A muffled grunt suggested the bottom of my foot had found his face.
Ah yes, it was “Maintenance” Murphy comatose with seasickness again and lying on the cabin sole under a dozen or so sails.
Maintenance loved his boating, but it’s fair to say that boating didn’t love him all that much. In fact he was crap at it.
But when I look back over a few decades spent around boats, he is one of the memorable characters I’ve had the fortune – both good and bad - to have shared boats with over the years.
His nickname “maintenance” came from the fact that he was the anointed one in keeping our 46ft ocean racer in top notch shape. His tendency to cut corners to “save the owner money” had a nasty habit of biting us on the arse and frequently precipitated a major repair bill. Saving money on halyards that cut through the masthead sheaves – that sort of thing.
His tendency to crash with chronic seasickness the instant we lost sight of land was another habit – amusing because we just couldn’t resist sitting there murmuring in his ear that we were tucking into a feed of nice greasy pork chops, bacon and seven day old pavlova. It never seemed to make him feel any better.
Whenever we did an ocean race, within hours maintenance would be crashed on the cabin sole where, over the succeeding hours he’d be covered by sales and sail bags and anything else that got biffed down the companionway hatch. That included seawater – and it wasn’t unusual on a rough race to see maintenance partially submerged in bilge water and puke.
I never could work out why he didn’t just stick to harbour and coastal racing.
The then was the character – who shall remain nameless – with two wives. He wasn’t actually married to both, but they all lived together and he called them Root One and Root Two. They would meet him at the end of a race and off they’d go, God knows to do what.
He was an absolute charmer – one of those who thought putting on wet weather gear was “poofterish” and reefing the mainsail was for sissies. Ah well, I guess it takes all kinds and I do believe those kinds of attitudes catch up with you in the end.
At the other end of the scale is a character I can happily name. Duncan Stuart – aka Cookie - who for years skippered “The Big Yellow Trimaran” Krisis. He was a hugely fun character who liked to have a “nervous rum” before a race, then another after the start! He ran Fisher & Paykel’s legendary staff restaurant and when doing the longer races like the Coastal Classic trays of fresh pies, still warm from the oven, would come aboard. Tucking into one of them as you slid up past Bream Bay in the cool night air was a sublime experience.
That boat’s done a million miles but is now in its dotage, reconfigured as a cruiser (with that god awful ear shattering inboard rotary engine replaced by an outboard and the impossible to get to toilet relocated) and Duncan is still enjoying sailing her. Like I say, attitudes catch up you and Duncan seems to be thoroughly enjoying his retirement – he certainly was the last time I saw him outside the Loaded Hog with a cool beer in his hand on a scorching hot day.
Gamefishos would have to be among the hardest case – I think it’s something to do with the hours and hours of utter boredom followed by a few minutes of searing adrenaline rush.
Many seem to develop a passion for shouting – and I don’t mean the type of shouting you get at the pub either. One mate of mine starts screaming profanities the instant we get a strike and doesn’t stop until it’s over. He doesn’t even know he does it. I once videoed his performance and replayed it to him.
“Who’s that swearing,?” he asked, refusing to believe it was him … and still does. The first time he hooked up this season he was so wound up his foo-foo valve failed and he couldn’t speak at all for a day or so. He was still hoarse when I met him a week later for a beer.
They can be dangerous buggers too – we were trolling in a 60 footer off the top of North Cape when one of the rods went off – and kept going as we had an obvious hook-up.
The boat owner and skipper had succumbed to the excess rums the night before and was having a nana nap in the forward cabin. Tossing up whether or not to wake him I went forward and advised quietly that we were hooked up.
There was a great explosion from the bed – the blankets tossed aside and before I could get out of his way he’d cleared the way to the cockpit and was shouting orders. Hardly two seconds had passed. I picked myself up from the companionway floor and wondered – that’s gotta be bad for a man’s heart, doesn’t it.
Characters one and all – where would we be without them?
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
Great Stenches I have Known
This column is an opportunity every couple of months to go back and troll through the many vivid, great and spectacular memories I have from my years of boating.
I’m not sure why this month’s overwhelming memory has turned out to be smell.
Or, to be more accurate, stench. Boats seem to be machines that are capable of manufacturing and concentrating smells into some of the most incredible and awful things you have ever encountered.
So I thought I’d share the line up of Shane Kelly’s all-time greatest boating stenches.
Possibly the Worst Stench Ever and Certainly the Most Embarrassing
This stench came about when we borrowed a brand new Bayliner Trophy from the then-importer and took it down to the Motuihe Channel for a fish. Back at the dry stack much later we carefully cleaned the boat. Every square inch ... except that some bright spark forgot about a large bonito bait which had been secreted in one of Trophy’s many lockers. There are far too many lockers on those things.
Give it a couple of weeks brewing in the dry, very warm drystack and the importer turns up with a prospective client to show the boat. The crane lifts the boat down and the thing is hummin’. There were so many flies in that locker the boat floated 3 inches above the normal water line. We’re talking the maggot capital of the world. The result was no Trophy sale and one very pissed off importer who never again loaned us a boat. You can’t blame him really, can you?
Longest Stench Ever
The boys had been out fishing off Tiri and on returning to our launch site at Browns Bay, I injured my knee landing awkwardly as I jumped over the side. The result was me, bedridden with a sprained knee. The boys helped me get the boat home and it then sat in the front yard, with a dozen or so jack mackerel that had been left on deck slowly turning to pure fish oil and leaking down into the bilge. Down there was a little bit of salt water and the bungs firmly left in place. Let fermentation commence.
