All Piss and Wind (19 page)

‘T
HE VAGUE AND VAST
suggestions of the briny world.' I'm not exactly sure what mystical old Walt meant by his phrase, but the poetic impulse of the ocean is always unmistakable. Indeed, it's easy to wax lyrical about seafaring because so many of literature's most romantic images and stories come from the sea. The persistent symbol of a tiny boat adrift on the vastness of the ocean; the recurring theme of great journeys into the unknown and joyous homecomings. That cycle – the slow rhythm of a long ocean passage and the return journey – there and
back – is ingrained in the history and literature we inherited from Britain. Today, for some of us, the lure of offshore sailing is partly a nostalgic echo of those more heroic times. Very few have the leisure to embark on a truly extended passage but, when the opportunity arises, that doesn't stop us trying to snatch a few extra days at sea to indulge our acquired taste for distance sailing. Sometimes we overdo things. I blame alcohol and intimations of mortality. You should never trust recidivist yachties to know when enough's enough …

 

We were all feeling pretty pleased with ourselves, a mob of old sailing mates who'd just won the Gaffer's Day race on Sir James Hardy's
Nerida
in a stiffish Sydney Harbour nor'easter. The crew that day was formed around such National Nautical Living Treasures as legendary offshore navigator Col Betts, master shipwright and gun international sailor Norm Hyett, and Max Whitnall (who'd been for'd hand for Jim Hardy when they won the World 505 championships in 1966). On the dawdle back to the yacht's mooring at Careening Cove we sampled some of the choice vintages in Jim's impressive onboard cellar. The wine and conversation flowed. I was the ‘baby' of the group – hard to credit, but there you go – and the only one of us still regularly racing offshore.

As we spun our yarns stretching back over more than four decades of seafaring, I couldn't help noticing a collective twinkle of nostalgic interest as I outlined the growing popularity of the ‘cruise in company' movement. These are informal groups of yacht owners who agree to sail to a distant destination and back, roughly at the same time. On the Australian east coast, the movement is unofficially led by Nigel Stoke, owner/skipper of the elegant 61-footer
Fidelis
. Nigel's quiet diplomacy and flair for dropping artfully casual suggestions has encouraged the return of many classic racing yachts to the joys and challenges of passage-making. The best-established regular ‘cruise in company' is to Lord Howe Island in
early November. The only fixed point of that rally is a BBQ at Ned's Beach on the windward side of the Island. It's a delightfully informal affair where everyone brings their own grog, the locals provide the food and the visiting yachties each chuck in a $50 donation for the local public school.

Back on
Nerida
, the wine had now loosened my tongue. ‘Listen, you blokes. None of us is getting any younger. We oughta do at least one more decent trip together.'

Wistful looks were exchanged. I turned towards Max Whitnall and blurted out perhaps the most presumptuous proposition of a lifetime. ‘Hey, Max. How about lending us your boat to do the Lord Howe BBQ cruise in November?'

Four pairs of eyes swivelled towards poor Max, who was leaning on the mast, innocently enjoying the late-afternoon view towards Neutral Bay.
Vittoria
– a classic Sparkman & Stephens 42-foot masthead sloop built in 1970 – is his pride and joy, and he keeps her in immaculate condition. Max is also a very generous man. ‘Lord Howe and back with you blokes sailing her? Can't see why not. But I wouldn't be coming with you. Don't really enjoy the offshore stuff – and anyway, I'm getting a new knee around then.'

The thought of poor Max enduring the agonies of orthopaedic surgery while we were enjoying his yacht 300 miles offshore made my suggestion seem all the more outrageous. But, in for a penny … ‘Well, whaddya reckon, guys? Jim? Norm? Col? You in?' Three broad grins and rapid nods. ‘OK then, let's bloody well do it!'

I thanked Max and assured him that I was happy to do the work involved in preparing the boat. All we needed now was a couple of younger blokes to take on some of the hard stuff north of the mast. As it transpired we had no problem finding the ‘youngsters'. Max's son Chris was keen to join us, along with one of his Etchell crew, Antony Elliott. The ship's company was therefore: Sir James (Skipper and Duty Sommelier), Col (Naviguesser and Honorary Cockpit Philosopher), Norm (First Officer and Boat Mender), Chris
(Owner's Representative), Ant (Designated Deck Ape), and me (Bosun and Galley Slave).

