Sanctioning Madness

About 1000 years ago I worked for a magazine in the UK that would sanction and pay for all sorts of madness if we could persuade the Editor it was a good idea.

One afternoon, when it got dark at about 2.30, and over a few warm, hellish strong pints at the pub nearest work, we decided to tow a boat to Europe. It would be an epic journey with a trailerable boat all the way to the grand Lake Geneva in Switzerland.

Lordy lordy it sounded like a good idea with a few pints of strong Youngs Winterwarmer swishing around inside.

Planning for the Great Event took place, generally over more pints of warm Pommy ale until I began to get quite a liking for the stuff. Once, we even tried to work our way from one end of the bar to the other. The bar having 10 different types of “real ale” on it. We got to number eight once but I don’t remember any constructive planning coming from that meeting and I nearly got run over by the tube train going home so we took it a bit easier after that.

We had a borrowed boat, we had a company car, we had insurance, we had a budget and permission to go from the big boss. We planned to use the boat as a caravan on the trip to Geneva, then cruise around the lake.

Then it all started to fall apart. Someone had the bright idea to look at whether there were any trailer boat ramps on Lake Geneva. That led to looking at whether there were any powered craft on Lake Geneva. We found out that outboards were banned from the Lake. Quietly whistling to ourselves that it was a good thing we found out before we got to Geneva.

So, all fired up with no place to go, we headed in the other direction to Dartmouth in the UK. In NZ terms it’s a bit like deciding to go to on holiday in Fiji, then making a last minute change and heading to Greymouth.

To the River Dart we headed. Dartmouth is a pretty little town and we launched locally for a nice quiet cruise upriver.

The boat was a Shetland 18 and had been designed by a most interesting character called Colin Mudie. He has the most eclectic, some would also say eccentric, collection of marine designs to his name, most of them very successful.

In his youth he was an intrepid adventurer on a grand scale. He sailed a 21foot boat called Sopranino across the Atlantic, then tried to take a hydrogen balloon over the top of the Atlantic. The balloon gondola was designed by Mudie so it could withstand a serious fall into the ocean and be sailed home if necessary. It was. The balloon got caught in a huge storm forcing them to ditch and they completed their journey by sailing to the US coast.

He also designed the outrageous offshore racing powerboat, News of the World, which looked like a massive jandal and was built from cold moulded plywood. Unfortunately the uncooled exhausts and the wood got far too friendly with each other and it burned to the waterline.

The little Shetland showed definite heritage to the NOW with unusual rounded bow sections and concave bottom.

But back to the River Dart. It didn’t take us long to cover the whole of the river so we tied up to a vacant pile mooring and settled in for the night. Miscalculation was again the name of the game and what we thought was going to take several days had taken no more than a few hours. We needed plan B.

Plan B was to put the boat back on the trailer and head further down coast, where we hauled up in one of those quaint coastal villages with narrow stone streets and a small harbour full of brightly coloured fishing boats.

We were about to find out what it is like to go boating when there is a 10 metre rise and fall in the tide. We launched into the harbour in the late afternoon and pottered about up and down the coast.

BY the time we got back there was about a 200 metres of sand where the harbour used to be. We anchored on the edge and I sent Lester (who was official photographer for the journey) into town for some fish and chips, a bottle of rum and some coke. This turned out to be a very bad move.

He returned to the boat, which by then was sitting about half way up a mile-long beach. The water just disappeared, seemingly within minutes. It was equally scary at night, when the water arrived back, the boat was floating in minutes and in three or four metres depth not long after.

We sort of missed that exciting event though, with the bottle of rum having disappeared at an alarming rate while set sorted out the problems of the world. We missed the tidal flow the next morning as well, with Lester emerging from the small cabin having rolled in a vomitous mixture of chips, rum and coke for much of the night.

This called for another plan.

Plan C was, chuck the boat on the trailer, head home and call it a day.

Best plan we’d had all week.

THE 10 WORST THINGS I’VE BOUGHT FOR MY BOAT.

It’s true that a boat is a large hole in the water that we pour money into.

