MESSING ABOUT IN BOATS
As Ratty says in Wind in the Willows “There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats”
PREAMBLE. In early chapters came the small Dutch Stuyvesant and Van Renssler, “Nederland Stoomboots” that took us on leave to England before the war, the Querriman sternwheeler, that thrashed its way across the huge mud-swirling rivers of Guyana, the large Canadian Lady Drake that took us to Trinidad, the Barbados schooner on which Arthur and I lay back on sugar sacks to avoid the swinging boom and, in 1944, the worn-out Arabian Prince limping for a hundred days across the North Atlantic. I remember all the smells: Demerara sugar on my father’s wharf, dried salt fish on the jetty, gouloise tobacco from a French ship that tied up once, decaying vegetation washed down from Amazonia and caught in the mangroves, sugar and salt on the schooner, and the reek of whisky in the captain’s cabin as he tried to explain the ship’s bills of lading that he was no longer capable of understanding. In England there were now army surplus stores from which came my frogman’s flippers and the fighter pilot’s life raft in the photo that Tim and I attempted to navigate across Pevensey Bay. Then, in Australia, came the tall ships, little Pipi, and other creaking canvases that inhabited my diaries.
“I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by” John Masefield.
TALL SHIPS. On Australia Day, Joan and I have just found a spot amongst the crowds on the Harbour Bridge from which we look straight down onto the decks of the tall ships moving slowly in line out to the Heads for the Tall Ships Race to Hobart. They had come from Russia, Poland, Mexico, etc., majestic training ships with cadets standing at attention way up on 4, 5 and 6 spars to each mast, almost scraping the bridge beneath our feet. Led by a fire float spouting water a hundred feet into the air and surrounded by hundreds of enthusiastic boats of all sizes, it is an amazing sight. Andrew and Ann, staying with us from England, went one better. They had cleverly enrolled in a 4-day sailing class and, as day four was Australia Day, they had a close up view of the fleet from their yacht.
THE APPRENTICE is what Gerry Smith called me as he handed me the wheel, telling me to steer out through the heads watching the “tell tales”, strips of cloth sewn into the sails. Preoccupied with what tales the sails were telling me, and a big swell driving in from the Tasman Sea, I narrowly missing collision with two Australian and one New Zealand warship coming the other way. While Gerry and his friend laughed quietly at my embarrassment, I tried to remember that ropes are called sheets and those wire things are called stays. But on the return leg, with a Manly ferry in my sights, skipper Gerry Smith did decide it was time to seize the wheel and “tack” up Middle Harbour with the wind “abaft the starboard beam”.
PIPI. “Look Dad, there’s a boat for only $300” said Madeleine. So we dumped our trailer of rubbish at the tip and, on the way back, strapped a Manly Junior dinghy onto the trailer. It was old and needed a lot of carpentry after each sail but we had fun. The family video shows Pipi streaking across Tuross Lake until it hit a submerged log. Then, back at Balmoral with Kate and Alex aboard, it was turned upside down by a cold August wind and rescued by the local ship chandler.
DUYFKEN is Dutch for “Little Dove” and, in 1606, this little 110 ton barque made landfall at the Pennefather River in the Gulf of Carpentaria. This was the first authenticated landing in Australian soil, pre-dating Captain Cook by well over a century. A full-size replica was built which Madeleine and Chris visited in Fremantle and we visited in Ulladulla.
THE SVANEN, brought out of retirement, now takes sailing cruises out of Sydney and, when Joan was in England helping to deliver Maya, I enrolled as crew for a weekend sail.
“Then did the sails conceive and grow full-bellied with the wanton wind” (Shakespeare)
and the rest of this chapter comes from diary for November 2003..
The astro-physicist from Leipzig is in the next bunk to me. We are both on the starboard watch and he will be seasick on Saturday. Across the single long cabin is a Canadian named Fox (Yes, that really is first name. His second name is Swan, which also happens to be Svanen in Danish). Behind a curtain in the corner is Angus, a Scot, and his wife Hannah, a tall Swede. In other corners are four Sydneysiders, a New Zealander, and the Irish girl who will be seasick on Sunday. Above my head a massive black cross-beam, shaped more with an axe than a saw, for some reason carries a delicate candelabra. We board at 1800 hours on Friday, cast off from Campbell’s Cove at 1900, and are anchored off the Old Quarantine Station inside the Heads by 2030. Kate has made me 20 pieces of fudge for the trip, which earn her many compliments that evening. There is one piece each and 5 left over. I decide it is prudent to offer these seconds to the crew only and, sure enough, I find I am not needed on Friday’s night watches.
John is the cook, really an excellent chef. We come back for seconds and thirds when at anchor, and he even staggers along the deck with fruit and sandwiches when we are working at sea. Yarrow (I ask discreetly about the choice of name and am told her parents were some of the original hippies up in Nimbin) organises the watches. Daniel the deck hand looks no more than 15, lives on board (as does Yarrow) and is obviously in love with the sea. His great grandfather built the first whaler working out of Eden so I guess it runs in the family. Gwen, a tough old bird of 60, knows everything you need to know about sails and is also a very patient teacher. Aran, the first mate, is a board shaper and surfs Catherine Hill Bay when he is not needed on the Svanen. And then there is Stephen, rough but honest, as a skipper should be.
