TBA Logo, Founder Member.
Edited August 13th 2015.
This was taken from www.tba.org (traditional boat Asscociation)
Frank Wightman’s classics “The Wind is free”, and “Wylo Sails Again”, are in the National Library. Frank spent 20 years working alone in far-flung telegraph offices in order to spend the next 20 living as a recluse aboard “Wylo” at Kraal Bay, Saldanha. Lawrence Green’s last, evocative book “A Giant in Hiding” about Frank is a masterpiece. Such books will become Africana. Amazingly, “Wylo” has been found and is undergoing restoration in Hout Bay.
Chris Sutton of Durbans Point Yacht Club has just sent me this information on Frank Wightman (thanks chris)
There are 3 books that feature a South African yacht named Wylo.
Wylo was built in Cape Town by Frank Wightman. He sailed her to the Caribbean and shipped her back to Cape Town on a ship. The first 2 books are autobiographies. Thereafter Frank lived on Wylo, anchored in Kraal Baai ( near Langebaan ).
The third is Frank's biography, written by Lawrence G Greene.
Wylo is currently under restoration in Hout Bay. Go to the following website for pics and info.
http://ckdboats.blogspot.com/
brgds
--
Chris Sutton
obo the PYC Keeler Committee
"There is nothing - absolutely nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."
Ian and Cathy are cruising visitors to Hout Bay and the HBYC marina, they own a steel Wylo 2 named Ariel, they are on a circumnavigation and are heading west soon to continue their voyage via the West Indies and then on to Falmouth, England.
Wylo has been glass sheathed to protect her planking,she appears to be very sound viewed from the outside, a coat or two of paints would transform her appearance.
South Africas most famous yacht?
Much has been said about Nick Skeates Wylo 2 design, well this is the very original wood plank construction Wylo that started it all,Frank Wightman wrote The Wind Is Free on this boat, was that in 1934? I believe Frank wrote a second book also, he cruised the boat as far as Trinidad.The boat is part restored by Henry Nelson,it sits in his front garden,as it has for very many years, when Henry will continue with Wylos restoration we have no idea but as she is now she is safe enough for future generations to view and consider Wylos past.
http://www.wylo.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1&Itemid=101
His books are still around,a search on Google reveals a number of offers, England, Austrailia, USA, Canada.
Author Name: WIGHTMAN, Frank A. Mariners Library, 34) YOUNG, Graham
Title: Wylo Sails Again. 1st ML no dj.
Publisher: Rupert Hart-Davis, London, 1957,
Seller ID: 68512
WIGHTMAN, Frank A. Wylo Sails Again. With photographs by Graham Young. L.: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1957. First Mariners Library Printing. Pp. (5),6-239,(1)+ 4 p. of plates. Mariners Library, No. 34. Toy 1076: "Wightman's books ma ke excellent reading." The author's account of his re-purchasing of his prized yacht, that he had begrudgingly sold to return to South Africa, and thesubsequent journey he undertakes on said yacht, the Wylo. Slightly cocked, else vg. 25.00
NAUTICAL SAILING CRUISING FIRST YACHT SOUTH AFRICA
Price = 25.00 CDN
My thanks to Getaway Magazine for this report of Frank Wightman.
A hiding place from the world
March 07 2008
By Justin Fox, Getaway Magazine
"This is it," thought Frank, as he nosed Wylo round a headland and into the seclusion of Kraal Bay. The anchor splashed over the bows and his yacht came to rest. The scent of spring flowers wafted off the land, ostriches stood watching from the beach. Frank knew immediately he was falling in love. "May I live to be a hundred," he prayed. "May I always return here. This will be my hiding place from the world."
From the 1940s to the 1960s, the naturalist, sailor, hermit and writer Frank Wightman moored his 10-metre yawl in Kraal Bay... and dropped out. He fully embraced the lagoon's wiles and ways. "In this life of beauty and tranquillity, my senses became too acute for city life," he was later to write in his book. But it is through Lawrence Green's biography, A Giant In Hiding, that Frank is remembered.k, The Wind Is Free.
