The first thing Charl will tell you about his relationship with False Bay is that it wasn't planned. He arrived here the way most people arrive at the things that matter: by accident, by stubbornness, by staying when it would have been easier to leave.
He surfs Muizenberg most mornings. Not always early, sometimes it's late, after the kids are sorted, after whatever the morning required. But the surf is a constant. It's been a constant for long enough that it's stopped being something he decides to do and become something he simply is. The board is in the car. The wetsuit is always half-dry.
"The thing about raising kids by the ocean is they grow up thinking the ocean is normal. That's the best thing you can give them."
On being a single father
Being a single father in a coastal suburb of Cape Town has its own particular texture. The school runs, the packed lunches, the logistics that don't go away, all of that is still present. But it's also the early morning surf before the house wakes up, the weekends on the beach, the kids learning to swim in the tidal pool, the sense that the place itself is part of the parenting.
Charl and Stefan met through the water, more or less. Two fathers, two surf routines, a shared corner of False Bay. The friendship that followed was the kind that's built on proximity and familiarity and showing up in the same place enough times that you eventually stop introducing yourself and start sharing the flask of coffee.
On these homes
The decision to share the homes came from a simple idea: that the experience of being in this place, not a tourist version of it, but the actual texture of a day here, was worth sharing. Not in a curated or managed way. Just opened up to the people who would understand what to do with it.
Charl is particular about the homes. The way things are arranged, what's in the kitchen, whether the deck chairs are positioned to catch the evening. It's the attention of someone who actually lives with a place, not someone who has studied how such a place should look.
What he recommends
If you ask Charl what to do, he'll suggest getting into the water before you do anything else. The tidal pool in the morning, the surf if the conditions are right. After that, "food, usually." He's partial to Olympia Café when there's no queue. The hike to Muizenberg Peak on a clear day. Sitting on the terrace in the evening and watching what happens to the light over the bay.
He is, in his own words, very easy to find if you have questions, or if you want to borrow a board.
