Sibusiso Sizatu hopes to inspire a new generation of black yachtsmen when his South African team takes part in the Cape2Rio race.⛵️ Find out more here👇
The crew — four men and one woman — is the first all hailing from the Royal Cape Yacht Club sailing academy to take part in the race.
As a child Sizatu used to herd his family’s livestock in a rural part of the Eastern Cape province before moving to a Cape Town township at the age of nine. He didn’t quite like it. Open waters didn’t inspire much confidence and sea-sickness was a hard sell. Sailing seemed a luxury pastime for wealthy retirees, a world away from life in the township, where drugs and violence abounded but money was in short supply.
Still, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. He often didn’t have money to travel to events or buy food to eat once he was there. But Sizatu said he found a supportive community in the Cape Town sailing world that helped him out broadening his horizons along the way. “I’d like to see more like diversity,” he said. “There are still some people that don’t see us as part of this, the racism is still out there.