‑yacht.asn.au Issue 24 ‑ December 2007...

Issue 24 ‑ December 2007 ‑ Classic Yacht Association of Australia Magazine

CONTENTS

CYAA REPRESENTATIVES 2

COMING EVENTS 2

THE CUP REGATTA 3

MARIE LOUISE III – INTERNATIONAL 8 METRE CRUISER /RACER 4

THE YEAR Of THE bOAT 8

VANITY TO TASMANIA 10

CLASSIC PHOTOS 13

SHIP WRIGHT... SHIP RIGHT 14

REfLOATING NERIDA 16

THE INCREDIbLE HISTORY AND TALES Of THE ‘SIRIUS’ PART II 19

H.M. bARK ENDEAVOUR HObART – DEVONPORT fEb – MAR 2007 27

NEW MEMbERS 29

TANDANYA TALES NO. 1 30

MEMbERSHIP APPLICATION 32

www.classic‑yacht.asn.au

Our aim is to promote the appreciation and participation of sailing classic

yachts in Australia, and help preserve the historical and cultural significance

of these unique vessels.

Classic Yacht Association of Australia

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Issue 23 - January 2007 © CYAA

CYAA REPRESENTATIVES

ADMINISTRATIVE OffICERCYAA Officer343 Ferrars StAlbert ParkVictoria 3206admin@classic‑yacht.asn.au

EDITORIALMark Chew / Roger Dundaseditor@classic‑yacht.asn.au Design and ProductionBlue Boatwww.blueboat.com.au

NEW SOUTH WALESPhilip KinsellaTel (02) 9498 2481kinsella@classic‑yacht.asn.au

QUEENSLANDIvan HolmTel (07) 3207 6722, Mobile 0407 128 715holm@classic‑yacht.asn.au

SOUTH AUSTRALIATony KearneyMobile 0408 232 740kearney@classic‑yacht.asn.au

TASMANIAKelvin AldredMobile 0412 108 994aldred@classic‑yacht.asn.au

VICTORIADamian PurcellTel (03) 8344 6753purcell@classic‑yacht.asn.au

COVER PHOTO SAYONARA R6

PHOTO: ROGER DUNDAS

THE CUP REGATTA

MARk CHEw

Its 1030 Sunday Morning and I’m trying to keep the driving

rain off the bbQ long enough to heat up grill in order to

throw on a few prawns. The day’s sailing has been cancelled

as 35 knot easterlies roar across Port Phillip.

There is a crowd of hungry sailors standing on the deck in danger of getting bored and the first jug has been ordered for the day. One might have been forgiven that the whole regatta was going to be a bit of a write off. But by the end of festivities at midnight on Melbourne Cup Eve nothing could have been further from the truth. Fifteen New Zealanders made the trip across the Tasman to come and sail on the eclectic but beautifully pedigreed Classic Yacht fleet based in Melbourne. Following our invitation to the Lindauer Regatta in Auckland in February the CYAA created this reciprocal event which is hoped to be an on going over Melbourne Cup weekend. This was Victoria’s opportunity to show case the growing list of Classic vessels racing regularly on the bay. The long race on Saturday saw light south easterlies and a left over chop just annoying enough to stop the broad bowed boats in their tracks. The fleet of couta boats went off first. Tim Phillips the Godfather of Couta boat restoration and sailing had brought up two of his boats from the south end of the bay. The first was the chalky green Muriel, a 1917 Lacco Couta Boat, the second was the magnificent Storm Bay, an Alf Blore 52ft Gaff rigged fishing boat. (http://www.woodenboatshop.com.au/default.asp?Page=400&MenuID=Restoration/c13031/1557/) Muriel was always up the front of the fleet and it was a joy to watch them sail fast and tight with no inches given. The Classics went off five minutes later. After a neat start the two

big gaff cutters, Sayonara (Fife 1897) and Acrospire III (Peel 1924) went left and this was the eventual winning move. After more than 4 hours of racing Sayonara with the NZ president Tony Blake on board was just pipped over the line by the Admirals Cupper Mercedes III (Kauffman Miller 1968) but still managed to take a handicap victory. The plan was for two races on day two but that’s when the weather went bad. Drought ravaged Victoria was grateful for the rain but did it really have to be during our regatta? However once the beer and prawns started to flow it was a great opportunity for old and new friends, Kiwis and Australians, to exchange views, tell stories, and enjoy one of the major benefits of Classic sailing....the friendships. By Monday the worst of the weather had passed though and although there was still a damp 22 knots blowing over Hobson’s Bay and the waves were a steep 1.5 meters high. The two laid courses provided a rugged days sailing with Mercedes III making the most of the conditions to take overall victory in the Classic Yacht A division and Col Bandy’s Bungoona winning Classic B.

