Gerhard Moolman’s epic adventure across the Atlantic Ocean

Seeing as we are not all equipped with the gumption required to paddle across the Atlantic Ocean, let’s live vicariously through Gerhard Moolman, who recently did just that.
On December 1, the Dabulamanzi Canoe Club paddler started his adventure from Cape Verde on his way to Cayenne, the capital of French Guiana.

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Using a modified surf-ski kayak, his expedition spanned 37 days, covering a distance of 4 020km. The adventurer shared his experiences with the Northcliff Melville Times – from bringing birds back to health, battling a leaking boat, to enjoying the richness of the sea life, this adventure warrants the words of someone akin to Ernest Hemmingway, but these will have to do.

A day at sea saw him wake up at first light to paddle for three hours before having a 30-minute breakfast which was often followed by a 10-minute power nap. After another three hours of paddling, it was lunchtime during which he messaged home through WhatsApp using a Starlink device. Although he appreciated the functionality of the boat’s cabin, he preferred to be paddling the expansive sea. His days also included a dip in the ocean to clean the hull of the boat.

He said the best time of the day was the sunset. “The Atlantic offers spectacular sunsets with the clouds forming amazing pictures. I would be absorbed by this spectacle in the evenings and I would sit there often for more than an hour until it was very dark and I could see only stars.”
For dinner, he had a litre of soup and a kilogram of freeze-dried food. When he wasn’t being soothed by the sounds of the ocean, he listened to Audible books.

But, as with any expedition worth writing about, not every day was smooth sailing. On his second day, he became extremely sick with motion sickness and seasickness, coupled with just about everything going wrong on his boat. “The boat was leaking and there was a very real chance that it could sink.” The autonomous system also failed and there was a chance that he wouldn’t be able to get his batteries up again. “I tried to fix things but I didn’t know where everything was and my head didn’t work right.”

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Moolman said he had to dig deep so he could fix the problems, which he inevitably did. In the days that followed, he made peace with his environment and grew to love it. “To be quite honest, I was prepared to paddle around the world.”

Moolman’s character arc came on day 28 when a petrel (seabird), which accompanied him for most of the journey, became hypothermic during a storm.
The idea of him losing his only ‘friend’ while on the big ocean was inconceivable and he spent hours nursing the bird back to health. “I tried to dry the bird and warm it. I was worried it was going to die – we became very good friends.” He named it Stormvoel.

The richness of the sea life and the very low level of pollution were what surprised him. “I saw hundreds of fish species and I saw thousands of birds, however, there was only a dozen or so species of birds.” He added he only came across six man-made objects.

In conclusion, Moolman said being one with nature was good for one’s soul. “If you are directly exposed to nature for a relatively long time you start to communicate with it and it inevitably changes you.”

He docked his boat in Cayenne on January 7, with a sense of exhilaration and accomplishment.

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