The ‘boys' – both in their early forties – could only spare the time off work for the passage over to the island, so for the return journey the ‘Old & Bold' quartet would have to manage by ourselves. No problems. Between us we had 72 Sydney–Hobarts, and this was just a
cruise
, wasn't it? The only real complication for me was that I'd already committed to racing to Lord Howe the week before on
Bright Morning Star
. To be absolutely sure of making the BBQ at Ned's Beach on the Tuesday of the following week,
Vittoria
would have to leave no later than lunchtime the previous Friday. I'd just have to pray that the weather didn't close in and the small twin-prop plane which services the island would make it out on Thursday and get me back to Sydney the same afternoon. Things might get a little tight.

Preparing
Vittoria
for the long passage turned out to involve rather more work and expense than we'd first imagined. Beautifully built by Cec Quilkey, the veteran IOR racer (nine Hobarts) was no longer an offshore yacht. Over the years Max had cleverly de-rigged her into a day boat that he could sail single-handed. Her big midship primary winches – a signature of S&S designs from that period – were long gone, along with the running backstays, inner forestay and second pair of cockpit winches.

After overcoming the initial shock of me blithely announcing that we'd have to convert his floating work of art back into a practical sea boat, Max's commitment to the project was unstinting. He had
Vittoria
hauled out and checked from stem to stern. We fitted a GPS navigation system, running backstays, an HF radio, new steering chains and quadrant (which had to be specially cast) and added or replaced scores of smaller items vital for the 1000-plus miles we were about to sail. I never dared ask about the cost, but knew it had quickly climbed into five figures. Hugh O'Neill generously lent us loads of safety gear from
Mark Twain
, including an eight-man life-raft. Norm then built a cunning system that allowed
us to secure the raft without putting a single new hole or screw through
Vittoria
's elegant S&S coach-house roof.

I had no doubt the boat would easily make the distance in the traditional reaching conditions of a Lord Howe passage in November, but what about really dirty weather? The yacht had a big #2 jib permanently on the forestay furler, but no storm sails. An array of old turning blocks on the boom hinted at a previous single-line slab reefing system, but nothing was rigged. The reefing sheaves and in-boom jammers had all seized from lack of use and were quickly repaired. Showing our age, we voted to rig two traditional reefing lines to the boom with timber hitches and a simple tack line at the mast. That looked much more like a set-up we'd all know how to handle when we needed to shorten sail in 35 knots at 0200.

But the problem up at the front of the boat was not so easily solved. Reducing the fore-triangle by simply rolling up some of the jib would only be effective up to 20 knots. Standing on the foredeck and gazing up at the two-spreader rig I spotted a small, unused tang just below the second crosstree. The spinnaker topping lift conveniently exited through a sturdy sheave box just a few inches further down the mast. Maybe that might be pressed into service as a halyard, and we could convert
Vittoria
into a cutter?

Once again, the solution came from cadging gear off another yacht I'd sailed many times. A quick test hoist confirmed my guess that an old hanked staysail from
Nerida
went almost all the way from a dead-eye on the centreline of
Vittoria
's foredeck up to the first crosstree. That tough old sail would make a perfect storm jib, except there was nothing to hang it from. Headsails with hanks are ideal for short-handed sailing in heavy weather, but they depend on having a strong stay along which they can be raised and lowered. Yet again, Max came to the rescue, agreeing to commission a local rigger who installed a length of 1× 19 stainless as our temporary inner forestay. For backup, we took a virtually unused heavy #3 jib that had languished in Max's garage for years. (We soon discovered
why this sail had been thrown off the boat: four big vertical battens sewn into the leech made it impossible to flake, brick or bag the jib efficiently – but the cloth was so heavy it would be close to bullet-proof at sea.)

A month before our scheduled departure on the Lord Howe cruise the whole crew assembled for an orientation sail. We had a terrific day in 10–15 knots of early summer breeze, and sorted out a host of minor details. The newcomers soon had their first taste of Bettsie's dry-as-dust humour. Looking up from his waypoint calculations on the new GPS he declared ‘423 miles to the island. Should be there in 60 hours at this rate'. Then, a hearty chorus of the longstanding ‘Old & Bold' rallying cry: ‘Never drink at sea!' – immediately followed by Col handing up another round of frosty Victor Bravos from the fridge.

