All Piss and Wind (2 page)

N
OBODY IS BORN
with a love of sailing and the sea. It can't be genetic because – Ian Thorpe excepted – we're land animals. Some of our finest sailors, particularly in the offshore racing community, came to the sport quite late in life, then quickly blossomed. Others, such as Iain Murray, were blessed from childhood with an astonishing natural aptitude for making wind-driven boats go fast. But there's little doubt that the rest of us – the vast anonymous majority who've derived a lifetime of enjoyment from sailing – were largely shaped by our earliest experiences of boats and water. It's been my great good fortune that all of my early contacts were happy ones.

The first real toy I can remember owning was a little sailing boat. I didn't quite understand what it was, but just loved its shape. Later, my uncle bought me a proper model yacht with a lacquered hull and cotton sails. It was almost too good to play with in the bath, but if you blew really hard against the mast it would wallow away on a half-hearted reach until it fetched up against the taps. ‘Do it again, Mum! Do it again!' There was something endlessly entrancing about watching wind converted into forward motion. That boat was my favourite possession. I can feel it in my hands still.

Being on the water has always been magic for me. In the early 1950s we had the first of many seaside family holidays. The rented house at Sussex Inlet came with its own little jetty and a gorgeous 18-foot clinker fishing skiff with tiller steering and a Chapman single-pot petrol engine. No electrics, just a magneto to deliver the spark. The special mix of those old boating smells rushes back to me now – saltwater, marine paint, prop-shaft grease, prawn bait, spilt petrol, fish heads – all gently blended into one distinctive aroma by the morning sun. Starting the donk was a wonderful ritual of wrapping an old leather strop around the flywheel, rocking it gently back and forth to build up enough compression and then giving an almighty upwards tug. Whup … whup … and then (with a bit of luck)
whup! whup! whup! whup!
and away we'd go, slicing across the bay to the best fishing spots. Dad used to dispatch any flathead or bream we caught with a forehand whack from the rusty old plug wrench that lived under a thwart. Sometimes I'd be allowed to steer. Could a four-year-old Australian boy have more fun than this?

Yes, he could. My father had a workmate who owned one of the earliest Bluebird 24-footers on Sydney Harbour. This bloke's idea of a great weekend was to go down to his boat on Friday evening with a big glass jar of water, tin of walnuts and a paper bag full of dried fruit. He'd just rig up, sail out the Heads and not come back until Sunday night. No engine, no radio, no navigation lights – just pure, solitary sailing. Somehow, my dad talked him into taking us out for a day. For me, the feeling as we jogged a few miles east into the Tasman under sail was wonderful in the most literal sense of that word: I was full of wonder at the sea moving under us, the silence, the brilliant sunshine and the startlingly vivid blue of deep water. I was hooked.

A year or so later my ever-indulgent aunt arranged a ride for me with friends who owned a big, clipper-bowed old sloop moored at Middle Harbour, called (I think)
Tui Karoi
. She was massively
strong and had been cruised out to Sydney from Singapore in the early 1920s. This was the first real yacht I'd sailed on, and I was soon scrambling all over her like a disobedient monkey and nursing every cabin boy's secret dream that the boat was actually
mine
. There's a photo of me standing on the coach house in bare feet and boxer shorts, proudly hanging on to the galvanised wire-rope rigging and pretending to be regular crew.

By the age of 12 every Saturday was being spent racing as for'd hand on an ancient little VJ dinghy at the Concord & Ryde Sailing Club on the Parramatta River. (Our tiny weatherboard clubhouse was later demolished to make way for the new Ryde Bridge.) The skipper and proud owner of that battered Vaucluse Junior was also my best classmate, Les Donovan. We were both total sailing tragics. Instead of concentrating on our French or Chemistry lessons we'd be secretly drawing boats. Hours were spent devising new rigging systems for the spinnaker – maybe we could drill a hole through the mast to lead the kicker to a cam cleat? Detailed variations on these schemes were passed surreptitiously from desk to desk. Our other staple was making sketches of fantasy yachts – usually sleek, low-freeboard yawls whose lines owed a lot to
Solo
, the Alan Payne 50-footer that was the ‘hot' ocean racer of her day. And if we weren't drawing boats, we were reading
Seacraft
magazine propped up behind our textbooks, or plotting how to qualify for the next State Championships.

