A Southern Right whale surfaces close to Deon off Steenbras mouth

A Southern Right whale surfaces close to Deon off Steenbras mouth

On most weekends, Deon and I paddle and sail this coast, spending countless enjoyable hours.

Spring is whale season off the South Africa’s Cape coast. The Southern Rights cruise the sanctuaries in their hundreds. On this day Deon and I paddled around to Steenbras River Mouth from Gordons Bay half hoping to see some. In the mouth in about 20m of inky water we almost paddled over a pair of adults.

They tolerated us for a while as we snapped some photos, and then slipped away as silently as they had appeared.

Below is a Google Earth track of some of our trips along the Kogelberg coastline.

For a while we used a triangular sail on the double kayak, but lost it off Rooiels when a line came undone in a nasty south-easter and it proved too difficult to derig from the cockpit. We have plans to rig our own sail of a different design. The kayak is a lot of fun under sail and we have reached speeds of 13 km/h in an 11 knot breeze – but the sail must be manageable when things get rough…

Here’s a slideshow of photos from these weekend trips: