SNOEK

Come hell or high water, we are gonna have fun                                                                                                                Mans

For me a Snoek is the quintessential Cape Town meal, it embodies all that is Cape Town. Everyone who lives here, knows what a Snoek is, but for those of you who don’t, it is a ‘Barracuda like’ looking fish (with vicious finger removing teeth) It’s actually no relative, but they are referred to in NZ and OZ as Barracouta. I know it’s all a bit confusing, but that’s just the way it is, so lets move on.

A yummy no frills chomp                              Mans

Nobody likes a ‘pap (mushy) Snoek’, not even me. So to avoid any ‘papness’ don’t get any during the months that have an R in them (the hot months). Anyhow, it was during one of the months, without an R that Ian Ian and I decided, coz it was such an awesome day, we would go for a sail on Deep Magic, our friend, Mark Mark’s yacht. With excitement bubbling over, we fired up the engine, so we could motor out of the harbour before we set the sails. Our bubbling excitement turned to a simmering excitement, when we found that the throttle cable had snapped. So like all good engineers Ian Ian pointed and explained what had to be done, while I sardined myself into the engine compartment and covered myself with grease. Under instruction, I managed to jury rig the cable with some dental floss. Excitement was again bubbling over, only for it to soon to return to a simmer, coz now the motor would rev, but the boat was still not going anywhere. We were as ‘pap’ as a Snoek caught in February. Our excitement was stone cold, but hey, come hell or high water we were going to have fun.  So it was decided, coz we were at the harbour and the fishing boats were coming in, we would have a Snoek Braai (barbeque) on the mooring. It was a no frills affair, apart from the fish, everything was bought at the local café. Government issue white bread, iceberg lettuce, mayo, tomatoes, and, of course the classic apricot jam, butter and garlic baste. Soon our excitement returned to the boil and we were chomping down yummy Snoek sarmies, while listening to squawking gulls and the familiar sounds the yachts rigging tinkling in the breeze. Who needs a working vessel to enjoy a good chomp on the ocean anyway?

The engineer with a clean white shirt                                Mans

The finale garnish to our storey, 'the cherry on the top', one may say, happened a month or two later, when Mark Mark took Deep Magic out of the water for maintenance and discovered why we weren’t going anywhere. The naughty propeller had fallen off.

Just the way we like it                                                                                   Mans