The boys were beginning to get a feel for the self-mocking humour of seasoned offshore sailors. We worked our way out to four miles off Coogee, then brought the yacht back to North Head, tight reaching under the big Multi-Purpose Spinnaker. It was a glorious sail, with
Vittoria
smoothly cranking herself up to seven knots and holding that secure, steady track that only a genuine displacement yacht can deliver. The old girl was loving being offshore again. Jim, Norm, Col and I couldn't contain our grins. This had all the makings of a great trip. Back at the dock I handed out the freshly-minted crew T-shirts with their special logo of a Sausage Rampant over a glass of red wine. Four hundred and twenty nautical miles across the Tasman is a long way to go for a snag, but you never really need a legitimate reason to go cruising.

Luckily, the official Gosford–Lord Howe race was uneventful.
Bright Morning Star
came second in its division. The prevailing windward conditions were uncomfortable and hard work, but that had suited us in a big, powerful masthead sloop. During the flight home I couldn't resist taking a few wary glances out the Dash 8 window. There was building swell in the Tasman and a strong
nor'easter kicking up whitecaps all over the ocean. Certainly not what the doctor might have ordered for the first leg of our BBQ cruise, due to begin the following day. Surely I wasn't in for another 500 miles of dead muzzler? It looked awfully like it. Oh well, it's only a cruise.

The relaxed nature of the trip was underlined by our rather generous approach to provisioning. Hardy had undertaken to bring the rehydration supplies (presumably because he can get the stuff wholesale). On Friday morning the Knight Bachelor proceeded to load so much liquid refreshment on board that he added at least six inches to our waterline length. We may well drown out there, but we were never going to die of thirst. Cases of booze we couldn't store in lockers ended up on the floor of the head.

Norm Hyett then weighed us down even further by arriving at the boat with six-dozen freshly shucked Manning River oysters. You can't possibly take such delicate culinary delights to sea, so there was nothing else for it but to settle down to the feast right there. ‘Hang on a moment,' said Hardy, his voice coloured by a faint tinge of epicurean outrage. ‘We can't possibly eat these without a good dry white. It'd be an insult to the oysters. Garçon, fetch me a bucket of ice!' Three bottles of Clare Valley Riesling and a mountain of oysters later, we were finally ready to give the manner and timing of our departure serious consideration. By then the mid-NSW coast was being hammered by the severe low-pressure system I'd seen from the air the previous afternoon. We poked
Vittoria
's nose out the Heads for a quick sniff of conditions but prudently decided to find a sheltered mooring and spend the night aboard. Charles MacLurcan, Commodore of the Sydney Amateur Sailing Club, spotted us lounging in the cockpit and kindly invited the whole crew ashore to join the Twilight Race crowd for dinner at the SASC. In the tradition of this most hospitable club, he even dispatched the club tender to ferry us back and forth from our mooring.

We slipped out of Sydney Harbour at 0530 the following morning but my heart sank just a little as I realised the breeze was a light nor'easter. ‘Here we go again,' I thought. ‘Another bloody dead muzzler!' The race the week before had been sailed entirely to windward. Now it looked like this trip would also be on the nose all the way. And that's how it turned out. When it blew hard it was from the NE. When it went light it was from the NE. Even when there was no wind at all it was still from the *!&#@$! north-east. The cumulative effect was that we were slowly pushed south of the rhumbline – the most direct path to the island – and would eventually have to sail almost 100 miles more than the shortest distance.

Never mind, it's not a race. Plenty of time to initiate our two offshore novices into the rituals and unique pleasures of passage-making. To witness their wide-eyed joy at our first sighting of a whale or sailing among hundreds of skylarking dolphins refreshed our own tastes for the natural world. Competition between watches for the most miles covered (with its associated provocations) was soon intense, and the newcomers were compulsorily bored to sobs by our endless war stories from the America's Cup, Admiral's Cup and Clipper Cup. But the one cup they couldn't quite understand was our loyalty to
Vittoria
's trusty Piss-a-Phone.