It took about three weeks before I came right and by that time the maggots in that boat were the size of anacondas. Laying traps for any birds that strayed too close and dragging them down into the bilge – they even managed to wrassel couple of neighbours’ cats down there. The clean up was not pretty.
The Swamp Gas Stench
Way back in the dark ages, I sailed on a 46ft ocean racer – some of the crews’ mad exploits have featured in this column before.
The boat used to exude a stench we called “the swamp gas.” Strangely enough this did not come from the head (although there were times when that appliance was sorely tested) but came from the keel. At least, we think it did.
You could see the swamp gas bubbling from the keel top through any bilge water that had accumulated and it smelt like nothing I’d ever experienced. We never did work out where it came from – possibly a void in the keel that some boatbuilder had crawled into for a kip during construction and they’d sealed him in there by mistake. You’d think they’d have noticed him missing but, given the state of many boatyards, perhaps not.
The Environmentally Friendly Stench
I do a lot of drift fishing. Therefore, I use the drogue a lot to slow the drift. The drogue I have is slightly different to many – it’s made from green nylon wind break/sunscreen mesh and has no hole in the back end. It works well, but has a bad habit of sieving the plankton from the water.
I discovered this to my retching cost after I slung it in the locker one day after fishing and left it there for a month or so – not knowing that it contained a football-sized wad of plankton. Now if you want to create really, really big stink, plankton is the finest way to get there. Trust me.
The Most Dangerous Stench
This came about many moons ago, when I unplugged my brother’s 16 cubic foot bait freezer from the wall to use the plug for something else. Just for a short while you understand, but I’m sure you can see where this is heading. I remembered its unplugged state a good long time later and was forced to engineer a blown fuse to that plug socket that would conveniently explain why his pristine bait supply was now slush. Stinking, filthy slush. He always was a violent bugger and I needed to divert attention. Fast. The fuse did the trick although they are surprisingly tricky to blow on purpose.
He doesn’t know to this day. Unless he reads this, of course, then I’ll still be toast, 30 years later.
I’m not sure why this month’s overwhelming memory has turned out to be smell.
Or, to be more accurate, stench. Boats seem to be machines that are capable of manufacturing and concentrating smells into some of the most incredible and awful things you have ever encountered.
So I thought I’d share the line up of Shane Kelly’s all-time greatest boating stenches.
Possibly the Worst Stench Ever and Certainly the Most Embarrassing
This stench came about when we borrowed a brand new Bayliner Trophy from the then-importer and took it down to the Motuihe Channel for a fish. Back at the dry stack much later we carefully cleaned the boat. Every square inch ... except that some bright spark forgot about a large bonito bait which had been secreted in one of Trophy’s many lockers. There are far too many lockers on those things.
Give it a couple of weeks brewing in the dry, very warm drystack and the importer turns up with a prospective client to show the boat. The crane lifts the boat down and the thing is hummin’. There were so many flies in that locker the boat floated 3 inches above the normal water line. We’re talking the maggot capital of the world. The result was no Trophy sale and one very pissed off importer who never again loaned us a boat. You can’t blame him really, can you?
Longest Stench Ever
The boys had been out fishing off Tiri and on returning to our launch site at Browns Bay, I injured my knee landing awkwardly as I jumped over the side. The result was me, bedridden with a sprained knee. The boys helped me get the boat home and it then sat in the front yard, with a dozen or so jack mackerel that had been left on deck slowly turning to pure fish oil and leaking down into the bilge. Down there was a little bit of salt water and the bungs firmly left in place. Let fermentation commence.
It took about three weeks before I came right and by that time the maggots in that boat were the size of anacondas. Laying traps for any birds that strayed too close and dragging them down into the bilge – they even managed to wrassel couple of neighbours’ cats down there. The clean up was not pretty.
The Swamp Gas Stench
Way back in the dark ages, I sailed on a 46ft ocean racer – some of the crews’ mad exploits have featured in this column before.
The boat used to exude a stench we called “the swamp gas.” Strangely enough this did not come from the head (although there were times when that appliance was sorely tested) but came from the keel. At least, we think it did.
You could see the swamp gas bubbling from the keel top through any bilge water that had accumulated and it smelt like nothing I’d ever experienced. We never did work out where it came from – possibly a void in the keel that some boatbuilder had crawled into for a kip during construction and they’d sealed him in there by mistake. You’d think they’d have noticed him missing but, given the state of many boatyards, perhaps not.
The Environmentally Friendly Stench
I do a lot of drift fishing. Therefore, I use the drogue a lot to slow the drift. The drogue I have is slightly different to many – it’s made from green nylon wind break/sunscreen mesh and has no hole in the back end. It works well, but has a bad habit of sieving the plankton from the water.
I discovered this to my retching cost after I slung it in the locker one day after fishing and left it there for a month or so – not knowing that it contained a football-sized wad of plankton. Now if you want to create really, really big stink, plankton is the finest way to get there. Trust me.
