Milnerton to Granger Bay

More than 20 paddlers from around Cape Town joined Richard as he paddled into Granger Bay. Amongst them was Jade Carstens, born with a cleft palate which was corrected after seven years. “He has no idea how great it is, what he is doing. I never thought people knew or cared about this,” said Jade.

With Richard within striking distance of Cape Town, tourismZA decided to step up the exposure for the expedition. Try as we may, we could not get the green light for a single, lone paddler to paddle into Cape Town harbour with only a week’s notice. Fortunately, Oceana Power Boat Club at Granger Bay came to the rescue and invited Richard, and everybody who paddled the 6.5km with him from Milnerton, in.

The event was to draw attention to the plight of children born with cleft lips and palates, and raise funds to perform corrective surgery on them. For every R5,500 donated to Operation Smile South Africa, we can facilitate corrective facial surgery on a child and give them their God-given right to a smile.

Thanks to the efforts of tourismZA and Richard Kohler, we were able to raise over R10,000 towards the Paddling for Smiles Expedition. We are still very far from the target of R1,000,000, which is going to take a huge effort on the part of everybody involved. We look now to the East Coast of South Africa and the next part of this epic journey.