This was a just reward for Col after days of thankless organising and administration which got this regatta off the ground. Hayden Warszewski sailed his Couta Boat Scoundrel not only to Victory in Couta Boat Div A but also champion Boat of the regatta. This earned him a ticket to the Lindauer regatta in Auckland next February......from the enthusiasm shown at the presentation dinner he won’t be the only Australian on the plane. The heavy conditions on Monday did cause a little carnage with two of the Tumlarens breaking booms, and worst of all a Port/Starboard collision in which the unfortunate Jim Woods suffered considerable damage to his magnificent 1929 Norman Dallimore Sloop, Windward II (http://www.ecollect.com.au/debts/windward/index.php). Its important for the future of such events that those who suffered damage get our support, just as those who had triumphs get our congratulations. For full results go to http://www.rycv.asn.au/results/index.asp

VALE TONY FREDERICkZEA 308

Deeply saddened by the loss of a great bloke, a passionate

Tumlaren sailor, a guy with an inspiring vision of the

future of Classic yachting and his role as the editor of this

magazine. Even whilst he was filled with “rat poison”, the

chemicals designed to keep the insidious cancers at bay,

his innovative ideas bubbled incessantly.

Thank you Tony for too short an acquaintance, but one

I will cherish. Roger Dundas

COMING EVENTS

LAUNCESTON WOODEN bOAT RALLY

9-10 february 2008

Wooden boat Rally will be held at Seaport Marina Launceston on february 9-10. bring your wooden boat along whether it be a yacht, dinghy, launch or kayak. $250 of prizes to be won. Register now as registrations will be limited. Registration forms are available on website. http://www.woodenboatrally.com.au

LINDAUER 14-17 february 2008

Our 2008 Lindauer Classic Yacht Regatta begins on the 13th february with an evening harbour cruise on two of our large classic launches, “Lady Gay” and “Akarana”. We have a dinner organised at the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, for our Aussie guests, on the evening of the 14th, after the Skippers Briefing and racing takes place over the 15th, 16th and 17th, with Prize giving on the evening of the 17th february.

GEELONG WOODEN bOAT

8-10 March 2008

The Whyte, Just and Moore Geelong Wooden boat festival 2008. Royal Geelong Yacht Club. It’s on again!!Register for the event now, get the 2008 Whyte, Just and Moore Wooden boat festival registration form at http://www.rgyc.com.au/wooden-boat/woodenboat.asp

THE bRISbANE TO GLADSTONE YACHT RACE

21 March 2008

An Australian sporting icon. As Queensland’s premier blue water classic, its significance was recognised when this race was selected as the feature aquatic sport event for the ‘Centenary of federation’ celebrations in 2001. The 308 nautical mile ocean classic will run for the 60th time in 2008 and is one of Australia’s major sporting events over the Easter weekend, race start is 1100hrs Good friday 21 March 2008. This 60th Anniversary Race will be a spectacular yachting event. http://www.brisbanetogladstone.com.au

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AND NOW fOR HER STORY:

In 1953 Bill Lowe, a member at RYCV, commissioned J. Savage and sons, Williamstown to design and build [to the Rule] an 8 Metre Cruiser/Racer, whose specifications are:

LOA 40 ft,

LWL 29 ft,

Beam 9 ft,

draft 6ft, displacement14747lbs,

ballast: lead.

Hull constructed from 1 1/8” Huon Pine over 2”x11/2” laminated ash frames @ 8” centres.

Spruce mast and boom, galvanized fittings

Deck originally canvas covered, replaced early on with teak, and more recently with New Guinea Rosewood.

Extensive Huon Pine fitout.

Motor was originally 25HP Clae Marine petrol, now fitted with a 3cylinder 20 HP Yanmar diesel.

Upon launching in 1954 she was named Mongoose III, however, shortly after commissioning, Bill had a need to find some funds for impending nuptials!

Enter Dick White, drinking mate of Bills and well known raconteur and purveyor of shoes to all and sundry, looking to move on from his Dragon [Marie Louise II].

