September is the most beautiful month in our part of Africa. The new spring is upon us. The cold sere months have gone and are forgotten. Swim suits replace duffle coats. Hope replaces drudgery. It seems natural therefore that our hearts would feel the pull of the new year and rush us to the pleasures of Lake Kyle. Our Silhouette September Song, in these new days of hot south-easters that blow across the lake, is like a young colt, full of fire and pawing at her moorings to get free. Enna and I are the only people interested in dinghy cruising on Lake Kyle. At our club we have perhaps 18 sailing dinghies that, twice a month, chase each other’s tails around an Olympic course and ignore the twenty miles of beautiful water the stretches on either side of the club. We laugh with them, drink with them, argue sailing with them, fight with them and leave them when it comes to our time to sail! We slip our moorings and let racing tactics for the bottom of the brandy bottle.

So now that September is here, it is a time for us to wonder again; it is a time for us to wander again.

Last week the landscape was grey, tired and had a look of old thatch about it. In seven days, spring, as we know it, has rushed us. The heat has stirred the soil and the Msasa trees have shown their leaves. In all the joy they bring, they bring sadness too. In their spring display all along the lake shore I see the autumn colours and remember the oak, the elm, the beech, the ash and the bronzed cloaks they put on to make the British Isles so beautiful.

Here the blazing glory of colour comes first. In their excitement, the Msasa go a little mad. It is ordinary to see one side of a tree cafe au lait and the other a deep blood red colour. So they are the backdrop to our sailing September days. They disregard propriety. They scorn conformity as they show off their spring ensemble. In a few short weeks they will change to the dull green of breeding. But now, as debutantes, they are quite exquisite. These are the days when we forget business, war and sorrow and slip away on the morning sun across the lake towards the Kyle Game Park. As we ease to a broad reach, we see white rhino, eland, impala, giraffe who have come down for a quick one before they lay up in the heat of the day. Fish eagles above us claim the sky. Yellow billed kites, lately back from Egypt, patrol the shorelines. Further on hippo grunt before they sleep, submerge as we pass, and blow their annoyance at us as they emerge from the blue waters. Crocs show only their eyes as they wait for a gosling, an African fisherman, or me. They are not proud, merely patient, as they wait for something to fill their bellies. All this is true: they are there each morning. We run till lunch time, and then beat back to some chosen anchorage where the night falls softly, and in the peace we are quite alone. Our day has needed no words. The boat has done her job calmly. The winds fade with the sun. As yet they are fresh born. Later, when the rains will come, the boat will work, and so will we.

It is perhaps our last September on Kyle, so it is special one. Soon we will replace our Silhouette and get something less heavy on our pockets and our backs. While Kyle is beautiful, there is so much more to see. Kariba beckons. The Vaal calls. Knysna is 2500 miles return trip when we go. Petrol prices and massive mountains one has to cross call for prudence. It is a sad thing to loose a dog or a boat, to leave a friend or a country. But time changes and heals. So we will replace September Song with something easier to handle, cheaper to maintain, and still enjoy our sailing while we can.

We have made many friends through the Silhouette Association. Through your Dinghy Association, when we qualify, we hope to meet more. Our trouble will be to ask for advise in what we should build, and if time permits invite those of you who wish, to come out to feel the glory of a September dawn.