The Most Dangerous Stench
This came about many moons ago, when I unplugged my brother’s 16 cubic foot bait freezer from the wall to use the plug for something else. Just for a short while you understand, but I’m sure you can see where this is heading. I remembered its unplugged state a good long time later and was forced to engineer a blown fuse to that plug socket that would conveniently explain why his pristine bait supply was now slush. Stinking, filthy slush. He always was a violent bugger and I needed to divert attention. Fast. The fuse did the trick although they are surprisingly tricky to blow on purpose.
He doesn’t know to this day. Unless he reads this, of course, then I’ll still be toast, 30 years later.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
THE OCCASIONAL MANIAC
Ahhh Mr Kelly, come aboard.
I stepped onto the water taxi being provided to take media and “celebrities” across the harbour to the rock concert held on a barge off the Devonport foreshore in Auckland. I fit into the former category of media, working as I did in those days as a journalist for a boating magazine.
The driver was a young blond dude. As soon as we were aboard, we were off, throttle mashed hard down to the stops and the 140hp Yammie howling. The driver, readers, was not a person who believed in moderation as far as throttles were concerned. I’ve since learned that he feels the same way about red wine – but that’s a story for another day.
We got to the rock concert, which had drawn a large crowd. The musos were playing on a barge moored some distance off the seawall. There were lots of girls in flimsy white dresses but the thing that grabbed my attention most – no, really it was - was the likelihood of the musos being electrocuted.
Standing on a steel barge, moored in salt water, with power generators and humming wires everywhere as well as stacks of speakers – the poor buggers looked nervous as hell. No wonder that concert has never been repeated – these days the OSH Nazis would line everyone up against the wall and shoot them.
Then it was time to return, and Mr Throttle Guy gave us an unforgettable demonstration of what happens when you apply his philosophy to wind against the tide conditions. We hit the first of the pressure waves, leaped out of the water and landed with a huge crash. Repeat 77 times.
There were several dozen beer stashed up by the bow. It was the real type, in big quart bottles and wooden crates. They bounced their way aft, smashing and exploding and sending foaming brown liquid and shards of glass down the boat towards our jandals-clad feet. Try keeping your feet in one place when the floor is jumping up and down about 6ft.
The passengers hung on for grim death, the women were screaming and the children crying, as the bloody maniac crashed his way up past the wharves and finally into the calmer weather. And that’s how I met the editor of this magazine. I forgave him, but the bugger still owes me several lunches by way of compensation.
You come across these maniacs from time to time in boating, don’t you? The Mr Throttle Guys who have spines of steel and legs made from cast off Super Truck shock absorbers.
The most entertaining I ever traveled with was at a fishing contest and there was a strange “twist” to the occasion.
I was fishing the Ramco Cup in the Bay of Islands and had been invited to join a couple of hard cases for the day. The weather had been ugly for a couple of days and as we left the Waitangi River there were huge swells rolling into the bay.
Richard was “Mr Throttle Guy” on the trip and … it went straight to the “Wide Open” setting.
The boat roared off across the ocean, leaping and crashing. From the cabin, huge boxes of frozen pilchards and squid, the day’s lunch, drinks and spare clothing bounced their way aft to end up against the transom – where I was perched – in a great filthy slimy mess.
Richard’s mate had had enough. He reached across and grabbed Richard’s ear and twisted it …hard.
“Slow the f*** down,” he shouted.
Richard wasn’t having a bar of it.
Another handful of ear, a severe twist and another gentle plea to “slow the f*** down.”
Also ignored.
By the time we arrived at Bird Rock, Richard’s ear looked like one of those bright red twisties on a plastic bread bag and we were ankle deep in smashed pillies, squid, food, drink and clothes. I have to admit, it was bloody funny.
“Jeez sorry about that mate,” Richard apologised.
I had to tell him I wouldn’t have missed that spectacle for anything, even if I was now 4 inches shorter. Why is it you never have a video camera when you most need it?
I stepped onto the water taxi being provided to take media and “celebrities” across the harbour to the rock concert held on a barge off the Devonport foreshore in Auckland. I fit into the former category of media, working as I did in those days as a journalist for a boating magazine.
The driver was a young blond dude. As soon as we were aboard, we were off, throttle mashed hard down to the stops and the 140hp Yammie howling. The driver, readers, was not a person who believed in moderation as far as throttles were concerned. I’ve since learned that he feels the same way about red wine – but that’s a story for another day.
We got to the rock concert, which had drawn a large crowd. The musos were playing on a barge moored some distance off the seawall. There were lots of girls in flimsy white dresses but the thing that grabbed my attention most – no, really it was - was the likelihood of the musos being electrocuted.
Standing on a steel barge, moored in salt water, with power generators and humming wires everywhere as well as stacks of speakers – the poor buggers looked nervous as hell. No wonder that concert has never been repeated – these days the OSH Nazis would line everyone up against the wall and shoot them.
Then it was time to return, and Mr Throttle Guy gave us an unforgettable demonstration of what happens when you apply his philosophy to wind against the tide conditions. We hit the first of the pressure waves, leaped out of the water and landed with a huge crash. Repeat 77 times.
There were several dozen beer stashed up by the bow. It was the real type, in big quart bottles and wooden crates. They bounced their way aft, smashing and exploding and sending foaming brown liquid and shards of glass down the boat towards our jandals-clad feet. Try keeping your feet in one place when the floor is jumping up and down about 6ft.
The passengers hung on for grim death, the women were screaming and the children crying, as the bloody maniac crashed his way up past the wharves and finally into the calmer weather. And that’s how I met the editor of this magazine. I forgave him, but the bugger still owes me several lunches by way of compensation.
