stormy seas = broken ships

Thought I would stay with the nautical theme that I’ve been following recently, well I suppose it is not really nautical in the true sense, probably more coastal, seeing its been about boats, fishermen, harbours, surfers, beaches etc. Nevertheless, in the same territory :-), I guess there was another agenda too to stay with the “maritime” there’s a better word theme, because I wanted to touch on shipwrecks which have come about from stormy seas. Shipwrecks resulting in broken ships, and broken being the topic of the Weekly Photo Challenge this week, all fitted perfectly well together. I did post something yesterday that was relevant to the topic, but figured when I have an opportunity to submit another perspective on the same topic, why not 🙂

So, here goes…………Blouberg is a beach not far out of Cape Town which is very favourably positioned to give magnificent views of the City with the backdrop of Table Mountain. This beach, like Muizenberg which was covered in a recent blog post, is pretty popular with water sport enthusiasts. It more often than not is quite windy, hence very popular with wind surfers, kite surfers , surfers and others. Because of its proximity to the City , and more specifically the harbour, many ships anchor in the deeper water waiting for their opportunity to be let into the harbour. Every now and then when the weather turns nasty, the sea can get quite rough with huge swells, presenting a real danger to shipping, hence the area has a reputation of being the “Cape of Storms”.

This happened a few years ago, the weather turned pretty nasty one evening, and in the morning residents in the area awoke to find a ship had run aground literally a short swim away from the shore. The strong winds had actually forced the ship into shallow water and lodged itself in the sand. Numerous attempts to free the ship were unsuccessful, eventually the cargo and fuel were removed, and the ship was literally left to the mercy of the sea.  It appears that the ship had been left there for a long time before salvaging of the wreck actually commenced. So despite the deceptive appearance from the shore, this ship is well and truly “Broken”. Nowadays, it appears like the wreck is slowly diminishing as pieces are being removed. In the meantime, it offers a prefect backdrop for the watersports enthusiasts. I don’t know enough about if the presence of the ship actually does anything to enhance the conditions for these water users, though with the large number of people doing various activities in the area whenever you visit the area, you’d have to believe it does………………….The journey continues……………………    

So todays images are of this “broken” ship, which forms my second submission to the weekly photo chllenge this week…………………………..