Civil Engineering May 2022 | Vol 30 No 4

Civil Engineering May 2022 19 mostly plunging, the roll of the surf and the cheeky swash surging up the beach. I always experienced a great catharsis standing on that beach in the early morning light, watching the break of the waves and listening to the crash of falling water above the murmur of the sea. When it was low water on the spring tides, always around mid-morning, we would go down to the beach to pick black mussels off the rocks. In the evening, when the afternoon sun was sinking low into the sea from an orange-coloured sky, we would invite our friends around for a mussel cook-up. Often, we would look for the green flash, but only once did I see it. I had time, once, to write, to record the distilling of my thoughts, calming them with the constant sight of the sea peeping through the windows. Sometimes, when I ran into a writer’s block, I would take the dogs for a walk down to the beach and walk through the water, knee deep, waist deep, just watching the sea, the ice-cold water surging around my legs, watching the way the waves broke and, beyond, the unending blue with the occasional super tanker gliding past far away. On one occasion, the Zulu sage Credo Mutwa came to lunch. He had come to the sea, to the beach below, for the induction of two acolytes. Afterwards he and his entou- rage came up for lunch. The old man was in full regalia with a chunk of copper ingot around his neck, and he was exhausted. He had no familiarity with the sea and was totally overwhelmed by it. I talked to him quietly of the sea in all its moods, the quiet times and the storms and of what today we would call blue mind, and it relaxed him. When he left, he bestowed on me the simple Zulu name “Manzi”, meaning water – an appropriate honour. MY FRIEND THE SEA Civil engineering is quintessentially working out in the open, often in the open veld, getting immersed in the earth itself. But nothing in the working world can surpass the shear intellectual and emotional engagement of working with the sea. Even in the office, working with plans, drawings, calculations, and specifications of steel, concrete, rock and all the other paraphernalia of engineering, every little part invokes the sea. Every part somehow echoes the call of the blue in some subliminal part of the mind. But far beyond that are the regular visits to harbours and sites or, better still, being stationed there and making real contact with the water. Over the years the sea and I have come to know each other and become good friends. Once, walking along a breakwater in Crete with a Canadian professor of classics who had little taste for the sea, every splash that came over the wall dumped on him. Not a drop touched me. Only once did I turn my back on the sea and I got slapped in the back for disrespecting it! Another time, in a dinghy in what would have been the dark beneath a jetty 4 , the morning sunlight diffracted up through the water, illuminating the whole space in a suffuse of blue. At the very end, three seals wallowed in the ice-cold water and in the saturated air, steam came off their backs. The most scared I’ve ever been was in another dinghy on another inspection of a jetty that had suffered from extreme corrosion. It looked like it could collapse at any moment. As soon as I had made my observations, I told my shipwright to get us the “hell out” of there, but decades later that jetty is still standing! Breakwaters are wonderous things. When one walks out to the end of a breakwater one is at sea, far from land, yet not in a rocking boat. All around is surging blue water. One has a sense of being part of the water, part of the blue, part of something enervating and ethereal, not the hum-drum world of dry land. One morning I went up early to in- spect a small breakwater I was building. Standing at the end, inspecting the work, something caught my attention. I turned around and looked up – eye to eye with a full-grown great whale only a few metres away, or so it seemed, scratching his belly on the sharp rocks of the armouring. We remained like that for some minutes, eyeing each other before we both moved off. When you love the sea, the sea giveth a great mood of elation. THE CINDERELLA OF MARINE ENGINEERING Within this field, I have chosen to spe- cialise in the art of dry docking ships. It is very much the “Cinderella” of marine engineering, but one where you get to work with the ships themselves. To bring a great ship to the blocks in a graving dock engenders a marvellous sense of achievement. Going down later to walk under the stern gear that towers stories above brings a great sense of wonder and humility. The Zulu sage, Creda Mutwa, relaxing after lunch, staring thoughtfully at the sea Morning breakers