The Svanen, a three mast barquentine, was built in 1922 in Denmark to carry grain and beer to Greenland. Most wooden ships these days are replicas so, although she carries her age well, maintenance is a heavy and increasing problem. As we are about to find out, there is no way the Svanen can be worked by a crew of five. So, we are not just passengers. Now Saturday, and we are woken by a curious chatter, coming from the nearby colony of fairy penguins. We clear the Heads and, as there is a Nor-Easter blowing, we motor out and up along the string of Sydney’s Northern beaches until, about 5 miles offshore, we put up sail.
My first job is to pull on a thing called a halliard to raise the main staysail. Next we haul on one side and ease on the other to swing the spars round at the right angle. Next, we need to climb the rigging and unfurl the coarse, the lower topsail, upper topsail and top-gallant. Joan had forbidden me to go aloft, and Christian, the astrophysicist, is feeding his breakfast to the fishes over the lea rail (as we were instructed to do yesterday), but some of the youngsters volunteer. It is as exciting as in the movies, three on each side of a spar, feet braced precariously on that rope thing, stomach on the spar, bending over to release the canvas (I always wondered why it was called “bending the sails”).
The ocean is a deep Mediterranean blue out here, though I never knew why Homer called it “wine-dark”. Opposite Broken Bay, and with a lot of help from Gwen, we tack and run in, with an unusual view of Kilcare, close under Barrenjoey, past Steel and Flint Bay, and turn left (sorry, that should read “wear to port”). Past Challenger head, looking up to the rock slab we sit on with the grandchildren at the end of the Challenger Track, we finally anchor near Cottage Point. Daniel runs us in the rubber ducky to a tiny beach for a swim. The skipper, face covered in shaving cream, is shaving at the water’s edge and seems very keen for us to shower off under a small waterfall. I suspect he didn’t take on enough water in Sydney for the luxury of showers on board. And now we watch hungrily while huge slabs of chicken breast are being seared on a BBQ assembled on the aft deck. For some reason the chicken goes back into the galley and does not reappear. Instead, the hotplate is now filled with steaks and rissoles, a huge salad is assembled on the aft hatch, and beer and wine have been cooling in a giant esky. Svanen is called a dry ship, which seems to mean no alcohol except, apparently, when at anchor. We do eventually get the chicken, but for Sunday lunch, with homus, tabouli and Lebanese bread, wrapped tight in a paper napkin so we can eat while working.
I am a bit slow off the mark that evening and the only watch left is 3 to 4 a.m. Fox wakes me at 3 and I must wake Christian at 4. He is fully recovered now and gives me two New Scientist articles to read on my watch. Apparently, if you lie on your back on the equator for 24 hours, above your head will pass (I quote very roughly from memory and a short sleep) 4000 satellites, one moon, 8000 asteroids, and about quarter of a million galaxies. I go out of the chart room and note a blaze of stars, one moon, and one staysail lamp aloft. I come in and record in the appropriate columns on the log the wind direction and speed, temperature and barometric pressure, sky 8/8 (completely clear) and the facts that the staysail lamp was still alight and the ship had not caught fire during that hour. I read the other article and learn that scientists now refer to the last 200 years as the anthropocene era, in which one species has dominated the earth, altering it in ways that used to be left to nature.
Sunday, and bacon, eggs, mushrooms and tomato and then we motor out of the Hawkesbury. Now the Svanen is punching in to a rising swell and the decks are awash. But by now we have all gone for shorts and bare feet and we have also learned the rule: keep your balance by keeping your eye on the horizon. I count 40 pins on the port rail, same starboard, and quite a few clustered round each of the three masts. More than half have ropes coiled on them (sheets, halliards, etc to the initiated) and we have to remember which ones to use. And the rule here is to keep your eye on where the other end goes to up in the rigging and, when finished that task, coil the rope back on its pin. We are only using ten sails this trip, but that is enough. Christian is helping UNSW scientists analyse Antarctic weather patterns with a view to establishing the feasibility of building a telescope there, since the atmosphere is very clear. He is well again today and back into telescope mode. He asks me which telescope that is in its shiny cupola on the hill top and I explain it is actually a Bahai temple. I don’t think the Irish girl Tricia is interested in telescopes or temples right now, leaning miserably over the lea rail. Even Peter, and Hannah the giant Swede, are somewhat queasy, but Fox seems to be everywhere things are happening.
This morning I am on bow duty (forward lookout) with a walkie talkie since the steersman can’t actually see where we are going. I report the magnificently restored square-rigger the James Craig on our port bow, but then have to call for help when I don’t know how to handle a yacht race we seem intent on disrupting and Angus rescues me (and quite possible the Svanen and a few yachts). Working for Reuters, he seems to have sailed and dived all over the world, and Rob, in between boats at the moment, has many stories of the reef and the Pacific. Daniel, soaking up every word, then stuns me by asking about my sailing experience, and I gulp for a moment. But they listen politely to my account of my trip to the chemist by way of a Barbados sugar schooner, and then I remember the 100-day epic voyage later that year, up through the Caribbean, through a U-boat blockade out of Halifax and across the North Atlantic in a worn-out 1800 tonner.
Sunday afternoon and the harbour is packed with “professional” sailors, and some not so professional, causing us some trouble. The traffic jam around the Opera House forces us on under the bridge while we furl the mains and roll up the stay sails. “Start with the dogs balls” says Gwen, pointing to the pair of heavy iron rings at the corner of each sail. But her colourful language is always memorable, as will be the Svanen, the crew, and the “passengers” who contributed to such a great weekend.