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.