The best view of Table Mountain by far. Head to Table Bay Harbour to get your feet wet and spend the day playing on Watercraft.
Sailing in Table Bay is easily one of the best ways to get a truly unbelievable Cape Town experience. There’s really nothing quite like looking back onto majestic Table Mountain and Cape Town city bowl in all their magnificent glory. The view you get from the bay is the same iconic imagery you see on almost every postcard and documentary.
Sailing a 40-foot yacht off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa offers a supremely unique twist on the “traditional” Cape Town experience. Not only is the Cape of Good Hope a well-known travel destination with stunning views and beautiful coastline but there is a thriving food and wine scene to boot. What better way to experience the fairest Cape than by sailboat? Enjoy the sun on your face and wind in your hair while you sail along the rugged South African coastline, sipping on delicious local wines and Methode Cap Classique (MCC), the local bubbly.
People often come to South Africa to experience the extraordinary land-based “Big 5” but even a short sailing trip around the Cape can reveal a thriving community of aquatic wildlife. The magnificent Humpback and Southern Right whale’s can be seen in Cape Town during September and October when they migrate from their breeding grounds in the tropics to the southern oceans, via False Bay. Southern Right whales are the most commonly sighted and appear in Table Bay from June to November.
Bottlenose, Haviside’s and humpback dolphins can be seen gracefully swimming alongside your sailboat. The best time to see them is during the sardine run, a large-scale migration of the small fish, which takes place between May and July. Cape fur seals are long-term residents of the V&A Waterfront and can be found lying lazily onshore or playing around the water’s edge anytime of year.
Nearby Robben Island is home to a colony of African penguins where you can sail close to the shore to see them up close and personal. And if you’re really lucky, you might run into the Cape clawless otter, which fishes in both salt and freshwater environments and are found throughout the aquatic surrounds of the Mother City.
Another unique aspect of seaside sightseeing in Cape Town is the possibility of seeing over 11 visible shipwrecks around the Western Cape. The “Cape of Storms” has played a dark but important part in South African history and has claimed many ships since the original explorers discovered the route to the east via the tip of Africa. Some of these shipwrecks are onshore and are only possible to see from the sea because of the remoteness of their locations.