On Sundays we'd often crew for Les's father, who kept a delightful 30-foot double-ender called
Primavera
moored at Gladesville. It was a traditional little timber yacht – today it would be much prized as a ‘classic' – with cotton sails, manila ropes and a laid teak deck. If the breeze got up we'd fool around using the fall of the main halyard bent to the bosun's chair to rig a makeshift trapeze. Those relaxed afternoons on Sydney Harbour also offered us an occasional first-hand glimpse of the boats and sailors who we worshipped from afar through the pages of
Seacraft
. It was a great
day if we spotted
Janzoon II
,
Siandra
or
Southerly
. The centreboard superstar Richard Coxon might be out for a training sail on his new Flying Dutchman. We couldn't believe our good fortune to come upon
Anne
, the top-secret new ‘C Class' catamaran, on her first outing – and rushed home to draw her unusual lines for our scrap-books.

The dominant yachting story of my high-school years was Australia's first challenge for the America's Cup. Frank Packer's
Gretel
was built at the big Halvorsen boatyard at Kissing Point, an easy Speedwell cycle ride from home. With loyal Les as my accomplice, I'd sneak under a hole in the fence and then let both of us in through an unlocked side door. Inside, alongside
Gretel
, the legendary
Vim
stood on the slips in all her breathtaking Olin Stephens elegance. The lovely smell of fresh wood shavings hung in the still, dark air of the massive shed. To us this was all incredibly exciting – to reach out and touch the most famous 12-metre in history, and the new Australian boat that would soon be demolishing the Yanks!

Months later – forbidden by my parents (quite rightly) from staying up to listen to the America's Cup race reports on radio – I went to bed but secretly tuned in on my crystal set under the blankets, using the bedspring as an aerial. When
Gretel
won the second race of that 1962 series the thrill was intoxicating. I couldn't wait to get to school and talk the whole race through again with Les, tack by tack. (Within a few years I'd be working for Frank Packer at the
Daily Telegraph
and listening to his disgruntled staff complain that money they thought should have been spent buying new typewriters was instead ‘wasted' on sails. Les went on to become an eminent optometrist and champion Northbridge Senior sailor.)

At 17, as a first-year university student, I used to earn a few extra pounds during the term breaks working in my mother's old-fashioned ‘health foods' shop at Drummoyne. Making fruit-cake
mix in a laundry tub out the back was my specialty. Invariably, I'd be up to my elbows in sultanas, raisins, mixed nuts, cherries and candied orange peel when Mum would have to yell out ‘Shop!' because another customer had wandered in. One morning I was called to the front to serve a handsome, suntanned woman in what was plainly a sailing shirt. Measuring out her eight ounces of best currants, I noticed the logo on the shirt featured an embroidered Australian flag below a single word: GRETEL.

‘Is that a
real
shirt from the 12-metre?' I blurted out.

‘Oh yes,' said the lady with a smile. ‘My husband was on the foredeck.'

Mum intervened. ‘This is Mrs York, David. She lives down by the water. I think they've got a boat of some kind.'

My mind raced. Her husband must be
Mick
York, the legendary offshore yachtsman who'd sailed ‘No. 1' for Jock Sturrock in the 1962 America's Cup challenge. I was standing a yard away from the wife of a hero!

Now, nobody has ever accused me of not grabbing an opportunity when it presents itself. ‘Doesn't need any crew, does he, Mrs York?'

Before long, phone numbers had been exchanged, one thing led to another, and Mick rang to invite me for a sail that weekend.

My excitement was so intense I just couldn't wait to have a look at the boat. Next day I spent my lunchtime crawling around the Drummoyne foreshore until I found the yacht hauled up on Mick's private slipway. It was a steel Tasman Seabird called
Tui Manu
(‘Storm Bird'). I drank in her wholesome lines and sturdy rig. It was difficult to believe that I now had a faint chance of securing a berth on 37 feet of Alan Payne design genius – and with one of the best sailors in Australia as my skipper.

