The Alwyn Vintcent, the 50-year-old pilot steam tug, was, we thought, on its way to Australia after having been bought and partially refurbished by a tugboat enthusiast. Well, maybe not.

Quite a bit of cash was apparently lavished on the tug which had been languishing at its moorings in the V&A Waterfront for much of the past 15 years. She was repainted and given a decent clean-up ahead of a planned tow to Simonstown to wait shipping to its new home.

Since then, not much has happened. The contractors who did the spruce job have allegedly not been paid in full and the tug is back on its mooring alongside the boom defence vessel and museum ship SAS Somerset, being used as a nesting ground – and lavatory – by numerous cormorants, and looking decidedly the worse for wear.

It’s good to see that the cormorants are happy, as evidenced by their many screeching progeny, but it won’t be long before the owners of the million-dollar penthouses and lofts overlooking the basin start wailing about this guano-encrusted eyesore of a tug and calling for its permanent removal from society.

It’s a real shame that Cape Town’s officialdom cannot see the value of the Alwyn Vintcent both as a tourist attraction and part of the city’s heritage. Every single one of Cape Town’s historic tugs was either scuttled, used for target practice by the SA Navy or scrapped. Saving the Alwyn Vintcent offers a chance to erase that little blot, but will they grasp the nettle?

For more on the tug’s sad story, see the previous blog post or click here.

Related posts:

1. Cape Town icon threatened by gunfire – or worse
2. Cape Town’s skyline grows up – and up
3. Back-in-time travel: 51 years ago in Cape Town docks
4. Emirates adds second daily flight to Cape Town
5. No more, the sound of fighter jets over Cape Town