All Piss and Wind (11 page)

Inevitably, mellowed by the steady intake of fermented and spirituous liquors, sailors' minds turn to home. The most sought-after document on the island now becomes the detailed four-day weather map and forecasts available gratis from the excellent weather station at the island's airport.

‘When you blokes heading off? That northerly change looks like it'll come through late tomorrow.'

‘Yeah, we're thinking about it. Wouldn't mind fitting in a round of golf before we go, though.'

It's always hard to leave Lord Howe. Many crew fly back to the mainland because they can't risk not being at work by Monday.
The lucky ones have time to wash their sailing clothes, collect some extra fuel, water and supplies and start ferrying it out to their boats. Most will wait for a high tide to make leaving the lagoon easier, although it's difficult to avoid the suspicion they're just using that as an excuse to stay for a few more hours.

‘Time to go, lads. Let's have the donk.' We motor out past Rabbit Island, through the passage, a quick ‘thank you' on the VHF radio to the Wilsons for all their patient pilotage, sails up, engine off, and away we go. Few of us can sail those first few miles without constantly looking back over our shoulders to savour the beauty of the island, trying to hold it in our mind's eye until it emerges over the horizon again next year. There is no sweeter landfall.

F
EW YACHTS ON THE
east coast of Australia turn more heads than the elegant wooden 61-foot sloop
Fidelis
. With her impressive length, extreme low freeboard and narrow beam she looks like a classic 30-square-metre classer blown up to double size. This isn't so surprising when you learn her provenance. The lines of
Fidelis
were derived from a design by Knud Reimers, the legendary Swedish creator of the Tumlaren class and a string of world-beating metre boats.

Lofted directly from a half-model in the traditional method,
Fidelis
was built at the old Lidgard yard in Auckland more than forty years ago. She has the sleek profile of a flat-water day boat, yet boasts an impressive offshore record. Her bulkhead skite plaques attest to hard-won ocean-racing honours throughout the South Pacific.
Fidelis
was Sydney–Hobart line-honours winner in 1966, beating her closest rival home by such a whopping margin that the gap remained a record for the next 16 years. Three decades after her launching,
Fidelis
returned to win the classic division of
the fiftieth Sydney–Hobart, and bettered her 1966 time by eight hours. Since then she's been regularly campaigned offshore, has done many swift passages to Lord Howe Island and remains surprisingly competitive ‘around the cans' on Sydney Harbour. The lady is not for slowing.

Her current owner is Sydney businessman Nigel Stoke, who flew to New Zealand in 1993 to charter the boat for the fiftieth Hobart and ended up buying her. Stoke is an active yachtsman, not one of those fussy, fanatical purists who treat their wooden boats like antique furniture and rarely leave the dock. Nevertheless, he embraces the underlying tradition of classic yacht ownership: you don't really own one of these works of art, you merely hold them in trust. ‘It's a privilege to look after it for a while, and to preserve the yacht for another generation,' says Stoke. ‘Some of that work you should do by just sailing the boat and maintaining it properly, but eventually you've got to stop and do the big things.'

Big indeed. The last major refit of
Fidelis
was begun in 1986 and, although the yacht still presented beautifully, regular offshore passages and weekly harbour racing inevitably take their toll. Stoke decided in early 2005 that his celebrity classic had now earned a major makeover. But undertaking any serious refit of a large classic yacht demands an enormous commitment of both time and money. Time from the shipwrights; money from the PBO – Poor Bloody Owner. The massive job went to the Newcastle branch of Sean Langman's boatyard business, Noakes. Only 60 sea miles north of Sydney, it was one of the few places where a fixed workforce with the necessary spread of craft skills could be assigned to the task for the entire four-month project, and where the boat would be set up as the sole occupant of a secure, modern shed. (As it happened, when they first lifted
Fidelis
out of the water at Newcastle they discovered she was too long for their shed, but eventually just managed to squeeze her in on the diagonal.)

My first impression on visiting the refit-in-progress was of the
yacht's powerful underwater sections – eight feet six inches of sweetly curved timber and lead draft. The trailing edge of the keel slopes forward where the original half-elliptical rudder hung, replaced long ago by a balanced spade further aft, designed by Warwick Hood. Her long ‘shoe' means
Fidelis
can't be dropped into a conventional keel pit. Instead, the blokes at Noakes built a temporary stairway and gantry to provide deck-level access to their first-floor workshop, and for the thousands of up-and-down trips required to complete the job.

