It is harrowing watching a crane move a two ton yacht onto a truck. Ropes crack under the strain. You imagine the fibreglass hull will shatter at any moment. Professionals may struggle with the job, so consider a family of seven with their thirteen-year-old daughter, Michaela, driving the crane. This feat of engineering is the first step of a Robinson family holiday that most would find hard to imagine.
“It’s been impossible to get her out of the driving seat; at least if she doesn’t make it as a sailor she can always work the crane,” says father Mike Robinson.
The Robinsons are as much a crew as a family. For them a Christmas holiday is a month ploughing through the cold ocean, ducking under flying fish, gawking at glowing dolphins and watching out for floating containers as deadly as icebergs. All this in a 35-foot yacht, that cost them $24,000 to repair as well as a case of beer for the charter fee, on Africa’s most famous sea voyage, the Cape to Rio.
Once every three years, yachts of all shapes and sizes take to the high seas in a bid for glory. It is a downwind race stretching 5,500 kilometers from Cape Town in South Africa to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
“It’s not hard to find South America. You just go toward the setting sun,” jokes Mike.
Loading...
It may seem unlikely but the Robinsons have a good chance of winning. In 2011, Mike and his wife Gill, sons Ricky, Brennan, and Ryan with daughters Kathryn and Michaela and their nephew Bradley came second on board the Ciao Bella, the smallest yacht in the competition.
What’s more, the Robinsons managed to sail all the way with a hole in their rudder after they collided with a submerged container. They say the greatest danger comes lurking, sinister as a snake, under the surface. The Robinsons were lucky, floating containers could easily rip a hole in your hull, says Mike.
“They fall off the tops of those huge charter ships, and you will never see them. They float just under the surface,” says Brennan.
While swimming, the Robinsons found their rudder was missing a large chunk. Ricky believes it started as a hairline crack that opened after traveling for a few days at high speed on the sea. You could say it took a knock to their chances of winning.
“All the hotshot sailors from the Cape were saying we were just a family from Carletonville, from the Vaal, that we knew nothing about ocean racing,” says Michaela.
Their critics were wrong. The Robinsons had trained together for years. The family grew up with the wind in their face and a rope in their hand. Brennan, Ricky and Michaela have all sailed for South Africa. The Robinson’s garage holds testament to this, it is a boneyard of boats, masts and sails. The cars are parked under a tree.
The Ciao Bella lies in their backyard in Carletonville, a small mining town that is a two-hour drive from Johannesburg and hundreds of miles from the ocean. The yacht is on its way to the sea, to race in the Cape to Rio, once again. This time round they are aiming to win it, with a new rudder designed and made by Brennan, an engineer student at the University of Witwatersrand.
It is a different world far out on the Atlantic Ocean. One night, outside of Cape Town, there was a glowing phosphorous light on the surface of the sea attracting life.
“In the wake of the yacht you have this bright light. Dolphins jumped out the water, it makes them look like glowing torpedoes. You can’t see the dolphins, you just see this glow,” says Brennan.
“Every time they hit a shoal of fish it would sound like fireworks as the fish scattered,” says Kathryn.
It is not always plain sailing. The Robinsons were halfway, 10 days out of Rio. They were moving along in the trade winds. All was well, when their engine failed. Somehow there was water in the diesel.
“We still don’t know if it was the cheapskate who we got the diesel from or if it was a pipe in the engine. It was dead,” says Mike.
“A yacht uses the wind to move, but uses an engine to survive,” says Mike.
Without it you cannot charge your GPS or purify water.
“When your engine fails, it’s the scariest moment on the Atlantic,” says Gill.
The family did an inventory of their available water; it was running low. They went into emergency rationing and experienced 24 hours without water.
“It was looking pretty bleak,” says Mike.
Luck and ingenuity saw them through. As the sun began to rise, a rare squall blew over the yacht. Mike woke up to see his children using the yacht’s sail and every bucket they could find to store rain. They collected 80 liters of fresh clean water, which was the exact amount needed to get them to the Brazilian coast.
“What was really cool was that we could see another boat next to us, and they didn’t get any rain. It was just us,” says Michaela.
They managed to fix the engine a few days later, the danger had passed. And to boot they had some extra water for a rare bath.
Then there is the bombardment of flying fish.
“They are like phantoms, they’ll get caught in places you don’t want them and there is just a smell on the deck. They’ll rot for two days and you’ll think oh my word where is that smell coming from. You have to dig them out from all the holes they’ve crept into,” says Ricky.
The ultimate irony was that the family had tailed a line across 5,500 kilometers, hoping to catch a real fish, without getting a single bite.
The Cape to Rio starts off at a chase. Strong south-easters blow the ships off the coast of Cape Town. It is a judgment call where to pick up the calmer trade winds in the heart of the Atlantic. Finally you reach the most difficult phase of the trip, the South American coast.
“Everyone calls it the Parking Lot; you come to a complete stop, with the mountains of Rio just in front of you and the oil rigs around you. You have to be careful because there is a strong current and you end up going backyards. It gets tense on these last couple of days, when you are in the doldrums with no wind. It’s hot and you are trying to keep the boat moving,” says Gill.
The Robinsons were racing against teams who had the latest navigation systems, linked permanently to satellites and day-to-day weather forecasts. All the family had was a small yellow GPS phone called Homer, only useful for pinpointing your position. Instead, they relied on ship routes dating back to 1800s. Most of their opposition ended up being stranded in the Atlantic without wind, whereas the historical route, proven by hundreds of years sailing, was longer but more reliable.
“You will find the family transfers information between each other. I’m at best a journey man, we’ve taught them as best as we know. It goes full circle. The process of going across the Atlantic has got this potential to transfer this huge amount of knowledge. Our children are now teaching us, so when Brennan says this sail needs to be enveloped, we can’t let anybody know we don’t know what he’s talking about,” says Mike.
What started out as a family holiday, on a yacht that needed $24,000 to repair and a case of beer, has now become a family obsession. If you were to sit next to the Robinsons in a restaurant you would not think that they were contenders for a coveted gold medal. But don’t go telling them that, they don’t like losing. Coming second to a team from Cape Town last time was one place too far behind as far as they are concerned. So they plan to spend another 20 days cramped together fighting off flying fish and floating containers. All the while their eyes will be focused on the horizon and the setting sun.
Loading...