-ranging view of the Atlantic ocean (minus the marine biology), check out Simon Winchester’s Atlantic.
Lighthouses are beautiful and captivating, often positioned in lonely, windswept locations at the very edge of human settlements. The idea of being a lighthouse keeper, custodian of a light that is a warning against the might of stormy seas over submerged reefs, seems romantic and heroic. It is for these reasons that I am surprised there aren’t more books about lighthouse life; perhaps we are fortunate that there aren’t.
Sentinel of the Seas is about the St Georges Reef Light, situated on a rock about 10 kilometres off the northern Californian coast. The subject was researched in painstaking detail by the author, and he provides a great deal of colour to the process of constructing the lighthouse and its subsequent manned use as a warning to shipping. The cover photograph at left shows the small size of the rocky outcrop on which the lighthouse stands. The challenges of construction work at this location, combined with frequent salty inundations and fluctuating tides, were considerable. The main theme related to the St Georges Reef Light is, however, interwoven with several other ideas and story lines and the entire book is poorly edited, rendering the overall thread of the narrative disorganised and difficult to follow.
Today the lighthouse is in disuse after being replaced by a floating light buoy (apparently these days all but one or two lighthouses off the American coast are unmanned), but has been the subject of efforts to restore and preserve it. It has an official website, and at various times tours to the facility by helicopter have been offered.
There are no photographs in this book – I thought it could have done with some, even if they were only of the lighthouse as it appears today (although historical photos do exist). I was struck by the similarity between this light and Roman Rock, although I suspect Roman Rock’s location is a little more sheltered. Since the rock on which Roman Rock is built isn’t visible (the lighthouse base may cover it completely – I’m not sure), I wonder how it was constructed. Something to find out!
Wet, wild and windy is the only way to describe the last few weeks’ weather. An odd sunny day in between is hardly enough to keep the cold out. I had a minor repair job done recently and have had to stay out of the water for 14 days. These days are almost up and thankfully the weather for next week looks far better than we have had of late.
Southern right whales in False Bay
Last weekend, taking advantage of my planned time out of the water (and, to be honest, the poor underwater conditions!) we went whale watching with Simon’s Town Boat Company. It was wonderful to be so close to these majestic animals. It was lovely to be out on the water, and apart from the whales just to see how beautiful False Bay and the surrounding landscape are.
If you can’t get out to see the whales, follow Simon’s Town Boat Company on facebook – they post amazing photos almost every day during whale season (July-November). Also, the whales are apparently more active when the conditions are stormy and rough – so watching them from land during these wintery weeks is a definite option.
Yachts near Roman Rock lighthouse
Weekend plans
The weekend conditions are not as good as I had hoped they would be.Despite the strong north and westerly winds the bay is not as clean as I had hoped, partly due to all the dirty run-off from the rain that has been blown into the bay. The swell direction is better on Saturday, but I know that filling a boat in the rain is a difficult task.
Sunday looks dry and almost windless so I think its an option, however the swell turns southerly with some east, and that cruises straight into the bay. The only way to be sure is to make a last minute call. If you want to be on the list for possible Sunday diving, text me and I will make the call late Saturday or really early on Sunday morning.
