Tag: Kalk Bay

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The mackerel are biting! Let’s go down to the harbour

English: Kalk Bay harbour and town in Cape Tow...
Kalk Bay harbour and town in Cape Town, South Africa (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the summer afternoons I would take my reel of nylon line, penknife and a sardine from my father’s bait deep-freeze and run from our home in Kalk Bay down to the harbour.

The mackerel were biting in the harbour. Huge shoals of mackerel, maasbunkers and chokka (squid) would move into False Bay during the summer months. From October right through to March you could catch bait fish in the harbour.

At the quayside a whole crowd of boys would be sitting with their legs dangling over the edge or the taller boys with their feet touching the big black tractor and truck tyres used as fendors around the concrete harbour walls. Continue reading “The mackerel are biting! Let’s go down to the harbour”

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Find your inner strength to guide your way

Rodeo Beach, the Maelstrom
Rodeo Beach, the Maelstrom (Photo credit: kern.justin)

I stood in the big open hall of the old Olympia bioscope in Kalk Bay on my first day to learn karate with Peter Brandon, our instructor.

It was my last year of high school and I wanted to do something to keep fit and find the inner discipline to make it through what would be a tough year. Although I put it out of my mind as being far away, the reality of being conscripted into the military hung menacingly over my future.

Continue reading “Find your inner strength to guide your way”

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No place like home for good heavy rock

The Black Cat Bones
The Black Cat Bones

A personal journey of rock music starts with the first riffs and rhythms you listen to growing up. The stuff you raved about with friends. The subtle influences from rock you heard from friends who brought the records with them when their parents settled in the country, the radio charts and local bands.

The exciting part of the rock journey is that it seems to never end as you hear new rock music made here in South Africa by local bands. You can’t help tying up all the influences from that early rock you heard and the echoes in the new stuff of Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple and King Crimson. Continue reading “No place like home for good heavy rock”

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Fishy tales of snoek in False Bay

Recreational fishermen still catch snoek in the occasional run. Local Fish Hoek business person Alf Caplen looking happy after a morning catching snoek in the bay.
Recreational fishermen still catch snoek during the occasional run in the bay. Local Fish Hoek business owner Alf Caplen looking happy after a morning of catching snoek.

Lawrence Green, the gem of South African writers who loved the country so deeply, recalls meeting the old fishermen at Saldanha who talked of the days when one man could “haul in 200, even 300 snoek in a great day’s fishing.”

As Green says, “… the fishermen needed enormous catches when a snoek fetched only twopence on the wharf.”

I never caught much above 100 snoek in False Bay and the times that I did break through the hundred mark I could count on one hand.

Already in the mid-1970s commercial fishing was taking its toll on snoek fishing in False Bay. Even the professional fishermen from Kalk Bay did not often catch 100 each a day. Yet there was a legendary skipper nicknamed “Hondered Bedonderd” (Hundred Crazy”) who regularly reached his target. Continue reading “Fishy tales of snoek in False Bay”

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The swimming pools at Kalk Bay that people lost

Kalk Bay poolsWhen I was about six years old I started swimming in the pool below our house called Wooley’s pool. I was embarrassed because I had to use water wings. The problem was that no one had taught me how to swim. I wasn’t a natural learner.

But all that changed when I went to primary school at Kalk Bay. I can’t remember the day but I think it was on Wednesday that we would go to the Kalk Bay swimming pools behind the railway station for swimming lessons. Continue reading “The swimming pools at Kalk Bay that people lost”

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Birdland, Take Five, Son of Mr Green Genes: Jazz lessons on improvisation for business

weather-report_heavy-weatherThursday evening I attended an awards function interspersed with the sounds of a jazz trio, the double bassist plucking notes that still reverberated in my head this morning.

A jazz band these days adds a touch of sophistication to an event. It’s not in-your-face music but rather brought out at the right times when the audience needs to be surprised, delighted… energised.

I am not the world’s great expert on jazz but I grew up with a jazz musician. My father was a double bass player in the 60s, playing in Johannesburg and Cape Town, while making his living as a journalist. Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong and others filled our house in Kalk Bay with jazz sounds from a Yamaha record player. My father cut his own jazz record which I heard once and wished I still had a copy. Continue reading “Birdland, Take Five, Son of Mr Green Genes: Jazz lessons on improvisation for business”

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Château plonk and other Cape vino adventures

Pouring_a_glass_of_red_wineMy early experience with wine wasn’t of the most genteel kind. Just straight Tassenberg poured down the throat at small pubs in Stellenbosch on Friday nights when visiting a friend studying forestry at the university.

In those days we weren’t so interested in the taste of wine as we were in the mind altering effect. Tassenberg or Tassies had one major enduring feature: it may have been rough on the palate but it was soft on the student pocket and a sailor’s wallet because I was polishing anchors in Simon’s Town in those days. Continue reading “Château plonk and other Cape vino adventures”

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Winter snoek fishing from Hout Bay and mountain water

English: Hout Bay, South Africa
English: Hout Bay, South Africa (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When you are young the places you experience and the people you meet seem so extraordinary that you promise yourself you’ll never forget those great days that seem to have come out of a dream.

Growing up we lived in Kalk Bay, which sits in the heart of False Bay, and did most of our fishing there in the summer and autumn months. But when the winter came with the cold and the rain and those strong North Easters we’d head out to Hout Bay, travelling across Chapman’s Peak towing the ski boat behind the Land Rover at four in the morning.

One morning when we got to the ski boat slipway at Hout Bay harbour the queue was long. It was so freezing cold that time of the morning that my friend Peter and me took an empty two-stroke oil can, filled it with sand and poured petrol into it. After a few attempts we lit the petrol and huddled around the lighted can to keep our hands warm. Continue reading “Winter snoek fishing from Hout Bay and mountain water”

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How much pain can you take before you act on your cash flow?

English: Fish seller in Kalk Bay, Cape Peninsu...
Fish sellers in Kalk Bay, Cape Peninsula, South Africa (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One Christmas morning not too long ago I was walking after church with my children in Kalk Bay when I came across an old friend who I had fished with on the wooden commercial fishing boats when I was growing up. He looked in a bad way. One leg of his denim jeans was ripped. He had a gash on his big toe. His face said it all: he had a dreadful night alone on Christmas Eve.

I shook hands with my old fisherman friend and wished him Merry Christmas. We spoke briefly about fishing. There was a promise that someday we’d fish again on one of the commercial boats that go out from Kalk Bay hunting for yellowtail and snoek. Continue reading “How much pain can you take before you act on your cash flow?”

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I wish people didn’t have to make money this way

Photo credit: Andrew Taylor aka andytuwphoto
Photo credit: Andrew Taylor aka andytuwphoto

There are 10 ways to more effectively manage your cash flow before it gets out of hand … you’ll find the ways below.

Onward with the story…

When I was 15 years old I had a boat that I used to row out to the reef just outside my house to catch Red Roman off Kalk Bay.

Unless you knew the exact location of the reef, you were unlikely to catch anything. My father had shown me on earlier occasions going out to sea in his ski boat how to locate the reef. From the sea the marker was a row of three chimneys – the chimneys of houses against the mountain side at different levels that you needed to line up. Continue reading “I wish people didn’t have to make money this way”