Worldly, travelled and a life less ordinary
YACHTIE couple Robert and Rosemary Forrester have finally found their land feet after years at sea, but they are still missing their faithful four-legged sailing companion, a Jack Russell terrier named Tara.
Although Tara has moved on to doggy heaven, she is the title of their book Tara, the Terrier Who Sailed Around the
World which is about one of their adventurous odysseys.
Living out at sea the feisty little canine, who witnessed the 2004 tsunami on board the Forrester’s vessel “Deusa”, was for ever catching fish in the shallows. She sometimes hopped overboard, prompting search expeditions that were adventures in themselves.
But then, adventure to the Forresters is like breakfast to most folk.
They have been wandering around and putting down temporary roots in distant places ever since they met and married in what was formerly called Rhodesia.
They took a Land Rover across South America, leading Robert to an agriculture job in central Brazil. Later they owned and ran a tour company in Rio de Janeiro.
While on their sailing voyage, they stopped for a while in South-East Asia to recharge their cruising kitty, starting up the now well-known Royal Langkawi International Regatta in Malaysia. In Mozambique they started a scuba business with relatives from Zimbabwe.
What makes them live this lifestyle?
“I think it’s probably enjoyment of life,” said Rosemary.
She added that on top of sailing skills and being able to pick up new languages, it is important to have a sense of humour and an adventurous spirit “to see the beautiful world we live in” – and an understanding of computers.
Robert’s interest in things digital led to their having e-mail access in the early days of the internet when they anchored Deusa off remote South Pacific islands by going to the local telephone exchange and connecting different wires with dog clips to get internet connections.
Now on terra firma in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, Robert has devised a way of preventing computer theft at the local Simbongumbomvu School. He takes the hard drives out of the machines, reducing their value to thieves but installing portable flash drives which make them functional again during class time.
Robert said thieves discovered the machines were worthless after they recently ransacked the school. They appeared to have discovered that their loot was without value and threw the computers in a forest where they were discovered by the police.
“I believe that was a good thing. They weren’t flat screens or anything like that, but equipment that was still useful and good. The crooks now know the computers are not worth anything to them,” said Robert.
Their decision to take to the sea came out of seeking a positive solution to a misfortune.
When Robert’s brother died young from a malignant melanoma, the couple – then in their mid-forties – decided to pack up their Rio life and live the dream of sailing around the world.
“It made us think: What are we doing? We could stay here (in Rio) and make money. But what for?”
After upgrading their smallcraft sailing skills to what was needed to take the 44-foot Oyster 435 ketch into the ocean, the first place on the bucket list was the Caribbean. There they narrowly escaped Hurricane Hugo in 1989 thanks to an ex-Durban yachtie family who guided them to sheltered water.
Their open-sea sailing skills were perfected by the time Rosemary took Deusa single handed through Singapore’s busy shipping lanes and harbour when her husband lay ill with food poisoning in the cabin.
The Forresters have sold their yacht in Cape Town to buy their Howick home, which overlooks Midmar Dam.
While they enjoy land, things which they were starved of at sea, such as growing their own vegetables and hosting lunches on a dining room table that doesn’t move with the ocean swell, the urge to carry on travelling remains.
Their “new yacht” is now a four-by-four, equipped for camping and ready to take them on a road show to promote their book and to share their memories of the world and, of course, of Tara, their beloved old yachtie dog.
For further information, visit www.Tara-book.com or call 082 767 7366.