The Snake in Cape Town

The Daily Sail's wily Around Alone correspondent on growing eyes in your buttocks

Something that will probably be overlooked in the mainstream yachting press is the humanitarian work carried out by some skippers. Here in Africa, Thierry Dubois has undertaken work and carried out presentations on behalf of Amnesty International, while Dalton , Richards and Schwab are supporting the HSBC Global Education Challenge, running throughout The Around Alone.

In Cape Town this programme is funding computer links between schools in South Africa and The UK. The three skippers, with talented local duo, MC Sky and DJ Hammer (sounds familiar), toured schools around Cape Town with a three day roadshow, finishing in one of the poorer and more deprived townships, Nyanga. With video aids the skippers described solo yacht racing with the stress centred on challenges and the fulfilment of ambition.

Although the sight and sound of three hundred 5-10 year old Africans rapping, “H-S-B-C, Education Challenge in your vic-in-it-y” may seem at first draconian, the message is delivered and so are the computers. The theme of striving hard to achieve dreams and aspirations was put across by the skippers with great conviction and eloquence. Indeed, the unfair idea that Dalton’s public speaking coach was Jedi Master Yoda (“An Open 60, a great boat, it is.”) can be quashed.

As a finale to the roadshow the day’s showstopper, video footage taken by Richards while fixing the main halyard block at the top of her mast 86ft above the water, was upstaged by some freestyle singing from a Grade 7 student named Spokasi, whose talent and precocity guarantee her path to fame (you read it here first).

Having recently developed a Doppler radar set that can identify the moisture in a glass of free champagne at considerable range, The Snake found his way to the race prize giving on board the warship S.A.S. Drakensberg. Taking a break from some intensive grazing on cocktail sausages The Snake noted that Stamm, Class 1 victor, completed the last leg only two days faster than the fastest Volvo yacht (okay, so he didn’t have the western waypoint in the South Atlantic the Volvo boats had, but still a stunning solo result) and the incredibly svelt Brad van Liew , the sole Class 2 competitor to reach Cape Town so far, now holds the 50ft twenty-four hour speed record.

Yours, playing with the dimmer switch in The Buddha Bar,

The Snake.