The Boat
I usually tell people I built my boat. This
is not exactly true. About 20% of the work has been done a by
a chap on the west coast of Tasmania. Ho bought a set of plans
from John Pugh, stole a lot of plate steel from the gold mine
he was working at and started building. He bent the 1/8th plates
into the shape of the hull and tacked them together. That's as
far as he got. His dream was to finish his boat and go cruising.
His Missus wouldn't have it. So he had that heap of rusting steel
in his yard for a while, then sold it to his mate on the north
coast. I heard it was something about paying his debts in kind
or similar story. The new owner was a nuts and bolts man close
to retiring age. He did no work on the boat, only dreamed of
cruising. His missus wouldn't have it either. He had it siting
in his machinery yard for a while, then put it on the market.
Nobody wanted the thing. It was only a few rusting plates tacked
together. I was driving past it for a year before I seriously
considered buying it. I was going to finish it and go cruising.
Naturally, my missus wouldn't have it. So I got myself a divorce
and bought the hull.
Rig and such
The only mode of propulsion was to be provided by sail. No engine.
I am not a purist. A purist is someone to poor to buy en engine.
With me it is not a question of costs. I feel that smelly noisy
infernal combustion engines belong into barges and trucks, not
into sailing boats. From my personal experience I know that the
only time you really need them, they wont start, anyway.
People sailed all over the place without them. They still do,
millions of fishermen and traders in poor areas of the world.
No engine means no noise, no stink, no grease, plenty of room
aft, no through-hull fitting to leak, saved weight of motor,
gearbox, shaft, tanks, fuel, oil, spare parts. Instead you get
a true independence in decisions. So what happens when the wind
died and you are drifting with the tides? Another bloke starts
his engine. I start cursing. You learn to sail your boat, keep
her bottom clean. You learn to catch every puff of a breeze,
use the wind shifts to your advantage. You learn not to make
reckless decisions, not to sail into traps hoping your cast iron
genoa will save you if you get caught.
There is no ideal rig; otherwise everybody
would be using it. I wanted to do fast comfortable single-handed
passages. Frenchmen have shown us that you can single-hand anything,
and fast. Theyd single-hand the Cutty Sark,
if she werent too slow for them.
I like more comfort, and the simplest,
cheapest rig. Junk is fast downhill. We once sailed 1000 miles
in 7 days and 2 hours. For a 33' steel cruiser I do not ask more.
Mainland Australia
I was watching the mountains in silent wonder,
a childhood dream coming true. We had crossed our first ocean,
without using a compass, GPS or even an electric torch, 41 days
of tranquil solitude, undisturbed by idle chatter on a two-way
radio. A simple profound experience that justified itself. Precisely
the way I want it.
Every generation of boat bums grows up with their own heroes.
I grew up on tales of Chichester, Knox-Johnson, Tabarly and above
all Moitessier and Lewis. Those guys expanded the field of small
boat navigation to the regions undreamed of until then. After
their exploits there was virtually nothing left that has not
been done.
The following generation concentrated on
speed, a bunch of young French dragons who were using the latest
technology, sailing improbably fast multihulls, slicing days
off the fastest times, always pushing for more speed. 80 days
around the world. Fine. What next?
There comes time when our heroes disappear at sea, lose their
boats or die of old age. One morning you wake up and looking
over a quiet anchorage you realise its up to us to carry
on. We are the generation who is DOING IT. Right now.
I believe its time to put a bit of
magic back into sailing, for sailing is not about hardware. It
is about interaction between a man and the sea. More gadgets
you put between yourself and the ocean, colder and more diluted
your experience becomes. And there is nothing in this world but
firsthand raw experience. Reality, if there is such a thing,
is experience at first hand, and on the quality of that experience
depends what you get out of life.
Zanzibar
Zanzibar is an island 60 miles long. The
main town, also called Zanzibar, has about 100 000 people. What
makes it so attractive is hard to define. It is not one particular
thing that arrests you. Many small details combine to creep up
on you. Zanzibar has always been the distribution centre for
East Africa, trading hub, dealers place. The Stone Town
is well preserved. Many buildings were restored or are being
restored. Famous carved doors, old and new, convoluted narrow
lanes struggling to accommodate modern traffic, bazaars, spice
shops, coffee-vendors, dhow sailors, tourists. Everywhere distant
and recent past is mingling with the present, jumble of most
diverse influences. I cant think of a more depressing combination
than Islam and Communism together, a drab unimaginative negation
of life. Yet African zest survived it, absorbed it and sprang
back. A number of whites fell under the spell of Africa and stayed,
but ask them why and they cant put their finger on it.
How can you explain that intelligent and capable people are barely
scratching living in countries where they are not welcome, where
they lack basic comforts and securities, where general poverty
and illness reflects in their own conditions? There is no way
to explain it in a rational way without experiencing it yourself.
You wake up one morning on the anchorage
in Zanzibar at dawn, hearing drums over the waters. Ngoma. Africans
returning from fishing the reef, beating their drums and chanting.
And you know - this is it, the life itself, before communism,
before Islam, before Aristotelian logic, a primal chant of humans
alive. And you want to be a part of it, this to hell with
tomorrow attitude making our philistine prudence appear
sterile and lifeless. Watching them joyfully crowding into already
overfilled taxi, loudly arguing the price of a single mango or
shovelling greedily rice gruel from a cracked plate into their
mouth, you know that nothing is alien to them. They live now,
in total abandon, poor, dirty, futureless, free of neurosis and
agonising indecisiveness. Imperceptibly you are drawn into it,
however out of place you may feel at the start. If you are not
tough and cynical enough, you can quite easily lose your fragile
identity, without gaining another one. In such a place having
your own boat outweighs any inconveniences it may bring. Wherever
you are, you have a refuge to go to. Not just any hotel or some
other impersonal shelter. You carry your own home with you. After
a days bustle you return into the sanctuary of your own
hearth, your own home. It makes it easier to preserve your identity
in powerful or overwhelming circumstances. I found this nowhere
more important than in Africa. There are few things more pathetic
than a white man who lost his tribe.
MADAGASCAR
Waking up on a passage one morning I found
Kehaar racing an 80' three masted sambu under a full
sail, a half a mile from us. I sat there in my hatch, spellbound.
I felt I had finally arrived; I went through time backwards where
I had always wanted to be. I missed the time of square-riggers
and down-easters and often, when travelling, I felt I was born
too late. All I had left was chasing romantic images of the past.
Travelling two decades ago in Asia I got close several times
but never the less late I was. Questionable progress and tourist
development managed to alter the places. And not only Bali, Goa,
Phuket. In Eastern Indonesia I got very close, sailing on huge
two-masted pinisis of Buggis people from Surabaya
and Macassar to the Islands of spice and New Guinea. Yet even
then, I felt there was not much time left for them. Indonesia,
lying in the equatorial doldrums, is famous for its calms and
everyone was talking about engines. I was right. In the eighties
they indeed converted to unreliable truck engines, cutting down
their masts. I was late again.
Now, here, in Madagascar, watching fascinated how the sailing
master of a 120-ton butre tried to get the best out of the morning
breeze, I felt that was IT. For once I was not late. Its
hard to describe the excitement of the moment. These guys were
direct blood descendants of Arab traders from Oman, blokes who
were sailing in the same way since King Solomons days,
ignorant, raw, brave and wise, the last fleet of working sailing
ships anywhere. And nobody is talking about installing motors
into rickety leaking hulls. Theyd shake and fall apart.
And with $12 a month average wage there is no money for engines
and fuel in Madagascar. Selfish and cruel as it may be, this
absence of progress is one of the great attractions of Madagascar
right now. |