Without any scruples Dick proceeded to get Bill drunk and did a deal to buy the boat for an undisclosed amount of whisky. In the cold light of day Bill was rather remorseful and tried to back out of the deal. Commonsense eventually prevailed and a more commercial arrangement was struck, allowing the love‑struck Bill to launch into married bliss, and Dick to sail over the horizon in his new boat.

Dick had no such formal encumbrances, remaining a bachelor and naming his boats after his elder sister‑ saving the embarrassment of changing boat names with ensuing girlfriends/wives.

In his care she was actively sailed in Victorian waters, being out on Port Phillip most weekends and in all the major yacht races, including off‑shore with great success. Her unusual colour made her a standout, particularly in those days as coloured boats were no where near as prevalent as today. She usually spent the summer down at the southern end of the bay, moored off Sorrento. She was a great training vessel for Juniors, in more ways than one!

Sailing legend Jock Sturrock had many tussles against Marie Louise III, and used to think that it was Dicks skill that put him ahead, but on sailing her declared

”Now I know why this boat gets away‑its not Dick‑ its the boat, shes a thoroughbred”

[Thanks to Lyle Close for above early insights].

After custodianship spanning almost two decades, in the mid 1970s, Dick decided to move up to a larger boat. She was sold to the Valhalla syndicate‑a group of four ex‑commodores from the Royal Brighton Yacht Club, namely:

Euan Macgregor, Ken McBriar, Malcolm McEacharn, and Fred Moylan

We all know how these ex ‑Flags treat their boats and what they get up to! Marie Louise managed to survive this period with some distinction and these days she gets a warm reception when she ventures over there. It was great to catch up with the syndicate members when she was relaunched back in Williamstown in 1997.They kept up the tradition of taking her to Sorrento over the summer.

Alas, in the late 1980s, both the syndicate members, and the boat were getting a little tired and the time for parting unfortunately had arrived.

Enter Salvador Mata Luque, Spanish/ex Melbourne architect, fishing trawler owner, [and now marine artist] who had flown down to Melbourne to buy a H 36 and to sail it back to his home port of Mooloolaba on Queenslands Sunshine Coast.

PETER LLOYD following an active and successful winter sailing season,

with firsts in the Laura Gloria B series Mid‑Week races

at RYCV, the Victorian Classic Yacht Association Winter

series and second in the recent Classic Yacht Melbourne

Cup Regatta, we asked owner/skipper Peter Lloyd for the

background on this pretty classic yacht…..editor?

Let me first explain just what an ”International Metre” boat is. In 1906 a conference in London, attended by all the major yachting nations, [excluding USA which had its own Universal Rule] paved the way for this new breed of yacht. Out of the chaos of many different rating and handicap systems [sounds familiar] came a formula that allowed yachts from many countries to race together. The numeral designation – ie 6 or 8, has nothing to do with any physical dimension of the boat! Complicated? – Sure is! 8 Metres are typically 15 metres long, 12 Metres are 20 metres long!

The numeral designation is derived from the following formula:

L+B+1/2G+3d+1/2√ [S‑F]

2

Where L is waterline length, B is beam, G is chain girth [ie the girth of a chain stretched around the hull from covering board to covering board], d is “chain girth” minus “skin girth”, S is sail area and F is freeboard.

This International Rule, modified over the years, notably in 1920 and 1933, had a profound influence on yachting for the whole of the 20th Century, and led to the creation of some of the worlds most beautiful and exciting yachts. The monstrous International J Class racers of the 1920s and 30s were derivatives‑ a compromise between the International Rule and the Universal Rule [restored Velsheda being one of the most notable and most photographed yachts ever. See www.jclassyachts.com for further info.]

And then to that fabulous era in Australian yachting – the Americas Cup in the 1960s, 70s and 80s with yachts designed under the International 12 Metre Rule.

Modern Americas Cup boats are still derived from this Rule.

The 8 Metres are in some circles known as the “golden” boats, incorporating the best “Metre” features:

‑ not too big,

‑ not too wet,

‑ not too many crew,

‑ challenging to sail,

‑ and beautiful to look at! [absolutely no bias here!]

At Royals, apart from MLIII, we are fortunate to have the 12 Metre Kookaburra and two 8 Metres ‑ Francis [recently fully restored] and Vanessa [restoration nearly completed.]

Marie Louise III has a little trouble keeping up with Kookaburra‑but we’re working on it!

