Messin' about

There's something about watching a boat being built - no matter what size - from keelson to tuck (something my dad used to say) - from actual reality, seeing something grow, to even watching the efforts of others online.

Keeping an eye on SOS and DancesWithSandyBottom building their Core Sound 20 is a real delight. But over the last few years, I've also been watching another boat. Every time I've driven to or returned from the put in at Ebeneezer at Lake Jordan, I've kept an eye out on a cruising launch being built out in someone's yard. Being a yachtie myself, I can still admire the sleek lines and very racey bow flare. And I had to smile, when the grandchild appeared beside it one day.

So this last weekend, I actually stopped and took some photos.

Don't leave your boat

There’s a sad story playing out off the east coast of Australia, where a 12m catamaran, the Kaz II, has been found adrift and its three-person crew missing.

When the Coastguard boarded the boat, via a chopper drop and a good swim, the engine was found idling, table laid for dinner, a laptop and other computers open running, but no people. The headsail's shredded and the main sheet looks as though it's parted company with its traveler, but it doesn't take much to do that on an untended boat. Interestingly, there's also a reef in the main, and that could be a whisper pole hanging from the mast on the port side - perhaps they'd poled the headsail out on a down wind reach.

Media is reporting that the liferaft is missing, but there’s yet been no confirmation whether the cat did have a liferaft or not. I can't see an empty cradle anywhere on the foredeck where a liferaft would normally be secured. There is a RIB hanging from the stern on davits, still with its outboard.

This tale is a poignant reminder when at sea in a kayak or a yacht – don’t leave your boat, unless it’s sinking from under you. In most cases, the boat will survive. And always wear a lifeline.

When I was skippering a bareboat off the Turkish coast in 1990, we were told of a charter yacht that had similarly been found adrift. The Med had been flat calm and nor were there any signs of a struggle. What rescuers did find though, were lots of finger nail scratch marks along the side of the hull, just above the waterline. Apparently the crew had all jumped overboard for a swim, but had forgotten to hang a boarding ladder.

I thought that perhaps this is what had happened in this case, but watching the video, you can see that the Coastguard swimmer has little trouble climbing up one of the hull’s low transoms. But what I do find curious is that there’s one fender hanging over the starboard side of the cat, and another three hanging over the port side. Dad never let us leave our fenders over the side of the boat for more than a minute once we’d left the jetty!

Prior to this year’s Everglades Challenge, EC superstar SandyBottom had advised me to have a line of some sort attaching me to my kayak. And I took her at her word. In fact, Andrew McAuley’s loss compounded that decision. I had an old climbing tape, less than a metre long, looped around the side of my PFD, with a carabiner to clip the other end to the kayak’s safety lines. I felt just that little bit safer, knowing that if anything really bad did happen, I wouldn’t be separated from my boat, or at least I’d be found with my boat.

* Six hours later: The more I think about this case - and it's been plaguing me all day - the more I believe that this is probably a very sad case where one of the crew has fallen overboard, another tried to help him (two were brothers), and the other fell over trying to save all of them. I've seen it before where a person's fallen overboard, and another has automatically jumped straight over the side without a thought in the world in an attempt to save them. And I have a sneaking suspicion that this could have happened shortly after first leaving port when winds were gusting 30knots, particularly because the reef is still in the main. It appears that conditions have been perfect for sailing once that 30knots blew over.

Messing about in boats #3

Perhaps today’s children are too cocooned. There certainly seems to be much mentioned on folks’ worries regarding children’s obesity, and their obsessions with cell phones, text-messaging, video games and MySpace. Maybe it was easier raising children back in the sixties, particularly in NZ where TVs were not the norm and, if so, were black and white with only one channel.

Late fifties: my dad has finished building a 32-foot Kathryn Anne Woolacott designed yacht, Aries. It has taken him nearly five years, in a shed up the side of the house.
1960: mum and dad marry.
1961: I come along.
1962: my sister Clio arrives.
1963: dad closes down his cabinet-making business at the back of the house, mum’s parents move down from Auckland and live in the house, and for the next few years we sail the east coast of the North Island.
1965: my brother Rob is born. The family joke is that we just row mum ashore in time. Dad attaches a wringer to Aries’ transom so we can wash and wring nappies/diapers, to dry on the boat’s rigging.
1966: I’m about to turn five and thus due to start school. With some sadness the family sails home. I start primary school, dad reopens his business, mum’s parents move into a flat next door, mum raises a family before she goes back to part-time and then full-time secondary school teaching.

I’m a great believer that kids are extremely resilient, that you can take them anywhere from a very early age and pretty much throw them in any deep end. It takes parents who know what they’re doing, that’s certain, but as parents, we’ve also got to take the responsibility of introducing our kids to all the wonders and adventures outside the home and mall. And hopefully that sense of adventure will grow as they do.

