I have mentioned that I had two reasons for visiting Durban last October, and one of them was to visit the port of Durban, where my brother and I learnt to sail in a tiny Optimist amongst giant tankers and cargo ships, and Durban Marina, where Scally was moored before she left at the end of 1981, with my father, mother and brother Manel on board. The port claims to be the largest natural harbour on the east coast of Africa, and it’s where all the ships needing repairs or re-fuelling call en-route from the East to the West. The port, like many, is dirty, smelly, cluttered with floating debris, and oil slicks slinking on the surface of the water. You’d never want to fall in.
From our hotel veranda, about ten kilometers away from the entrance to the port, you could see between ten and twenty huge ships at anchor on the horizon, waiting for entry into the harbour. Durban Marina is home to about a two hundred yachts and boats of all sizes and this is where we spent many a weekend from when I was about twelve, visiting Scally and getting her ready. I wanted to walk on the jetty, but, like many marinas, the entrance was padlocked, for crew members and owners only. I tried to get a sense of where Scally was moored.
What I did remember, was that it was here that my youngest brother fell off the side of Scally into the water below at the age of two and also here that my middle brother stabbed his toe on a rusty nail on the sand, giving him his manky toe.
Dates: I was in Durban in October 2025.
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