Very few of these 8 metre Cruiser /Racer’s were built as it really was at the end of an era of both the long keel design and traditional planked wooden boats.

MARIE LOUISE I I I –

INTERNATIONAL 8 METRE CRUISER /RACER

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IT’S A GOOD STORY SO LET HIM TELL IT:

The trip and buying of M L is really a funny story, I went to Melb to buy a Herreschoff H36 that was advertised in the trade‑a‑boat, I spoke with the owner and agreed on a price (I knew the boat well from my time in Melb), I landed in Melb. With the sextant, charts, radio etc ready to sail back to Q’land. When I get to Hasting where the boat was kept I found her padlocked to the dock with a massive chain and padlock, the marina manager tell me that she is impounded until the owner pays the money owed to the marina, which is quite a bit, the owner is nowhere to be found so I resigned to go back home. I chance to drop in to a Yacht Broker on the odd chance he could tell me where the owner was, he tells me that, no, he has no idea but there is a boat at Brighton that has been neglected, owned by a syndicate that was maybe ready to sell. After the usual to and froing, made more complicated by having to deal with a syndicate, I collected a lump of orangey/brown fungus that was happily growing under the deck and placed it in front of the broker, telling him that there was plenty more where this one came from, and that if she was not attended to “urgently” she was likely to sink on her mooring, not a far fetch event as she was half full of water of a sad shade of green. An offer was made, rejected and accepted as soon as I made plans to go home, got her out in the yard at Brighton for a quick look, remove some of the critters living on her hull and slap a bit of antifouling, as time was getting short for me I made a quick assessment of her condition and decided that she was sick but not terminal (I was young and foolish then) and if I picked the weather I could get her home in one piece, a friend that had once sailed a Hobie Cat, asked if he could come along for a leisure cruise to sunny.

Queensland, I was more than happy to take him along as he was, and is great company and a good guitar player, not exactly the right skill needed for such an enterprise but as I said I was young and..., sailed through the heads with fine weather and me wiring the brand new autopilot I just bought, well, as everyone knows there are two things you just can not trust, autopilots and the weather, with in a few

hours the pilot stop working, the weather got nasty and as predicted it got dark!

The rest of the story is best left for another day, suffice to say that some two weeks later she arrived at her new home.

Salvador then spent a couple of years working on her‑ replacing the deck, using New Guinea rosewood‑lighter and more rot resistant than teak, [over fiberglass and marine ply all bonded together with epoxy] and setting up the boat for the extensive cruising up the Queensland coast that was to follow. Every year the trawler would follow the prawns up to Far North Queensland and Salvador would accompany in Marie Louise III.

After some years of this he decided a larger boat would be more suitable and accordingly in 1997 placed MLIII on the market. I had been sailing from RMYS for some years, latterly in ‘Decisive’, a 31ft Lidguard, but decided that I would like to experience a wooden classic. At this time Waitangi had been restored, and the wooden boat revival had begun in earnest at Williamstown.

As usual when you want to sell buyers are hard to find and when you want to buy its hard to find what you want. Eventually one broker did delve into his bottom drawer and produced a tattered picture of MLIII, a derogatory comment, and a phone number.

I knew from the photo that almost certainly she was the one, her lines having instant appeal. Just like viewing a girl across the room, falling in love and knowing that you will marry her – even before you meet! Well we did meet and fortunately the attraction was mutual, settled the pre‑nuptials, and ten years later we are still together!

Let me quote from a letter that Salvador wrote to me when I took delivery:

She will forgive your early clumsiness and will eventually tell you what to do. Do not press her, she does not need it or like it Don’t be afraid of her, she is not as formidable as she looks, She will always look after you, that is her great strength. In the worst of weather, with a minimum of sail up, she will forge through any seas with a minimum of fuss.

In four years, and thousands of miles, she has never rounded up, broached, laid over or any other bad habits that boats have from time to time.

Not being young and foolish [but overly cautious perhaps] I had her trucked down to Melbourne. I had by this time seen the model in the bar at RYCV, and with the wooden boat facilities available it was the obvious choice to bring her back home to RYCV at Williamstown. We were extended a warm welcome, particularly by those at the club who knew her from the early days, had worked on her and sailed on her. The original sail number was available and this considerably added to the feeling of “coming home”.