You come across these maniacs from time to time in boating, don’t you? The Mr Throttle Guys who have spines of steel and legs made from cast off Super Truck shock absorbers.
The most entertaining I ever traveled with was at a fishing contest and there was a strange “twist” to the occasion.
I was fishing the Ramco Cup in the Bay of Islands and had been invited to join a couple of hard cases for the day. The weather had been ugly for a couple of days and as we left the Waitangi River there were huge swells rolling into the bay.
Richard was “Mr Throttle Guy” on the trip and … it went straight to the “Wide Open” setting.
The boat roared off across the ocean, leaping and crashing. From the cabin, huge boxes of frozen pilchards and squid, the day’s lunch, drinks and spare clothing bounced their way aft to end up against the transom – where I was perched – in a great filthy slimy mess.
Richard’s mate had had enough. He reached across and grabbed Richard’s ear and twisted it …hard.
“Slow the f*** down,” he shouted.
Richard wasn’t having a bar of it.
Another handful of ear, a severe twist and another gentle plea to “slow the f*** down.”
Also ignored.
By the time we arrived at Bird Rock, Richard’s ear looked like one of those bright red twisties on a plastic bread bag and we were ankle deep in smashed pillies, squid, food, drink and clothes. I have to admit, it was bloody funny.
“Jeez sorry about that mate,” Richard apologised.
I had to tell him I wouldn’t have missed that spectacle for anything, even if I was now 4 inches shorter. Why is it you never have a video camera when you most need it?
Sunday, November 25, 2007
SCOTTY … YOU BEAUT
I think everyone has a mate like Scotty. I certainly do. I met him on the bus to Orewa when we were both young and foolish and on crutches after motorcycle accidents.
I’ve always reckoned a man is rich if he has a few mates around who’d stand by him through anything, and Scotty is certainly one of them. So despite being the subject of this column he remains a true and valued friend … down to the little eccentricities that seem to come out only when he’s on the water.
When he gets on the water he reminds me of my father, who was about as much use on a boat as a wheelbarrow. Let me first introduce you to his fishing style, which he practises to perfection.
An eggbeater reel on a Warehouse two-guide rod, fished with the drag backed right off. Every so often he’ll whip the rod it back, crying “Christ did you see the way that pulled line off,” as the slack drag lets line peel off and the fish spits the hook.
It then becomes only a matter of time before a wayward jack mackerel picks up the mile of twisted, free flowing nylon and wraps it around every other line beneath the boat.
Neither is buying flash fishing tackle his thing. He once came to a fishing trip to the Coromandel with one rusted Kahle hook, that had been attached to his line since the last fishing trip. I think that had taken place sometime shortly before Rob Muldoon became Prime Minister.
“Oh no I’ve lost me hook,” was the inevitable plaintive cry. “There’s some in my fishing kit,” I offered. I didn’t really mean for him to uplift the box of hooks, select one for his line, then place the full box back in his kit. What a beaut.
His contribution to the bait that weekend was a packet of long life squid. I don’t think the manufacturers claim of “long life” meant that it could be opened, then left in a plastic bin in the garage for three weeks before use. Whhheeee that had the boys retching over the side.
I went fishing with Scotty and his dad once, and let’s just say the apple did not fall far from that tree. The boat was his Dad’s pride and joy, about 13ft long and supplied with enough horsepower to get it to the moon. Faced with this evil handling, tempestuous monster, no one was brave enough to actually push the throttle open, so we wallowed along with the bow pointing skywards as we headed to our fishing spot at trolling speed. We anchored up, while both of them fished with Warehouse eggbeaters, the drag released off and every few minutes cried “Christ did you see the way that pulled line…”
Underwater, the fish were more likely to become tangled in the miles of snaking nylon than fall onto a hook, and we came home with a mighty catch of Zilch. I often wondered if a Scotty & Father fishing trip had been the inspiration for drift netting.
Things only got worse when Scotty decided his own boat was the go. An old plywood thing “powered” by a 30 year old Blueband Merc that never really wanted to get out of bed in the morning.
After much cranking and fussing it would eventually start to catch and wind up. I never could work out why, when sitting in the wash close to a lee shore, my mate would first haul up the anchor, then start the outboard. Or try to start the outboard, as the case may be. That caused a few occasions where, like my old sailing skipper used to say “You coulda cut washers off me ringpiece…”
The first time it wouldn’t start, he proudly unearthed the boat’s auxiliary - an air cooled TAS. Now these outboards were originally responsible for at least half the earth’s air pollution problems and were noisy enough be heard by longhaul 747s as they passed overhead. Despite all the fuss, they were slightly less effective at propulsion than a kitchen eggbeater.
And Scotty’s had been lovingly preserved for years, lying in the bilge up by the bow wrapped in some salt-water soaked towels. It seemed reluctant to start, despite this care and attention. Fortunately the Blue Band got its nose out of joint about this and decided to kick into life, sputtering, belching clouds of blue and rattling like packet of Jaffas on the Orewa Picture Theatre’s sloping wooden floors
When the boat finally hit the dock we were once again fishless. And for some reason, I was always busy on the weekends I was invited out again.
But typically, you know, often when we’ve fished in a competition together, the bugger’s beaten me. Must be that soft drag setting …. or maybe he has better hooks. It’s not really true that someone up there hates me. Is it?
