Page 132 - Bulletin 8 2004

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The Royal Cape Yacht Club, however, was already in existence in Table Bay, and came
later to have a sturdy presence in Kalk Bay.

Notably in fishing harbours, this hostility to anything other than fishing boats was

consistently supported by officialdom. It is interesting to note that its most startling

manifestation, as recently as December 1998, was Marine and Coastal Management’s
gazetting of tariffs (since repealed) for fishing harbours with differentials of up to six

hundred times as between “seaworthy fishing boats” and certain other arbitrary classes of
boat - including, as it so happened, fishing boats under repair where their owners perhaps

did not have the funds to repair them as speedily as M & CM thought appropriate. The
actual tariff in this case was R3 000 per meter of boat length per month.

Nonetheless, leisure boating slowly established itself around our coast and is today an
important part of our country’s economy. We shall take a look at some of the “pleasure

boats” which have made use of Kalk Bay harbour over the years.

The Early Years: 1919 - 1940

Clearly, before the completion of the breakwater in 1919, only those who relied for their

living on the sea regularly engaged in boating activity there. With the breakwater, however,
sheltered water space became available which made possible the mooring of boats whose

owners were perhaps not in daily attendance, and so the first pleasure boats made their

appearance.

It is probably appropriate to consider a pleasure boat as one which is intermittently used
and where neither the owner nor the crew depend upon its productivity for a living. There

remains, however, dispute over the precise meaning of “pleasure” in this context. This
dispute was actually the subject of a reported Appelate Division case years ago concerning

the meaning of the phrase “a vessel used for pleasure” with regard to duties on fuel. Is the