Find Your Sea Legs

From struggling neighbourhoods to conquering Rio, this small team of sailors defied the odds.

- Kieran Legg & Kirsty Macnab

 

GRASSY PARK ISN’T EXACTLY KNOWN FOR producing crack sailing crews. “No one here really knows what sailing is,” laughs Daniel Aguhlas, who began finding his sea legs when he was just 14. It’s why, when he dreamed up a plan to conquer the Cape2Rio, the young sailor filed it away under a category marked “very small possibility”. But this year he was pinching himself when he stepped onto a Brazilian dock, 18 days of arduous sailing behind him. This was his moon landing: one small step from deck to dock, but one giant leap for his neighbourhood. “It was unreal. I just couldn’t believe it. I was here,” says Daniel.

CREW BOSS MARCO TOBIN DOESN’T WANT you calling Gryphon a development team. No matter the race, he knows his guys are capable of winning. And the Cape2Rio was no different. The now seasoned sea dog was introduced to sailing back in 1997, at Grassy Park High School. “It was actually a school sport! That was about 19 years ago,” he says.

He was approached by the Zeekoevlei Yacht Club, who run a development sailing program in partnership with Wynberg Rotary designed to uplift the community and identify aspiring young talent. Marco fit the bill – and was immediately recruited.

Through his time sailing he would meet similarly-minded would-be sailors. Among them was Theo Yon, who would go on to skipper the Gryphon Team. “Most of the team had been sailing together, but all on different boats. That’s 10 years of training as a team on separate yachts,” he says.

In March last year, they hatched a plan to pool their knowledge and experience – they bought a boat and formed their own team. While Theo is a realist, always dubious of Marco’s utmost certainty that the team can win any event, it hasn’t curtailed the crew boss’s ambitions.