lifestyle
HAVE SAILING LICENSE,
will travel
by charl du plessis
South Africa’s big wave surfer and 2010
Mavericks champion, Chris Bertish,
recently explained in an interview with a
famous men’s magazine how he used his
sailing skills to get around the world and to
earn the money that he needed for his surfing
exploits.
Now, admittedly, Chris grew up in a sailing familywith his dad
having built the first catamaran in Cape Town (Chris recalls
how, in those early days, people would ask why his dad had
two yachts stuck to one another). Chris virtually learned to
sail and walk at the same time. Years later, once he finished
school at Rondebosch Boys High School, he confidently
skipped abroad armed with his sailing skills and determined to
compete and to earn.
Time abroad post-school or post-varsity is an important
rite of passage. The more so if you consider that longevity
forecasts for today’s 20-somethings suggest they may live
to over 100 years old and may, therefore, have to work up to
a mandatory retirement age of 75 or 80. With that long of a
working life ahead, it makes all the more sense to take a few
years off to travel and experience the world while you are still
young and beautiful.
Your parents’ generation had their own rites, too, and they
likely backpacked around Europe with a passport filled with
tough-to-get visas due to the Apartheid-laden stigma South
Africa carried at the time. Then, post-Madiba’s release, when
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our own continent finally welcomed us, the overland, Driftersstyle tour guide jobs become de rigueur. What a tough job
guiding 20 scared blonde Scandinavian beauties through
hostile terrain! After the Commonwealth invited us back in
and offered our under 26s special working permits, London
housed more South Africans than what one Mrs Balls Chutney
factory could handle. We once spent a week in London where
a “Seffie” served every meal we had. But, then came corrupt
Home Affairs and 9/11 fears, and suddenly the SA passport
and the youthful London segue was no longer that easy.
Enter the world of the skipper’s license, obtainable
regardless of whether you grew up in the Namib desert or on
the water like Bertish above. All one needs is a good sailing
school, of which there are several in both Durban and the
Cape. We first found out about this super-cool work and
lifestyle option in a truly bizarre fashion.
A few years ago, walking around Monaco’s harbour, and
gawking at some of the world’s m