The first time he saw the ocean, Sibusiso Sizatu thought that with all that water, it must be a very large lake.
A couple of decades later, the former pastor is preparing to sail across that same ocean in an iconic race, leading a South African team that hopes to inspire a new generation of black sailors.
“It’s going to be a revelation for young people,” Sizatu, 30, dressed in a white polo shirt, told AFP as he stood on a Cape Town pier next to his ship, the Alexforbes ArchAngel.
The ArchAngel will set sail for Rio de Janeiro on January 2, as part of the 50th edition of the Cape2Rio regatta.
It will compete against more than a dozen other boats from five countries to cover the more than 6,000 kilometers of Atlantic waters that separate the two cities.
Sizatu believes his 10m sloop has a chance to win, but being on the start line is already certainly a success for the skipper and his crew of four.
“The first objective is to finish the race,” he said. “Winning will be an extra bonus.”
open waters
The crew, four men and one woman, is the first from the Royal Cape Yacht Club sailing academy to take part in the race.
The academy was created in 2012 to help youth from underserved communities succeed in a sport dominated by wealthy whites.
As a child, Sizatu used to tend his family’s cattle in a rural area of the Eastern Cape before moving to a Cape Town township at the age of nine.
There he started going to school and was first introduced to sailing by a friend.
He didn’t like it very much. Open water didn’t inspire much confidence, and seasickness was a hard sell.
He greatly preferred soccer and hoped to make it as a professional.
Yachting seemed like a luxury pastime for wealthy retirees, a world away from township life, where drugs and violence were rife, but money was scarce.
On the first sortie, he swam back to shore.
Things changed when his friend asked him to join him in a yacht race and his boat won.
Sizatu said he realized sailing was “a sport” and not just “having fun on the water playing with the boat.”
“I saw an opportunity,” he said.
While the chances of becoming a footballer were pretty slim, with millions of people chasing the same dream, few young South Africans were trying their hand at sea.
“I was like ‘okay, this is where I can really become something great,'” he said.
Smooth sailing
He grew to like the ocean and became very good at running a boat on it.
“It’s very peaceful and quiet when you’re in the water, you forget about everything else,” he said.
Still, not everything was smooth sailing. She often did not have money to travel to events or buy food once she was there.
And until he was 20 years old, he had no identity documents, which made competing abroad quite difficult.
But Sizatu said he found a supportive community in the Cape Town sailing world that helped him broaden his horizons along the way.
Now he hopes to expand those of sport.
“I would like to see more diversity,” he said. “There are still some people who don’t see us as part of this, the racism is still there.”
The challenging perceptions were one of the reasons he had long dreamed of competing in Cape2Rio with a team that has shared a similar path to his own.
Sizatu said his team stuck together even if many might have been tempted to join other ships looking for crew, while ArchAngel searched for a sponsor to support the venture.
From 21 to 30 years old, Sizatu is the oldest, the crew is young, motivated and skilled.
However, only one of them has completed an ocean crossing before.
“This will be a great springboard for all of us,” Sizatu said.