That Saturday in 1964 we raced with the Cruising Yacht Club offshore fleet from the Harbour to a mark in Botany Bay and return. It blew from the south-west and we had a thrilling spinnaker
ride past the southern beaches, then gybed for home around South Head. The only other thing I can still remember about that day was the way it ended. ‘Well, mate. Want to sail with us again next week?'

Did I ever! And that's when my lifelong love affair with sailing and the sea
really
began …

T
HE PLAIN TRUTH
of it is that I'm not a particularly good sailor. Keen, for sure, but of barely average talent. No row of gleaming trophies lines the family mantelpiece. When crews are being assembled for a new racing campaign my name is never at the top of the list, yet somehow I always manage to get a ride. Maybe mundane dependability is my strong suit: I always turn up, no matter what the weather, and after more than 40 years of sailing there are few jobs on a boat that defeat me entirely. I can fill most roles – from helmsman to cook – but with unspectacular competence. None dare call it flair. A kind of genteel underachievement that could be confused with plain mediocrity seems to be my distinguishing characteristic. But still I continue to derive boundless, undiminished enjoyment from yachts and yachting. For me, it's difficult to imagine life without the glorious expectation of that next sail. And the most wonderful prospect of all is the anticipation of an ocean passage – the heart-lifting knowledge that in just a few days' time we'll be going to sea again. Offshore.
Real
sailing.

Offshore yachting is not for everyone. In fact, the vast majority of sailors are flat-water people. Even when they have boats quite
capable of making ocean passages they rarely poke their bow into open waters for a taste of life on the ocean wave. The sheer weight of the sea's ancient reputation for danger and discomfort defeats them. It's that same aura of grim adversity that fascinates people with no real knowledge of seafaring. Their ignorance, quite understandably, provokes bizarre questions, of which ‘Where do you stop at night?' is my long-standing favourite. ‘Well, we usually just tie up to a nearby island and book a room at the local hotel,' is the standard reply. This is usually greeted by serious, understanding nods all round. Next comes ‘How do you top up the petrol …?'

To be fair, ocean racing is a minority sport and the processes and routines required to spend days – sometimes weeks – sailing a yacht offshore are not immediately obvious. Nor, at first blush, does the experience itself seem particularly attractive when described to outsiders. Set down in words, the task of keeping a yacht pointed more or less in the right direction and driving it as hard as possible appears more like punishment than pleasure. It's not quite a ‘joy-through-pain' pastime, but damn close.

Sleep is the main problem, or, more accurately, the lack thereof. Five hundred years of naval history have taught us that the only reliable way to keep a ship functioning safely is to divide its crew into watches and make them alternate their work and rest periods in much shorter bursts than the standard diurnal rhythms of life on dry land. The maximum efficient watch duration – particularly at night – is four hours. Performance levels of sailors asked to stand duty for longer periods drop rapidly, often with serious consequences. The downside of the watch system is that it is perniciously unnatural. It's no fun being shaken out of your bunk at the precise moment when you've finally managed to get comfortable, warm, dry, and have dropped into the delicious abyss of deep sleep. Richard Dana, serving on a square-rigger in the early nineteenth century, described this unique misery with wonderful first-hand sympathy:

It would be tolerable if the new watch could then just crawl out of the rack, rub the sleep from their eyes, grab a biscuit and head up the companionway to relieve their shipmates. However, in any but the most benign conditions (and always at night), coming on watch entails getting appropriately dressed for whatever the next three or four hours on deck might bring. This can be a long, difficult and even dangerous procedure, particularly if the seas are high or the boat is bashing to windward on a severe angle of heel (i.e. mostly).

The basic routine of ‘kitting up' runs roughly along these lines: first, curse whoever has come below to wake the off-watch; swing your legs out of the bunk while grabbing a handrail as you attempt to stand up; discover that the cabin sole on your side of the boat is two inches under water so your last pair of dry socks are now instantly soaked; pull on another layer of thermals if you can find them; start looking for your wet-weather gear (which is rarely where you last left it); wedge your weary body against a bulkhead and start wriggling into the pants; clip in the shoulder straps and then realise you've got them crossed over and will have to begin the whole process all over again; struggle into your heavy waterproof jacket, checking that nobody has nicked the torch, knife, position-indicating radio beacon or half-eaten chocolate bar you'd been saving; begin a grid-pattern search of the cabin for your sea boots, which by now have acquired an internal lining of foul-smelling gunk peculiar to
ocean racing; slip into your PFD (Personal Flotation Device – a combined inflatable lifejacket and harness), buckle up and shout ‘Who the f—k swiped my beanie?' while stealing the closest piece of warm headgear to cram onto your noggin; dig some dry gloves out from the bottom of a locker and set off up the companionway.

