Dear Friends,

Maybe some of you wonder where I have come from, what I have done in my life and how I landed up at Sandy Cove Marine Sales.

Well, I will tell you :-D

I am South African, born and bred!  I grew up in the Northern Suburbs of Cape Town but it was the holidays at the sea that meant the most for me. My parents had a holiday home in Struisbaai, just a stonesthrow away from Cape Agulhus...the southern most tip of Africa and we went there regularly...but not near as regularly as I would have liked!

From a very young age, I lived for the sea and was out on the beach collecting red bait pots even before dawn...but not like all of you would think, to fish with. No, I collected them to sell to the fisherman.

Later in the day, I would go diving for sinkers, come home, melt them down and make bright shiny new ones...and sell them.

Yes, I guess you could say that selling and the sea was equally fun for me!

During my school years, a group of us formed a Sea Scout unit of which I was the leader.  We sailed dinghy's and learnt morse code and flags and knots and went crayfish (lobster) and perlemoen (abalone) diving. Life was just so good!

After school I did my basic military training in Anti-Aircraft, but landed up playing in the military band after that. You see, I played in the school band in high school and could fill in for anyone, so I always had a spot.

Then I moved to Port Elizabeth and for some years I dressed in a suit and tie every day and worked in banking, eventually running the mortage department, but every moment I got, I would be at the sea, diving or swimming.

I decided to move back to Cape Town and that was really where I started learning how to do spearfishing the right way. After a few target practices on some very small fish, I met up with spearo's at a club who taught me how to hunt underwater. I loved it right away and still does until today.  What a challenge to get the fish to come so close to me that I could almost touch them. in time I was the spearfishing officer at the club.

But, let me not continue with that, else you will not get to know me...just get hooked on spearfishing! :-D

Oh, before I step off the topic, here's picture from those days...

At the club I learnt about Diamond Diving on the West Coast and soon decided to move up there, not for the furtune so many desired, but to be underwater as much as I could.  I worked on and under water for 5 years after that and achieved a Government qualification as a diamond and commercial diver.  By the 4th year I have realised that I would not be able to dive commercially my whole life and that I should do something else. During the year I looked at various directions and in the end decided to start a curtain factory.  I built that business to a point where it was bursting out of its seams with commercial contracts to hospitals, universaties and schools.

Then, vertical blinds arrived, and I immediately saw the potential in that line, so I got my brother involved and we built a blind factory together.

Competiton spearfishing took up a lot of time and money and after representing my province at the National Championships, I decided to give it a rest.  As I owned a small holding at that time and had dogs for protection, I got involved in dog training at a club.  As I grew up with dogs in the house, I loved their company but knew that they had to be trained. In time I became a trainer and committe member at the club and started competing in obedience competitions.

Then I moved to George in the heart of the Garden Route on the South Coast and while I continued marketing the blinds my brother was manufacturing in Cape Town I got more involved in dog training and in 1994 I took over the running of an existing club. We travelled all over South Africa competing with our dogs in Obedience until Agility started taking off.  Since there was only one dog body in SA, there were continual gripes over the way the working dogs were treated and viewed, so, some years later, a friend of mine and I decided to go against that organisation and started what is called the South African Working Dogs Association (SAWDA) under which we immediately put agility in place as South African Agility Dog Association (SADAA). It was a long road and a diffcult one, but we had good people with us and slowly people joined our Association. Today, SADAA is going extremely strong and has bigger entries than was ever seen at any trial held in the years before.

My personal best achievement was when my German Shepherd, Fame, and I was awarded a Guinness Book World Record for her breaking the world record in the 60 weavepole event.

At the same time, I also retained my love for the water and fish by breeding Japanese Koi and until today I still have a collection.

Having always loved farmlife, my girlfriend and I decided to buy a smallholding outside George where we could keep horses, as well as our 8 dogs, 3 cats, the Koi collection, a few cattle, sheep, chickens, ducks, geese, etc. This turned out to be a free range hog farm in the end and it all started because we had Wattle trees we didn't want. Hogs, being the rooters that they are and loving the Wattles, was a perfect fit and soon we were supplying the local butchery with some fine hogs.

I took on a Thouroughbred horse with extremely bad feet and everybody said it would be impossible to ride him, so, true to my nature, I took up the challenge.  I went on the internet and found a lady in Pennsylvania, Marjorie Smith, who is extremely knowledgable about trimming barefoot horses and I learnt from her how to trim my horse to alleviate the pain. Then I started communicating with another American, Dan Guerrera (a Master Farrier) and in the end he came to SA to teach us how to trim.  I also got Peter Laidley from Australia to come and teach us and all the while I gathered material and knowledge. Then, when the neighbours saw me riding the horse everyone said was impossible to ride on the gravel roads, they asked me to trim their horse's hooves.  As my time was too limited to do that, I agreed to teach them. So I did a couple seminars for them and others and it was amazing to see how well they all did.

I came to America on holiday in 2003 and visited the Florida Keys and fell in love with the Islands and the green blue waters as well as the warm weather, so it was not suprising that I should end up here.

Today I feel that everything I have done in my life has been a preparation for what I am doing now. Running my own businesses has certainly supplied me with enough knowledge to manage Sandy Cave Marine Sales efficiently.  Gaining knowledge about computers from the early days of GW-Basic and Dos is standing me in good stead today in this world where Outboards are becoming more and more computer related.

The dog training and pig rearing? Well, that help me be patient with humans and makes me better at communicating with you, our clients!

I hope this has given you a little background about me and my life, who I am and what I have done.

I have made many firends here and I sure hope you feel like you know me now and that we are friends, because in the end, we can do all the business we want, but if we do not have our friends, it would all be for nothing.

I hope to see you at Sandy Cove in the near future!

Johan