The work checklist was huge, covering many pages of detailed notes. Stoke concedes that he'd ‘had some issues' with the boat for the past few years and that it ‘now made sense to do it all in one go'. (Whether it also made sense to his bank manager is another matter entirely. Craftsmanship of this complexity and magnitude doesn't come cheap.) The boat was almost entirely gutted, including the removal of the engine and all tanks. Most of the internal furniture and fittings came out to gain access to the inner skin of the hull's triple-diagonal kauri planking. The deck was stripped of its thinning teak and was totally glassed before the new seasoned timbers could be laid. A for'd anchor locker was sealed over while the original, clunky lazaret entry was neatly replaced by a flush modern hatchway. Inside, a daunting amount of restorative joinery needed to be done where fresh water and condensation had begun to rot along the deck/coach-house join. A brand new Yanmar 75 replaced the old 61-horsepower marinised Mercedes diesel. Fortunately, both engines have virtually the same footprint, but the new power plant is much more compact and allowed space for improved soundproofing.

Classic yachts were built to last, and
Fidelis
is no exception. The refit was often challenged by the sheer substance of her original scantlings. To ensure an unhindered work space around the deck and its supporting beams, shipwrights removed the boat's massive chain-plates – and the 18 tough through-bolts on each side that seize them to the hull. Below the waterline, it took two days
swinging a sledgehammer to open up even a tiny gap between the keel lead and the deadwood. This revealed a rather eccentric path in the line of keel bolts (which Langman advised should be replaced with a more conventional pattern). The stubborn reluctance of the keel lead to be separated from its bolts was finally explained when the owner tracked down a veteran of the yacht's original build in New Zealand. ‘Oh, you might have a bit of trouble shifting them,' the old-timer remarked. ‘We cast that keel around the bolts. They're sort of welded in.' Useful information.

Much of the work done on
Fidelis
constituted small but significant changes to its ‘classic' credentials. But, as Nigel Stoke is quick to point out, his yacht has already been gradually transformed over its 40 years. The traditional stretched-canvas deck surface is long gone, as are the cotton sails, rustic galley, rackety one-speed winches and fractional rig. ‘This is a refit, not a restoration. If it makes the boat go well and look nice, then that's OK. You can use modern materials in a sensible way without changing the integrity of the original design. For example, we had one of the original bulkheads give way during the last trip to Lord Howe. The new one will be fibreglassed in. I don't suppose that's “authentic” but it's the right thing to do.'

Stoke is, however, passionate about the yacht's history and has spent a decade assembling a history of the boat and a collection of
Fidelis
photographs. Among these is a comprehensive sequence of snapshots taken during the 1986 refit, images that were an invaluable source of practical information for the Noakes project team. ‘What's important to me,' he says, ‘is that overall the boat looks consistent with the way it looked originally. A refit like this makes her safer. She'll last longer and sail faster. If you don't spend that money then you end up with something very sad just rotting away on the mooring. Eventually it ends up worthless.'

As a semi-regular member of the
Fidelis
crew, I kept an interested eye on the project. Like anything to do with timber boats, the refit was fascinating – but it also took almost twice as long as
expected. When the difficult and expensive job was finally done, work and sailing commitments conspired to prevent Nigel from immediately organising some proper recognition for the thousands of hours of loving craftsmanship the shipwrights had lavished on his triple-planked treasure.

A window of opportunity finally opened a few months later, and I was delighted to join
Fidelis
for its three-day ‘thank you' cruise. Our plan was simple enough: sail the yacht from Sydney to Newcastle after work on Thursday night; take the blokes from Noakes (and the ladies) out for a sail on the Friday; have a few celebratory sherbets together; sail home on the Saturday. Nothing to it, except that by the time the crew of Nigel, Rhod Cook and myself were ready to leave from the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron pontoon it was blowing 35 black knots from the north, with a southerly change of equal strength predicted for later that night. Nice!

We counted ourselves fortunate that a major part of the refit had involved replacing the tired old donk. ‘Fire up the new iron tops'l, lads, and let's get going!' Mr Yanmar's dependable Japanese engineering should do the rest, and it did.