The work that I have done has been comparatively superficial:

‑ the white tropical armoury had to come off

‑ mast and boom back to natural timber, stripped and all fittings regalvanized

‑ at least 10 different colours of anti foul removed

‑ hull back to original “Dicks green”, debate still ensues as to whether the shade is right or not – every one has a different opinion but the colour on the model, after allowing for 50 years of exposure and deterioration, was the guide.

‑ new standing rigging and chainplates, which required the removal of internal furniture.

‑ New running rigging

‑ new sails

The hull is virtually as good as the day she was built – credit indeed to the builders and the choice of materials.

So, of really continuous use over 50 years, the only major items to be replaced have been deck, chainplates and motor!

RECONSTRUCTION

All in all a well preserved and conserved boat that has not had to undergo a major reconstruction.

It took me some time to get to grips with her, and time constraints in other directions initially limited my sailing time. In the last few years though we [she and I] feel as if we understand each other pretty well [although as with your spouse there are no doubt more revelations to come!] and we can get around the course usually in a creditable way.

This last year has been particularly good :

‑ In the CYAA [Vic] winter series managed to keep ahead of the handicapper long enough to win the cup.

‑ In winter, the RYCV midweek pursuit races [sternchasers or staggered starts depending on handicap] are a very

pleasant way to spend an afternoon. Other classic boat skippers – Col Bandy [Bungoona R105], Peter Costolloe [Alwyn H151] and Roger Dundas [Tumlaren Zephyr 318], and emergency Peter McDonald [Pastime H161] came aboard and we managed to be the boat to catch enough times to win the B series of the Laura Gloria Trophy. In a Melbourne winter the north winds frequently prevail and MLIII thrives in 15/20 knot breezes and flat seas‑one reef and no.2 headsail and shes hard to catch. The astute reader will be likening the presence of several skippers on the same boat to the disastrous result that occurs when several cooks share the same kitchen, or a man with several wives‑but no, there were no arguments [not serious anyway] and we are all still good mates!

In closing I would like to quote another extract from Salvadors letter. To me it typifies the essence of what this ‘classic wooden boat movement” is all about:

“She is not just a boat, she is part of our maritime heritage and most of all a thing of great beauty, a symphony of wood, rope, and water, an object created by man with the only object to make us feel good about being alive. We are only caretakers and with luck she will outlive you and me. Future generations will think of us and will silently thank us for having seen her through the ages. All the best. Salvador”

I am indeed grateful to have the opportunity to look after this girl for the moment.

Peter Lloyd

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I had always wanted to build a boat, a timber boat of course.

I have done a bit of work with timber and am lucky to have a

big shed and so building a boat seemed an achievable dream,

it was just a matter of finding the time. Like everyone things

are busy, I decided I had to make the time and declared

2007 the year of the boat.

Coming up with the design has been an interesting and educational process, I have learnt a lot about how a boat works, this knowledge helps you think about how you sail and trim a boat. My idea of a good looking boat was heavily influenced by a 24” clinker couta boat I used to fish from. I had a few criteria in mind, a boat to sail and fish from, I live near Westernport Bay so a shallow draft was essential. It also needed to be easy to sail and handle on a trailer by one person. There were a few aspects of the design that were fixed in my mind; it had to be a clinker hull, nice lines with a sweeping bow possibly a bow sprit and a gaff rig.

I started looking for a design, trawling the internet, looking at magazines and eventually I found a great book “Building Classic Small Craft” by John Gardner, he was curator of small boats at Mystic Seaport in Massachusetts and had built a lot of boats. The book has plans for 47 different boats and importantly describes where they were used and what they were used for as well as lots of practical and detailed descriptions of traditional small boat building methods and some modern adaptations. I learnt of the rich history of small boats on the East coast USA, they were the key transport and livelihood for many people and over 300 years many distinctive local designs developed.

A few designs stood out as suiting my purpose, the Whitehall, Wherry, Sea Bright Skiff and the Peapod, but none were exactly what I wanted. I started drawing the lines up to scale and comparing them I found a lot of similarities in the hull shape especially below the water line. I decided on the

Whitehall, it has an elegant looking plumb bow, round bilge and pretty lines; it formed the basis of the design with a few significant changes. The length was increased from 14’ to 15 ‘, I had decided 15” was the length for me. The original design was narrow with 4’ beam to make it easy to row, but many were beamier to provide more stability under sail, I ended up stretching the beam to 5’. Also I added a bit of width in the transom, to provide more of room aft, this was done without changing the hull below the water line.

