So, plan B. I pick up the hire car that afternoon and head straight for Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, a wonderful collection of southern Africa's plant species in a beautiful location overlooking the broad suburbs of eastern Cape Town.
Within an hour, I've seen my first new species - African goshawk, saw-winged swallows, Hadeda ibises and Burchell's coucal - but disappointingly none of the sunbirds or cape sugarbirds that Kirstenbosch is renowned for.
The next morning, I meet Barry and Meidad at Muizenburg, overlooking False Bay, for a dawn expedition to the Strandfontein sewage works. This massive complex of settling ponds provides both wastewater treatment for Cape Town's growing populace but also feeding grounds for thousands of birds.
Swallows and martins swarm over the reeds and the open water is dotted with birds. Within two hours, I've notched up some 50 species of waterbird and seabird, 40 of them new to me, but some familiar - avocets, Sandwich terns, curlew sandpipers and greenshanks.
Soon after, I say goodbye to Barry and Meidad and head south down the peninsula, through Simons Town and on into the Cape Point National Park, ending up at Cape Point for a picnic lunch. The Park provides my first real experience of fynbos (pronounced 'fain-boss'), the unique and fantastically rich botanical assemblage to be found across the western Cape.
Later in my stay, a colleague would remind me that fynbos boasts more than twice as many endemic plant species as we have vascular plant species in the UK!
Fynbos isn't at its best in January, but is still pretty spectacular, a dazzling array of aloes, heathers and proteas. And soon I find some of its special birds, too - including orange-breasted sunbirds feeding on protea flowers - as well as wild ostriches and bonteboks (large brown and white antelopes).
Monday brings further bad news. The Verdana will be laid up until at least Thursday, but there is now a more worrying problem - I may not be allowed on the trawler at all, because some unknown environmental campaigners have been around the docks taking photos and asking difficult questions. One half of my sabbatical may not happen at all.