I’ve always reckoned a man is rich if he has a few mates around who’d stand by him through anything, and Scotty is certainly one of them. So despite being the subject of this column he remains a true and valued friend … down to the little eccentricities that seem to come out only when he’s on the water.
When he gets on the water he reminds me of my father, who was about as much use on a boat as a wheelbarrow. Let me first introduce you to his fishing style, which he practises to perfection.
An eggbeater reel on a Warehouse two-guide rod, fished with the drag backed right off. Every so often he’ll whip the rod it back, crying “Christ did you see the way that pulled line off,” as the slack drag lets line peel off and the fish spits the hook.
It then becomes only a matter of time before a wayward jack mackerel picks up the mile of twisted, free flowing nylon and wraps it around every other line beneath the boat.
Neither is buying flash fishing tackle his thing. He once came to a fishing trip to the Coromandel with one rusted Kahle hook, that had been attached to his line since the last fishing trip. I think that had taken place sometime shortly before Rob Muldoon became Prime Minister.
“Oh no I’ve lost me hook,” was the inevitable plaintive cry. “There’s some in my fishing kit,” I offered. I didn’t really mean for him to uplift the box of hooks, select one for his line, then place the full box back in his kit. What a beaut.
His contribution to the bait that weekend was a packet of long life squid. I don’t think the manufacturers claim of “long life” meant that it could be opened, then left in a plastic bin in the garage for three weeks before use. Whhheeee that had the boys retching over the side.
I went fishing with Scotty and his dad once, and let’s just say the apple did not fall far from that tree. The boat was his Dad’s pride and joy, about 13ft long and supplied with enough horsepower to get it to the moon. Faced with this evil handling, tempestuous monster, no one was brave enough to actually push the throttle open, so we wallowed along with the bow pointing skywards as we headed to our fishing spot at trolling speed. We anchored up, while both of them fished with Warehouse eggbeaters, the drag released off and every few minutes cried “Christ did you see the way that pulled line…”
Underwater, the fish were more likely to become tangled in the miles of snaking nylon than fall onto a hook, and we came home with a mighty catch of Zilch. I often wondered if a Scotty & Father fishing trip had been the inspiration for drift netting.
Things only got worse when Scotty decided his own boat was the go. An old plywood thing “powered” by a 30 year old Blueband Merc that never really wanted to get out of bed in the morning.
After much cranking and fussing it would eventually start to catch and wind up. I never could work out why, when sitting in the wash close to a lee shore, my mate would first haul up the anchor, then start the outboard. Or try to start the outboard, as the case may be. That caused a few occasions where, like my old sailing skipper used to say “You coulda cut washers off me ringpiece…”
The first time it wouldn’t start, he proudly unearthed the boat’s auxiliary - an air cooled TAS. Now these outboards were originally responsible for at least half the earth’s air pollution problems and were noisy enough be heard by longhaul 747s as they passed overhead. Despite all the fuss, they were slightly less effective at propulsion than a kitchen eggbeater.
And Scotty’s had been lovingly preserved for years, lying in the bilge up by the bow wrapped in some salt-water soaked towels. It seemed reluctant to start, despite this care and attention. Fortunately the Blue Band got its nose out of joint about this and decided to kick into life, sputtering, belching clouds of blue and rattling like packet of Jaffas on the Orewa Picture Theatre’s sloping wooden floors
When the boat finally hit the dock we were once again fishless. And for some reason, I was always busy on the weekends I was invited out again.
But typically, you know, often when we’ve fished in a competition together, the bugger’s beaten me. Must be that soft drag setting …. or maybe he has better hooks. It’s not really true that someone up there hates me. Is it?
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Trying to Kill Me Mum
I should have started to get worried long before the enormous bow of the Powles 38 motor yacht loomed over the top of our little Shetland 18ft runabout.
A smart man would have known it wasn’t clever putting his Dear Old Mother’s life in the hands of someone who was proud of having consumed 300 LSD trips. That person was DA.
DA’s once towed a Ford Escort Car home from a gig because the car’s front bumper was hooked on the towbar of the Transit van that he used to cart his Disco show around in. (His show involved setting up a gigawat of sound gear, taking an acid trip, donning his Dr Death skull mask and long black cloak and playing himself ear-shattering music all night.)
“I thought the bloody van was going a bit sluggish,” he once recalled during one of the many hours we sat together on the windward rail of the 46ft ocean racer we both sailed on as crew.
“It was only when I tried to back into a carparking space that I realized something was terribly, terribly wrong.”
Now readers you may be thinking that this is all a tall tale. But the contents of this column are true, or at least as close to the truth as 30 years of alcohol abuse will allow my brain to recall.
Truth is always stranger than fiction and if I could tell you the real name of DA (those are in fact his initials) and you typed them into Google you would find that he’s still an acknowledged world authority of some esoteric electrical computer stuff and has written a number of learned books on the subject.
How did my poor old Mum get involved in all this mayhem? Well, she was bored back in NZ so I bravely suggested she come over to visit me while I was working in the UK.
Her trip coincided with the start of the 1980 Whitbread Round the World Race, in which the Late Great Sir Peter Blake competed in Ceramco NZ. We also had the start of the Cowes Torquay Cowes Powerboat Race, which would have to be one of the world’s most famous (Ted Toleman competed in one of the first Cougar cats – which were designed by Colin Chapman, of Lotus cars fame).
