The old lady and the sea

MANKIND owns four things that are no good at sea: rudder, anchor, oars, and the fear of going down." Despite these sobering words by Spanish poet Antonio Machado, 65-year-old Anna Woolf has completed a solo trip across the temperamental Atlantic from Cape Town to Brazil and back home.

MANKIND owns four things that are no good at sea: rudder, anchor, oars, and the fear of going down." Despite these sobering words by Spanish poet Antonio Machado, 65-year-old Anna Woolf has completed a solo trip across the temperamental Atlantic from Cape Town to Brazil and back home.

Her age has not stemmed her boisterous spirit. She tells the story of her journey as if she were discussing a trip to the neighbourhood grocer.

"I sailed to Brazil via St Helena. I had intended to sail all the way to Patagonia at [South America's] Cape Horn, but unfortunately my engine broke down and I had to turn back [to Brazil]," she says.

On her return voyage, she ventured far south to the remote island of Tristan da Cunha, then sailed through to St Helena, where she spent four months painting murals for money.

At sea, she would sleep in the mornings because the ocean is far more dangerous at night, the lack of visibility dramatically increasing the potential for collisions with larger boats. Woolf kept awake reading and, in a scene of ironic domesticity, knitting.

During the day she had a gruelling schedule of maintaining the boat and navigating the wind and waters.

After a year and a half away, her first priority on reaching South Africa was, understandably, to see her family.

"I had had very little contact with my kids since I was in Brazil. I think the time spent away and without communication was too long," she says.

It was 36 years ago that Woolf was introduced to the adventures of sailing by her Scottish husband, an avid sailor. They had met in Cape Town, where she was working as a teacher, but they soon moved to Scotland.

"My husband worked as a welder and built boats. I helped him build his sailing boat. I had never gone sailing before I met him. I was just expected to like it," she says with a nostalgic giggle.

The boat they built together was a 40-footer, to which they gave the Gaelic name Mahon Mara.

In 1968, when Woolf was seven months' pregnant, she braved the Scottish seas. She, her husband and the twin boys she was carrying set sail from Glasgow along the west coast.

The family adventure did not end there. After Woolf's sons were born, the young family set sail on a two-week trip.

After six years on land, the Woolfs got the itch to set sail again. They built a second boat, a 43-foot ferro-cement boat they named Zama Zulu.

By that time Woolf had given birth to another set of twins - girls this time - but this did not deter her from going to sea again with her husband and all four children. They completed a whirlwind tour docking in Spain, the Caribbean and the US.

They dropped anchor for four years in the US, before returning to Scotland.

Of motherhood at sea she says, "I don't know how to raise children any other way. Fortunately, my sons slept through most of the [early] trips. Once the kids started crawling, I had the safety harnesses on them to make sure they wouldn't fall overboard."

Woolf attributes her sense of adventure to her mother, who encouraged her to develop her individuality. That support now comes from her kids.

Her sons have become avid sailors themselves. It was watching them build a boat of their own that inspired Woolf to sail again.

"My kids would jokingly say, 'there is such a thing as buying a plane ticket', but they understood that I wanted to do this trip to Brazil. If there was any disapproval, they kept it to themselves," she says.

Overflowing with inspiration and passion, she spent six long years building her third boat, which she named Morwena - Sea Witch.

She confesses to not actually enjoying the building of boats and says she endures the back-breaking effort because of financial constraints. "I build boats only because they're too expensive to buy."

Why would a 65-year-old woman put herself through the rigours of sailing? "You must do the things you enjoy now because one day you'll find that you'll never get the chance to do them. We keep putting it off over and over again until we're too old and we're not physically able to," is Woolf's answer.

That said, the voyage to Brazil was probably her last. Having sailed on and off for 36 years, Woolf says she is putting her boat up for sale.

Now she spends her time painting murals and developing educational programmes, with the SABC, for children in rural areas.