That's the basic routine. Now, imagine five people going through that same pantomime simultaneously, in a dark unventilated space not much larger than a garden shed, six times every day. Meanwhile, the other five people are already crowding into the cabin, keen to strip off their gear and crawl into your bunk before it loses its warmth. In the galley (which is rarely a separate area), someone is trying to cook and serve a hot meal because this is usually the only opportunity to feed the whole crew at one sitting. Bowls of steaming stew are being passed around and eaten wherever people can find a relatively stable spot to perch. ‘Bung the kettle on, mate, the lads could do with a cuppa.'

Welcome to a change of watch. And it's one of the immutable laws of ocean racing that the moment you've finally established yourself on deck and attached your safety tether to the jackstay and settled in for the next few hours, you have that burning, urgent, uncontrollable impulse to empty your bladder. But nature's little release valve now lies buried beneath five layers of clothing. It's just too bloody hard. Ocean racers soon learn to hold their water for quite remarkable periods. All piss and wind indeed.

It would, however, be unfair to give the impression that ocean racing is just a short notch up from finding yourself on the wrong side of the Spanish Inquisition. The discomforts are many, but so are the pleasures. Sometimes we enjoy ourselves for whole minutes on end. Much of that fun comes from the company of like-minded people joined in common cause – what Joseph Conrad in
Heart of Darkness
called ‘the bond of the sea'. But beyond those comforts there's the genuine challenge of applying our collective skills, strength, knowledge and experience to the complex task of sailing a
highly complicated piece of machinery for hundreds of nonstop miles as swiftly as possible. In other words, the
sport
of ocean racing.

To my mind, no other recreational endeavour combines so many diverse demands – physical, mental, even emotional. Offshore racing has it all. One minute you're at the absolute limit of your strength heaving a wet headsail along the foredeck, the next you might be squeezed into the navigation station trying to untangle the knotty tactical problems posed by a sudden windshift or change in current. There's a dodgy battery connection to investigate somewhere beneath the cabin sole, a spinnaker still to pack and the mob up top could all do with a cool drink from the icebox. Meanwhile, the port side primary winch has jammed and needs an immediate repair. ‘Anybody remember where we put those bloody spare pall springs?' And all the time there's the constant, unrelenting task of changing, reefing and un-reefing sails to suit variations in wind strength. ‘Old Huey', the weather god, rarely sends us a truly constant breeze, so serious racing boats can never adopt a set-and-forget policy. Everyone strives to deliver precise, watchful sail trim designed to yield maximum boat-speed. Sailing a boat ‘uphill' – to windward – is the real hard yakka of yachting. It isn't called a ‘work' for nothing, and windward legs can often predominate.

Yet there are thousands of sailors, myself included, who love all this with such a passion that they keep going back to sea even after the most miserable races. For years now I've returned home from every Sydney–Hobart, thrown my kitbag under the stairs and declared, ‘Well, that's it for me. No more Hobarts. That was the last.' My precious, infinitely patient and understanding wife just smiles. She knows I already can't wait until next Boxing Day.

Do we keep signing on because we enjoy the racing, or through some powerful attachment to the sea itself? In my case it's predominantly the latter: the sheer thrill of sailing and the aesthetic riches of seafaring offer me far more treasured memories than any
passing triumph over old rivals. A pleasant hour spent reaching towards the sunset at nine knots under a shy spinnaker with dolphins frolicking at the bow will wash away months of land-bound stress and aggravation. There's a profound contentment that flows from completing a passage by sailing a boat safely, and to its full potential. Ocean racing is a team sport, but the rewards can be intensely personal. The miles slip away, the finish draws nearer, you can taste that first bitterly cold ale at the club bar. Why would you want to be anywhere else?