We were covering both events for a couple of magazines. So I just figured I’d drag me Mum along for the weekend. And she came along, enjoying the festivities and the mayhem.
We had two boats – the big Powles and the 18 footer – which we used as photo boats and for entertaining important clients during the day. After the Cowes Torquay Race finished the bigwigs from the magazine company went home and left us to it.
A couple of hours later, after a meal ashore at Cowes and a few Heidseick champagnes we found ourselves barreling up the Solent in the wee Shetland, the Powles thundering a few feet behind us, with one of the crew hanging over the front of the bow above the water, holding onto the outside of the pulpit with one arm. That person is also very well known in the international boating magazine community so has also to remain nameless, unfortunately.
To this day my poor Mum believes DA tried to kill her and when he visited NZ in the early 90s she refused to even speak to “that mad bastard who tried to kill me.” The truly remarkable outcome of that day was that the other Dave, (ooops) who hung off the bow, managed to survive the exercise. But me Mum’s never forgotten it and, I think, has not quite forgiven me either.
A smart man would have known it wasn’t clever putting his Dear Old Mother’s life in the hands of someone who was proud of having consumed 300 LSD trips. That person was DA.
DA’s once towed a Ford Escort Car home from a gig because the car’s front bumper was hooked on the towbar of the Transit van that he used to cart his Disco show around in. (His show involved setting up a gigawat of sound gear, taking an acid trip, donning his Dr Death skull mask and long black cloak and playing himself ear-shattering music all night.)
“I thought the bloody van was going a bit sluggish,” he once recalled during one of the many hours we sat together on the windward rail of the 46ft ocean racer we both sailed on as crew.
“It was only when I tried to back into a carparking space that I realized something was terribly, terribly wrong.”
Now readers you may be thinking that this is all a tall tale. But the contents of this column are true, or at least as close to the truth as 30 years of alcohol abuse will allow my brain to recall.
Truth is always stranger than fiction and if I could tell you the real name of DA (those are in fact his initials) and you typed them into Google you would find that he’s still an acknowledged world authority of some esoteric electrical computer stuff and has written a number of learned books on the subject.
How did my poor old Mum get involved in all this mayhem? Well, she was bored back in NZ so I bravely suggested she come over to visit me while I was working in the UK.
Her trip coincided with the start of the 1980 Whitbread Round the World Race, in which the Late Great Sir Peter Blake competed in Ceramco NZ. We also had the start of the Cowes Torquay Cowes Powerboat Race, which would have to be one of the world’s most famous (Ted Toleman competed in one of the first Cougar cats – which were designed by Colin Chapman, of Lotus cars fame).
We were covering both events for a couple of magazines. So I just figured I’d drag me Mum along for the weekend. And she came along, enjoying the festivities and the mayhem.
We had two boats – the big Powles and the 18 footer – which we used as photo boats and for entertaining important clients during the day. After the Cowes Torquay Race finished the bigwigs from the magazine company went home and left us to it.
A couple of hours later, after a meal ashore at Cowes and a few Heidseick champagnes we found ourselves barreling up the Solent in the wee Shetland, the Powles thundering a few feet behind us, with one of the crew hanging over the front of the bow above the water, holding onto the outside of the pulpit with one arm. That person is also very well known in the international boating magazine community so has also to remain nameless, unfortunately.
To this day my poor Mum believes DA tried to kill her and when he visited NZ in the early 90s she refused to even speak to “that mad bastard who tried to kill me.” The truly remarkable outcome of that day was that the other Dave, (ooops) who hung off the bow, managed to survive the exercise. But me Mum’s never forgotten it and, I think, has not quite forgiven me either.
Blakey’s Boatshoes
It wasn’t long after fire crackers were banned in New Zealand. Some readers may recall those big bangers that were the size of your thumb and frightened the living beejasis out of the neighbours’ cats.
We had arrived in Saint Malo, France after completing a yacht race that had taken us around the English Channel for a day or so. St Malo is a stunning old French medieval city, located in a part of the world where 40ft tides are common, so you lock into the dock area for the night and leave again the next day on the high tide. We tied up next to our rival yacht, which we called Trilodog, a 45 footer crewed by a real bunch of Hoorah Henries.
As we tied up one stuck his snooty nose out through the hatch and said “Oh we don’t want you next door, there could be trouble….” We treated that with the contempt it deserved and continued to raft up alongside…. but we stored it away for later revenge.
We set about exploring St Malo. It’s one of the most stunning places I’ve ever been. We enjoyed the cafes and had a few beers on the town, which was in full-on party mode with street theatre bands and entertainment of all kinds.
And there it was – a shop that sold nothing but big juicy firecrackers. Not your girly pretty ones, oh no, these were cat scarers of the mightiest variety. I walk in and pulled out a pile about three feet high.
“I’ll take these,” I said.
“”Zees are for ze Bastille day next veek … you vill not use zem until then?” asked the shopkeeper. Actually he asked in French but my spoken French is about as good as my written French, if you get my drift.
“Oh no said I. I’d never do a thing like that,” summonsing an angelic look.
In a night of utter mayhem, a few highlights stood out. The boys from Ceramco NZ were in town (it was a couple of weeks before they were due to set out on the 1980 Whitbread Round the World Race).
Throwing crackers at a pair of Ceramco crew who were pretending to busk with air guitars – then having them fall bodily on the fireworks before they went off. They smothered most of them, but not all, and their nice red crew shirts were pretty second hand by the end of the evening.