He explored the peninsula and its beaches, coming to know the land intimately. He found Strandloper middens and flint harpoons from their hunting exploits. He discovered graves, too, men buried with their bows and arrows, skinning blades and fish spears. He even found a mammoth tooth.
Everywhere, he uncovered vestiges of earlier inhabitants. He searched for the remains of the Khoi who'd made a home beside his anchorage and whose kraal had been stocked with cattle and fat-tailed sheep. He found the wreck of a sunken vessel that he surmised to be the remains of the Bruydegom, one of Jan van Riebeeck's ships.
'Important watering point for the sailing ships' Travel writer Lawrence Green used to visit Frank and wrote an evocative biography, A Giant in Hiding, about the man and his relationship with the lagoon. Even before reading the book, it had long been a fantasy of mine to "do a Frank Wightman" - pack it all in, find an old fisherman's cottage on the lagoon and drop out. Inspired by the biography, I went looking for traces of Frank up the West Coast.
We were on a tandem windsurfer, tacking upwind through the channel between Schaapen Island and Langebaan. It was a strange sensation: two people and two sails on one big board, but my friend Luke Stevens and I were getting the hang of it, sort of. Kite-surfers, also sailing from our base at the Cape Sports Centre, tore past us like demented marionettes.
The sun dipped over Postberg and the southeaster was working up a short chop that came over the board's stubby nose. Along the shore were rows of Langebaan homes, cottages that harked back to a time before electricity and water, when locals made a living from the bounty of the lagoon. There were bobbing fishing bakkies, Hobie Cats drawn up on the sand and children walking dogs between coves.
Sure, the hills were alive with millionaire homes sprouting like weeds and altering the town's character, but the old houses along the shore still evoked the past.
South of Langebaan and abutting the West Coast National Park fence is the farm Oesterval. It was here that Frank Wightman spent the last years of his life after he'd sold Wylo. It's one of the oldest farms in the district, a cluster of lovely Cape Dutch houses on the lagoon shore.
'The din made by man to live in a city is monstrous' Oesterval is private property, but I had a loose connection and we climbed over the fence to have a peek. We met Dan Bull at her cottage and she showed us round, filling us in on two-and-a-half centuries of history.
"The farm dates back to 1723 and there was a garrison stationed here for some time. You see, it was an important watering point for the sailing ships. We have the best waterhole, Gietingmelkfontein, in the area.
"The lagoon was an active corner of the colony. You know, the French established an outpost here in 1632 and as early as 1660 there were VOC troops garrisoned on Constable Hill. Two rajahs from Ternate and Tidor were banished by the Batavian government and spent some time on the farm in the 18th century."
We wandered among Oesterval's lime-washed houses with gables, buttressed walls, sash windows and courtyards. There was a cannon pointing at the lagoon, an old anchor, the ship's bell of the Thermopylae, wrecked off Mouille Point in 1899, and, in one waterfront building, the room where Frank spent his last years. Creaky yellowwood floors, his bed, a chart of the Cape and a door that opened on to the lagoon's fringing salt marsh. Frank's presence seemed to linger.
Lawrence Green tells of visiting Oesterval during his friend's last months: "The night was alive with the whicker of wings. In the far distance, across the swirling waters of the lagoon, the sea beaches lay dreaming. Over the beaches there would be a snowstorm of seabirds filling the sky with chimes. Frank told me he would hold on to that vision until the runner with the bony face reached out to touch him on the shoulder."
In the farm's tiny graveyard, I found Frank's tombstone with a brass plaque bearing an image of his boat at sea, flying fish leaping from a swell in the foreground.
A cold front was pouring over Postberg and Constable Hill when my windsurfing buddy and I arrived. I imagined Frank making regular crossings of the lagoon in his dory for groceries and post, often rowing kilometres into a howling southeaster or pelting westerly.
"City routine, with the utter dependability of everything, draws the colour out of life," Frank told his biographer.
"The din made by man to live in a city is monstrous."
My last evening. The wind dropped and the sky was packed tight with stars, their pinprick lights mirrored in the water. It's on lagoon nights like these that Frank felt he "lived in the very temple of life".
Published by arrangement with Getaway magazine. For the full story, see the March edition of Getaway.