But let’s face it, a lot of the things we get for our boats are fun. We enjoy buying and using them. TAS (or tackle acquisition syndrome) is a recognised psychological condition experienced by fishermen and results in aberrant behaviour whenever the sufferer has been denied chance to buy the latest tackle.

But even the canniest among us make mistakes. In the enthusiasm of the moment and over-excitement purchases are made that turn out to be like that pair of platform clogs in your wife’s closet – great idea at the time but something to make you shudder in the cold, hard, light of day.

My list of greatest cock-up purchases would have to start with buying a 6.2m boat with an unbraked trailer. It was OK to move short distances in the dry, but add water to the roads and this rig became like a hungry dingo and you never knew when it was going to snap your hand off.

The only time I took it on the motorway was marked by idiots deciding that the real estate I carefully left in front of the car was perfect for them to swoop into and hit the brakes. If it was possible to tie a Falcon steering wheel into pretzel-like knots I would have done it as I stood on the brakes so hard my bum lifted off the seat. More than once.

The very first thing I did to that rig was get some over ride brakes for it and that tamed the beast.

Planing board

This little disaster occurred when I wanted a rig that would get fishing lines and lures down deep. It worked pretty well too, except the cheap rod holder I had clamped to the swim platform support tube was not up to it. It only went a few yards before the rod holder snapped with a bang and the entire rig, with brand new reel and rod, ended up on the sea floor. I got that line down deep all right. Dork. I bought a downrigger next.

1kw transducer

This was like buying a really big gun and finding that the barrel is warped. It’s about the size of a house brick and when it’s running sends up a shower of spray that would make an ocean liner proud. But after dozens of adjustments in height and angle, we’ve managed to get it to work at very low speeds, but that’s it. Cruising speed? Forget it. Every software adjustment made to the sounder at the other end of the lead has resulted in fewer functions working in the sounder. I’ve given up with it before it gets any worse.

The Canopy

This one really gets on my wick because it wasn’t cheap. Aux contraire. The side stays that hold it “up” constantly loosen when you’re in heavy weather, fall on your head and the whole thing goes floppy, and loses water tightness. You know how sometimes when you are doing an arse-puckering run downwind in big seas, tip-toeing the boat through it with the throttle – you can’t just stop and sort the canopy out? I know where I’d like to put the thing and that’s very, very close to the person who made it.

Crocs shoes.

These are excellent on the boat. Comfortable, tough enough to withstand fish spines and they dry easily. The only problem is that any time my wife sees me wearing a pair I can guarantee that marital relations will be suspended for several days. Or even a week.

Shimano Calcutta 400 reel

This thing needed a new set of drag washers every time I used it. In 8 months the cost of replacement washers had overtaken what I spent on the reel. When I complained to the tackle store their response was “Why did you buy that thing in the first place?”  “I bought it on your strong recommendation.” Fortunately Shimano tackle has come a long, long, way since then.

Cheap fluorocarbon trace

How many bloody good snapper did I lose with this stuff? My mate Boulder still chuckles about the world championship tanty I threw when I lost a potential 20 pounder off Kawau. I still haven’t admitted to him that I’d saved the thick end of $10 on that spool of trace. Clever eh?

My first outriggers

These were just bent stainless tubes that I put in the rod holders with the rods stuck in the ends. They were wrong in so many ways. First they held the rods so the reels were constantly awash with the bow wave at trolling speed. I had to lean out so far when retrieving the rod that my arse would pucker as I nearly went head first into the drink. We went trolling out off Houhora and kept our fingers crossed all day that we didn’t actually hook anything. It would have been one of those cluster-things you read about. Needn’t have worried because nothing was interested in our pathetic offerings.

Cheap chilly bin.

Another great saving but little did I know that the indentation for the bung was cracked. This allowed a significant quantity of snapper juices to gently seep into the carpet in the car boot after our Sunday fish. Monday afternoon was very hot and as I walked towards the car I thought to myself “bejasis something around here stinks.” I was still a good 20ft away when the awful realisation struck – I knew where the smell was coming from.  The drive home was punctuated by dry retching and gagging and the road back to scented harmony involved much scrubbing.

Can’t beat those savings eh?