I met Peter Blake for the first time. One of the other crewmen took a ginormous cracker off me and used it to blow up one of Blakie’s boat shoes. He laughed and took it well, knew how to sweat the serious stuff and let the unimportant slide I suspect.
A particularly obnoxious pommy journo called Alec Bielby was chatting up a very tasty blonde, who was way too young and good looking for him anyway. We had to save her! We sneaked up behind him and placed a lit firework between his feet. When it went off he jumped a foot in the air, his face an inch from hers as he screamed “f*** at the top of his voice.” The blonde’s eyes narrowed in disgust as she looked at Bielby like something the cat had brought in. Mission accomplished.
We put a cracker under a wheelie bin and it blew the thing about 5ft in the air. These were serious crackers, these babies.
One of the crew got arrested for stealing potted palms, but they had to let him go for lack of evidence. Let’s just say the boat owner was pretty annoyed the next morning when he found the palm stuffed in his bunk along with 3 inches of dirt.
We staggered back to the boat at some ungodly hour.
And as we crossed Trilodog to get to ours, we dropped a string of double happy crackers down the forehatch. Lit ones.
That’s what’s known in the trade as a self fulfilling prophecy…..
We had arrived in Saint Malo, France after completing a yacht race that had taken us around the English Channel for a day or so. St Malo is a stunning old French medieval city, located in a part of the world where 40ft tides are common, so you lock into the dock area for the night and leave again the next day on the high tide. We tied up next to our rival yacht, which we called Trilodog, a 45 footer crewed by a real bunch of Hoorah Henries.
As we tied up one stuck his snooty nose out through the hatch and said “Oh we don’t want you next door, there could be trouble….” We treated that with the contempt it deserved and continued to raft up alongside…. but we stored it away for later revenge.
We set about exploring St Malo. It’s one of the most stunning places I’ve ever been. We enjoyed the cafes and had a few beers on the town, which was in full-on party mode with street theatre bands and entertainment of all kinds.
And there it was – a shop that sold nothing but big juicy firecrackers. Not your girly pretty ones, oh no, these were cat scarers of the mightiest variety. I walk in and pulled out a pile about three feet high.
“I’ll take these,” I said.
“”Zees are for ze Bastille day next veek … you vill not use zem until then?” asked the shopkeeper. Actually he asked in French but my spoken French is about as good as my written French, if you get my drift.
“Oh no said I. I’d never do a thing like that,” summonsing an angelic look.
In a night of utter mayhem, a few highlights stood out. The boys from Ceramco NZ were in town (it was a couple of weeks before they were due to set out on the 1980 Whitbread Round the World Race).
Throwing crackers at a pair of Ceramco crew who were pretending to busk with air guitars – then having them fall bodily on the fireworks before they went off. They smothered most of them, but not all, and their nice red crew shirts were pretty second hand by the end of the evening.
I met Peter Blake for the first time. One of the other crewmen took a ginormous cracker off me and used it to blow up one of Blakie’s boat shoes. He laughed and took it well, knew how to sweat the serious stuff and let the unimportant slide I suspect.
A particularly obnoxious pommy journo called Alec Bielby was chatting up a very tasty blonde, who was way too young and good looking for him anyway. We had to save her! We sneaked up behind him and placed a lit firework between his feet. When it went off he jumped a foot in the air, his face an inch from hers as he screamed “f*** at the top of his voice.” The blonde’s eyes narrowed in disgust as she looked at Bielby like something the cat had brought in. Mission accomplished.
We put a cracker under a wheelie bin and it blew the thing about 5ft in the air. These were serious crackers, these babies.
One of the crew got arrested for stealing potted palms, but they had to let him go for lack of evidence. Let’s just say the boat owner was pretty annoyed the next morning when he found the palm stuffed in his bunk along with 3 inches of dirt.
We staggered back to the boat at some ungodly hour.
And as we crossed Trilodog to get to ours, we dropped a string of double happy crackers down the forehatch. Lit ones.
That’s what’s known in the trade as a self fulfilling prophecy…..
The Madness of Hot Paddies
“Ye’ll be wantin to come home and stay then….”
A great bear of an arm thrown warmly around my shoulders was my introduction to Eugene from Malahide Marine.
It was an Irish boating company and I think it might have been benefiting from the same pot of government money that was fuelling John DeLorean, inventor of stainless steel sports cars. Pity about the Renault engine, but they sure made good time machines, those DMC’s.
Anyway, back to Malahide. I flew to Dublin to trial a range of Starcraft tinnies and report on the experience for a London-based magazine. The boats were actually made in New Zealand at the time and Eugene was importing the range of boats. Because I was from NZ, I got the job to go review them – you have to understand that magazine editors have a habit of making that kind of weird association. (The same editor once sent me to interview Shane Acton, who had set off from the UK in a boat somewhat less seaworthy than a Hartley 16 trailer sailer, absolutely no experience at all and sailed it round the world. I got that job because my name was Shane and I lived in the London suburb of Acton. That made me, apparently, the ideal candidate for the interview because we had something in common.)
So reader, you can understand that working with editors, whose minds tend to behave like that, is bound to create bizarre moments.
Again back to Malahide. They had arranged a test session on a river system called the Shannon. The Shannon is a huge series of interconnected lakes, marshes and a river which is a major transport network through Southern Ireland. It’s incredibly beautiful.