Conditions were far from pleasant driving into the swell that had built up over the previous few days. When the southerly finally came – building to 25 knots true by 0200 at Norah Head – we hoisted the staysail on the inner forestay to make steering easier and provide a more sea-kindly motion. Things got interesting beyond Catherine Hill Bay as we played dodgems with more than 30 giant bulk carriers all swinging at anchor in the ‘parking lot' directly on our rhumbline to Nobby's Head. Avoiding these 100,000-ton obstructions in the dark helped keep us awake at the helm and it was a relief to finally make the flat water of Newcastle harbour by 0500 and follow the huge leads up to the ‘work' wharf at Noakes. A big hot mug of tea, a couple of sweet biscuits and straight into the rack for a precious few hours of sleep.

Even lying alongside,
Fidelis
is such a spectacular-looking yacht
that passers-by can't resist stopping to take a closer look. We were soon woken by dockside chatter and engaged in a steady stream of conversation with pre-breakfast joggers and bicyclists who'd paused in their exertions to ask questions about the boat and its history. These enquiries were so constant we began rattling off her vital statistics with practised fluency: built 1964 by Lidgards in New Zealand, Length Overall 61 feet, Length at the Water Line 47'4", Beam 10 feet, Draft 8'6", Displacement 12,200kg. Yes, she's won a Hobart, and yes, thank you, we agree she really is a very lovely yacht.

But
Fidelis
was there to do a job, not just be admired. The Noakes boss in Newcastle, Joe De Kok, is a sailor of vast transoceanic racing experience with a rather benevolent management style. When the predicted NE breeze filled to 15 knots he didn't need much prompting to declare a half-day off for everyone in the yard. The same happy team of craftsmen and women who'd spent months returning
Fidelis
to such magnificent trim now trooped aboard for their promised ‘thank you' afternoon under sail.

The weather gods could not have smiled more kindly upon us. We charged back and forth across Stockton Bight under full main and the #3 genoa with only the odd wave over the topsides. There was a procession of beaming faces as our guests each took a trick at the helm and felt the sure-footed power of a big displacement hull bending to her task as she sliced through the chop. It was wonderful to share the sheer thrill of pure sailing with the people who'd contributed so much to the yacht's rejuvenation.

A wheelbarrow full of ice and beers greeted us as we returned to the dock. Time to celebrate and capture the moment. Joe, Howard, Prue, Tegan, Chris, Ron, Brad and Brett came together on the foredeck for the
Fidelis
refit ‘class photo'. Every member of the team was rightly proud of the achievement, and has earned the special satisfaction that comes from seeing their skills made real in the elegant details of a truly classic yacht.

Next morning, after the longest and most leisurely onboard breakfast in Australian maritime history, it was time to tidy up and think about the trip back to Sydney. Lynn ‘Vasco' Anderson, navigator and
Fidelis
stalwart, had made the slow train trip up from Sydney to join us for the delivery. He arrived with a frown, clutching the latest weather maps that indicated a stiff southerly all the way home. Damn. But science doesn't always hit the bull's-eye. Instead of battling the predicted southerly we had one of the most glorious single days of sailing I can remember anywhere in the world. Brilliant sunshine, steady ENE of 18–20 knots, moderate seas, fresh prawns, chilled white wine. Absolutely, utterly dazzling. We reached along at eight knots wishing the day would never end. At one stage – abeam of Barrenjoey, with only 15 miles to go before Sydney – we seriously considered slowing the old girl down just to prolong the pleasure of being at sea.

‘Why don't we do this more often?' someone asked. Good question. As we grappled for the right response, the four of us, in our own ways, each tried to express what a joy and privilege it was to sail a boat that carried so much style and history. Perhaps emboldened by this warm flow of positive sentiment, Nigel began sketching out a dream
Fidelis
racing program for the remainder of the year. Maybe we could do the Hamilton Island regatta in North Queensland? Then the Lord Howe Island BBQ cruise, perhaps even the Sydney–Hobart to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of her famous line-honours win back in 1966? Now
there's
an idea.

That evening, as I dropped my sea-bag under the stairs at home, I did what every other addicted offshore sailor does at the prospect of fresh adventures. I dug out my pocket diary and began to pencil in the dates. Those proposed campaigns on
Fidelis
might still be a long way off confirmation, but I'd be buggered if anything else was going to get in their way.