Bathurst-built adventurer back in SA
Woolf’s boat, constructed in her garden, conquers oceans
Twenty years ago, Bathurst resident Anna Woolf launched the 37-ft steel ketch she had built in her back yard in the Port Alfred Marina.
Much water has passed under the bridge since Woolf set sail in Morwenna on an extraordinary solo trans-Atlantic adventure.
Since then, the boat has changed hands, has been completely revamped, and has spent the past six years taking a new owner across oceans on another amazing island- and continent-hopping journey.
About three weeks ago, Morwenna finally came back home to SA’s shores, docking in Hout Bay, Cape Town.
The story really starts in the late ‘60s when Woolf and her Scottish husband Jimmy Woolf, a welder, embarked on a years-long cruise.
It was in 1968 when Woolf, her husband and the twin boys she was carrying (she was seven months pregnant) set sail from Glasgow along the west coast.
In the years that followed, the couple traversed the ocean while raising their (eventually) four children – twin girls followed the twin boys.
Fast-forward to the early 2000s and the two boys – Marcus and Magnus – became sailors themselves.
Anna was working at the Centre for Social Development (CSD) at Rhodes University at that time, and the bug bit again. She built a boat in her spare time over a four-year period, receiving lots of local advice and help and expert periodic assistance from her sons, who were building their own boats in a shed in the Cape Town docks.
It was on her third boat, Morwenna (Sea Witch) that, at the age of 65, she sailed to Brazil.
After launching Morwenna at the Port Alfred Marina, she moved on board, rigging the boat with two masts and getting local help to install a second-hand four-cylinder Perkins engine.
A few shakedown trips to East London and up the East Coast ironed out some kinks and she sailed to Cape Town.
A year later she sailed to St Helena, El Salvador, down the east coast of South America to Buenos Aires and back across the South Atlantic to Cape Town via Tristan da Cunha.
Painting murals in private and public spaces and small paintings financed this trip and paid harbour dues.
In Hout Bay, working on a visiting boat, she met Rubow Hurgen, who was looking for a cruising boat.
Morwenna was a simple manual boat. Solar electrics, no electronics or roller furling sails. The anchor and chain were pulled up by hand.
If anything went wrong at sea, it would be fairly simple to repair.
Nevertheless, Morwenna changed owners in a month.
Hurgen had his own adventures. He left Hout Bay in 2018. His jouney over the next six years took him from Walvis Bay (to visit his mother) to St Helena, Ascension Island and across the Atlantic to Fernando de Noronha, an archipelago in Brazil, accompanied by large schools of porpoises.
Hurgen sailed to Chaguaramas, Trinidad, Panama, Puerto Rico, past the Galapagos to the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia in the Pacific, Tonga, Indonesia, Bali, Mtwara in Tanzania, Dar es Salaam, Tonga, Kenya, Seychelles and Richards Bay, before finally docking again in Hout Bay.
His adventures included hitting a dead whale that heeled the boat right over, damaging the pendulum windvane self-steering gear; learning
the Brazilian samba; the wooden mainmast cracking; warm, clean water, steady trade winds, meeting lovely people in the Pacific; an Olympic sailing coach joining as crew (they competed to see who could make the boat go fastest); and during a year in Indonesia, sailing, hiking, motorbiking, diving and dancing or just relaxing in a low-cost resort with Morwenna anchored on the doorstep.
From Bali he sailed to the atoll of Cocos (Keeling), which is slowly subsiding into the sea, and then to Mtwara on the southern tip of Tanzania, via Dar es Salaam and many small island hops, Tonga, then against the wind and currents to Kenya and the Seychelles. Then the home run down the coast to Richards Bay where Morwenna was repainted.
Sailing the East African coast is a
challenge due to lots of fishing nets and diving is limited because of unclean and unclear water, says Woolf, adding that corruption and officialdom can be a challenge to both purse and patience.
Morwenna finally docked back home in a familiar jetty in Hout Bay.
After extensive repair work, Hurgen believes Morwenna should be good for another 20 years.
Summing up the labour and money spent renovating the boat he said: “Renovating Morwenna is merely my way of saying thank you to a boat with a big heart that has kept me and sometimes a crew safe in spite of my inexperience.”
Hurgen told his story to Woolf, who wrote it for TOTT. Sue Maclennan filled in a few gaps. Among other things, it’ sa glimpse into the extraordinary life of local resident Woolf.