We met Eugene at Athlone and headed up the Shannon. Errr, perhaps I should explain that a bit further. We walked into a tiny, smoky little pub whose ceiling appeared to be about 3 inches above my head and the floor level was as pissed as most of the regulars.
The barman poured a Guinness just as soon as my shadow darkened his wonky doorstep.
I reached for the creamy pint and committed an almost-treasonable sin of trying to pick it up before it had properly settled. I was forgiven, but only after promising to leave future pints for at least five minutes, if I accompanied him home to dine and stay with his family, and to destroy zillions of brain cells while discussing rugby in great detail.
Ah the Irish, you’d never meet a more hospitable person anywhere.
So we got onto the boats. The only glitch was that it was December (Northern Hemisphere remember, pre global warming) it was snowing, and the boats were all open.
You have to hand it to those Irish. Blasting through the falling snow in the open tinnies was, shall we say, “bracing.”
Their solution to this was to haul up at a pub, which seemed to be about every two miles, lurch inside and order a Hot Paddy, which was the Irish version of a hot whisky toddy.
It’s true that drinking alcohol in the cold is the worst thing you can do because it brings the blood vessels to the skin and cools you down further.
But it sure felt like the right thing to be doing, motoring from pub to pub, walking in with icicles hanging off our eyebrows, then sipping away on a hot toddy while enjoying the Irish hospitality.
These are the things memories are made of. And as I headed towards the departure lounge in Dublin, Eugene was imploring me to come back and spend Christmas with them.
The conclusion to this story was getting a bollocking from the resident technical engineer for not writing a long enough story about the Starcraft. How was he to know that the entire episode had consisted of trying to freeze ourselves to death, while using a wicked mixture of whisky, hot water and sugar as antifreeze? In the madness I hadn’t bothered to make any notes and for some reason my memory was flawed… it was a lesson I never again repeated.
And you know what, I reckon if I turned up on Eugene’s doorstep, nearly 30 years later, he’d clap that great arm around me, shove a Guinness in my hand, and ask “to be sure what took you so long…”
A great bear of an arm thrown warmly around my shoulders was my introduction to Eugene from Malahide Marine.
It was an Irish boating company and I think it might have been benefiting from the same pot of government money that was fuelling John DeLorean, inventor of stainless steel sports cars. Pity about the Renault engine, but they sure made good time machines, those DMC’s.
Anyway, back to Malahide. I flew to Dublin to trial a range of Starcraft tinnies and report on the experience for a London-based magazine. The boats were actually made in New Zealand at the time and Eugene was importing the range of boats. Because I was from NZ, I got the job to go review them – you have to understand that magazine editors have a habit of making that kind of weird association. (The same editor once sent me to interview Shane Acton, who had set off from the UK in a boat somewhat less seaworthy than a Hartley 16 trailer sailer, absolutely no experience at all and sailed it round the world. I got that job because my name was Shane and I lived in the London suburb of Acton. That made me, apparently, the ideal candidate for the interview because we had something in common.)
So reader, you can understand that working with editors, whose minds tend to behave like that, is bound to create bizarre moments.
Again back to Malahide. They had arranged a test session on a river system called the Shannon. The Shannon is a huge series of interconnected lakes, marshes and a river which is a major transport network through Southern Ireland. It’s incredibly beautiful.
We met Eugene at Athlone and headed up the Shannon. Errr, perhaps I should explain that a bit further. We walked into a tiny, smoky little pub whose ceiling appeared to be about 3 inches above my head and the floor level was as pissed as most of the regulars.
The barman poured a Guinness just as soon as my shadow darkened his wonky doorstep.
I reached for the creamy pint and committed an almost-treasonable sin of trying to pick it up before it had properly settled. I was forgiven, but only after promising to leave future pints for at least five minutes, if I accompanied him home to dine and stay with his family, and to destroy zillions of brain cells while discussing rugby in great detail.
Ah the Irish, you’d never meet a more hospitable person anywhere.
So we got onto the boats. The only glitch was that it was December (Northern Hemisphere remember, pre global warming) it was snowing, and the boats were all open.
You have to hand it to those Irish. Blasting through the falling snow in the open tinnies was, shall we say, “bracing.”
Their solution to this was to haul up at a pub, which seemed to be about every two miles, lurch inside and order a Hot Paddy, which was the Irish version of a hot whisky toddy.
It’s true that drinking alcohol in the cold is the worst thing you can do because it brings the blood vessels to the skin and cools you down further.
But it sure felt like the right thing to be doing, motoring from pub to pub, walking in with icicles hanging off our eyebrows, then sipping away on a hot toddy while enjoying the Irish hospitality.
These are the things memories are made of. And as I headed towards the departure lounge in Dublin, Eugene was imploring me to come back and spend Christmas with them.
The conclusion to this story was getting a bollocking from the resident technical engineer for not writing a long enough story about the Starcraft. How was he to know that the entire episode had consisted of trying to freeze ourselves to death, while using a wicked mixture of whisky, hot water and sugar as antifreeze? In the madness I hadn’t bothered to make any notes and for some reason my memory was flawed… it was a lesson I never again repeated.
And you know what, I reckon if I turned up on Eugene’s doorstep, nearly 30 years later, he’d clap that great arm around me, shove a Guinness in my hand, and ask “to be sure what took you so long…”
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