SA rock star Ard Matthews has ridden a wave of musical success for more than a decade as frontman of Just Jinjer. Now he’s heading into unchartered waters in his new role as yacht skipper, attempting to sail around the world in a floating sound studio.
The energetic performer sailed into Cape Town harbour on Wednesday in his classic yacht, named The Impossible Machine (TIM) after his last award-winning album Impossible Machines, for which he won a SA Music Award in 2019.
Matthews bought the 20m vessel in that year and has spent the past several months restoring her in Saldanha. He intends inserting an on-board sound studio, with a view to some musical collaborations outside the industry norm.
“We will get album quality stuff on here for sure,” said Matthews from the prow of his vessel. “I see a lot of collaborations happening around the table of the saloon. Anything is possible.”
The Roodepoort-born rocker, who has played alongside some of the world’s top musicians during a storied career, has acquired his skipper’s licence in preparation for the next adventurous stage of his life.
He hopes to head anticlockwise around the world – the harder way – while he still can: “I want to do it while slightly younger and a little bit more naive, and not so worried about anything. Who knows how long it will take. Five to 10 years? Who knows?”
I’m sitting here at 45 and I’m thinking maybe life starts now. Why not have a new beginning?
— Ard Matthews
He said he wanted to make the most of life by achieving a better balance between work and play: “I’ve gotten to a place where I watch everyone’s story unfold. They work super hard and nearly kill themselves. By the time they get to retire they can barely function. I’m sitting here at 45 and I’m thinking maybe life starts now. Why not have a new beginning?”
“I’m in a bit of a unique situation in that I don’t have a wife or kids. There’s no reason why I can’t do pretty much whatever the hell I want,” Matthews said.
His first trial voyage was an eye-opener: an 11-hour slog straight into the southeaster from Saldanha, in a 5m swell.
“Everything fell off the shelves – it was impossible to make lunch.”
But he is not easily daunted. During the lockdown in April, when many performers went into hibernation, he staged a series of “Play It Forward” concerts on the roof of his Cape Town home, a renovated castle in Hout Bay. A percentage of the proceeds raised in online sales was donated to a fund for struggling artists.
Matthews said the dream of disappearing over the horizon had always appealed, possibly born out of a childhood growing up on the Bluff in Durban.
“I was in the water quite a lot, but I didn’t come from a sailing family.”
He said he was drawn to the well-known classic yacht largely because it was unique.
“She doesn’t sail fast, but she has a lot of history and character.
“I walked on and thought, this needs to happen. I’m not in a hurry to go anywhere ... I want to arrive safety and in a potentially controversial style,” he said.
While preparing for his odyssey he plans to equip the boat for bespoke charter trips, to help pay for the inevitable maintenance bills.
“The aim is not to have crazy, raucous parties. It could be surf charters, dive charters – not just a floating sound studio,” he said.
The 54-year-old vessel is well-known in Cape Town waters, previously called the Howard Davis and once used as a sailing training yacht. It was designed by Kurt Oehlman and built in the Louw and Halvorson shipyard at Quay 4 in the Victoria Basin Cape Town. She sailed in the inaugural Cape to Rio Race in 1971 and has since completed several Atlantic crossings.
Cape Town yacht broker Bruce Tedder said it was a case of “love at first sight” when he introduced Matthews to the vessel.
“He [Matthews] said, ‘Man, this is my boat, this is me. I want something that is authentic, that is real’.
“He has changed the vessel’s purpose in life, from a training vessel into a beautiful solid cruising boat to make music and share the love of sailing wooden boats,” Tedder said.