I’ll never forget mum’s reaction in 1989 when I told her that I’d entered a two-month yacht race from Auckland to Fukuoka: “Why can’t my kids be boring like everyone else’s!”

If you’re interested in another look at kids at sea, my brother Rob wrote an article on the very subject a few years back.

Messing about in boats #2

It was about four years after the sale of Reveries that I managed to buy another boat. In the meantime I’d graduated with my Masters in geography, moved from the North Island to Christchurch in the South Island with the windsurfer on the car roof, married and separated, and then transferred with the then Coopers & Lybrand up to Auckland.

Auckland – City of Sails! Gotta have a boat in Auckland! I dragged all my pennies together, borrowed some from my parents at a fair interest rate and hit the For Sale ads in The New Zealand Herald. I bought a Raven, a 27-foot NZ class design by Owen Woolley. And I went for a fiberglass hull rather than wood. Ouch, but with my work schedule, easy-care glass was necessary to get the most out of my sailing.

Houdini was everything I wanted – flush deck, four berths, full headroom and then some, 15hp diesel, wee galley, large cockpit, and all the sails. She even boasted a spinnaker. I transferred her from a swing mooring I’d had laid in Orakei Bay to a rented marina berth up at Gulf Harbour in Whangaparaoa – nearly an hour’s drive in those days, but much closer to the cruising grounds of the Hauraki Gulf (America’s Cup sailing territory!) and with an excellent hardstand and traveller for easy hauling out.

I didn’t need to do too much to the boat when I bought it – it was a bit run down but sailable. I put in new carpet, made some bookcases and a new cabinet to fit a VHF unit and a stereo, a new chilly bin and an anchor locker. And I learned how to bleed a diesel.

One morning I came down to the marina to find that friends had added some stickers to the transom. My boat was now called Mrs. Houdini. Apparently that’s what all the marina staff had been calling me.

If not solo, I’d often take friends out for long weekend cruises – I’d dive for scallops, paua or crays, and with a few bottles of NZ vino in the chilly bin, we’d be set. They were great days.

Two years later (1989), I left the country, via Westhaven Marina, on a two month yacht race from Auckland to Japan. Good friends sold Mrs. Houdini for me, good enough to realize before me that I wouldn’t be coming back to NZ for probably some time...

Messing about in boats #1

When I was 13 and in my first year of secondary school, I was Ratty in the play, Wind in the Willows. The book had been one of my favourites growing up. The best line of Ratty’s and the entire book, is: “There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” What an adage for life. My dad (86 in April and still solo sailing a 32’ Davidson around the NZ coastline for weeks on end) reckons he would have been a wealthy man, if it hadn’t been for messing about in boats pretty much all of his life.

My own first boat, after the family sailing dinghies, was a Laser. I bought it from my Uncle Jim. It had a beautiful blue hull and the centerboard casing leaked. By the end of a day’s exhilarating sailing, the boat would be half full of water. But, wow, could I make some speed on a broad reach – and then it would throw me out and I’d have to swim for miles after it.

I then bought a windsurfer, which, much to my father’s bemusement, is still hanging from his garage roof back home in Whitianga on the Coromandel Peninsula.

During my third year at university (1982), I found a derelict looking 18-foot William Garden-designed yacht, looking rather forlorn on the hardstand down on the First Ave slipway in my home town of Tauranga. Reveries had a ‘For Sale’ sign hanging from it, and I was hooked. ‘Varsity was 100kms away, but I’d try to get home most weekends to work on the boat. I scraped everything down and repainted. Dad had a cabinetmaking business, with an upholstery shop, and his upholsterer made me new wool squabs for the two bunks. Dad even recovered the main hatch with teak decking, which I caulked and varnished. Reveries was my pride and joy.

After months of work, back into the water she went. There was no winch on this hardstand, so we pushed the cradle down into the water. Reveries had been out of the water for so long, the planks had opened up a good centimeter or so – you could practically see through from one side of the hull to the other. Of course, as soon as it hit the water, in poured Tauranga Harbour. Handbailing furiously, we dinghy-towed her around to the old Tauranga yacht club and stepped the mast. For two days and nights while moored out on the boat’s swing mooring, my brother and I took turns to bail while the other one slept.

Reveries had a small inboard engine – an old modified petrol Seagull outboard. It was the bane of my life. I would spend hours getting all the pauls lined up inside the casing to get her started, but would have to time my passage from the mooring to the jetty just right. Invariably the motor would konk out about three-quarters of the way, and judging the tide I’d just be able to drift in and down, kissing the jetty with perfect timing – usually to a round of applause from the old salts watching from the yacht club bar.

There’s nothing like the love affair with a first boat.