After a lot of drawing up of sections and elevations, scaling and adjusting to get what looked like fair lines to me, I made a half model. This was a valuable process, seeing the lines of the boat in 3D started to bring it all together. I showed everyone I could for comments which helped in the fine tuning, a few lumps and bumps were removed and the stern was lowered a bit to give cleaner lines. I enjoyed the design process, using traditional lines as the basis should result in a boat that sails well, hopefully the changes made to fit my requirements aren’t too severe, the proof will be in the sailing.

With the design all drawn up the next question was materials. Selecting timber turned out to be simple, I have cyprus growing at home and had been told they grow good knees. I cut some branches with good grown bends in them for the stem and knees and had some seasoned cyprus timbers to build up the keel. For the transom and trim I reclaimed an old Kauri door and some old red gum planks have made a solid centre board. The planks were the hardest decision, I liked the idea of using natural timber planks, but ended up using hoop pine marine ply, they have the advantage that they are readily available, light and can be glued which means a stiffer hull and leaks can be minimised. Using traditional timber planks relies on caulking and swelling of the planks to keep the water out, this means a trailered boat would probably leak a lot each time its put in the water, not so practical. Silver top ash, a locally grown eucalypt looks to be a great timber for the ribs and gunwhales.

Building the boat started with lofting the plans and cutting frames to form a mould for the boat, this turned out to be quite simple, once the frames were set up on a base the shape of the hull was there. Then the real boat building started, cutting a stem making up the transom, centre box and keel.

I had read that it’s a good idea to make the centreboard first, that way you can make the centre box and keel to fit around it, this turned out to be good advice, the centre box fits snugly around my heavy redgum centre board. The centre box is longer than the centreboard so I have room for adjustment to trim the boat; just in case I find she has a lot of weather helm. I calculated centre of effort of the sails and tried to position the centreboard on this line but leaving room to adjust the mast position and centreboard is good insurance.

Once the keel was made up they were put into the mould and the plank lines were lined out to set up plank widths and positions, the planks were then measured off the lined out mould, this turned out to invaluable in making up the planks.

Then the time consuming work started, I thought the keel with its curves was hard enough, making and shaping the planks took a lot of time and patience. I had built houses and furniture, they are simple in comparison. I am now, after almost finishing the planking, starting to understand how the plank widths and curve affect the twist and bend. I relied

heavily on another excellent book “Building Traditional Clinker Dinghy’s” published by the Sydney wooden boat school, it is full of good practical hints on spiling, planning laps, cutting geralds, shaping knees, roving nails and more; it simply explains the skills, never mind the language that I knew little about.

The boat has now come out of its mould and the last plank is on. I must say she is looking magnificent, and is surprisingly light. I now have to build a steamer, learn how to steam timbers then I start putting in the ribs, seats and knees. I am hoping to have her in the water this summer, even if it’s just to have a row and check for leaks. Hopefully I get an idea of how she handles, how much sail area is needed and any other problems.

The mast and sails will be another story. It is time to start talking with a sailmaker, I don’t fancy my chances on a sewing machine. I have found some nice old fine grained Oregon to build the spars, but I think they are a project for next year.

THE YEAR OF THE bOAT

ANTONY PERRI

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VANITY TO TASMANIA

JOHN CRAwFORD

(Article courtesy of Sydney Amateur Sailing Club)

It started out as a bit of an idle thought really. Take Vanity

to Tasmania for the 2007 Australian Wooden boat festival?

Must be joking? As the idea took shape other factors inserted

themselves into the mix. Sean Langman had started the

restoration of Maluka, a slightly bigger Ranger than Vanity

and I had been offered a crew position as one of six for

the Hobart Race. Maluka was also going to attend the

Australian Wooden boat festival, to be held in Hobart in

mid february.

Maluka to Hobart was an adventure I didn’t want to miss. The oldest and smallest yacht in the race and gaff rigged to boot. On race day it would be the first time in 60 years that a gaff rigger had raced out of Sydney Harbour bound for Hobart. How many people had that opportunity (how many would want it?) — I felt very privileged. What’s more I could use the Maluka experience to ‘test drive’ the thought of taking Vanity to Hobart and that was an OK thing to do.

It was also my exit strategy. If the Hobart Race on Maluka was horrible then I could bail out of the Vanity trip with some semblance of honour and my bravado possibly intact? In the end I trapped myself. The more the trip with Vanity was discussed the more entrenched it became until after a while it took on a life of its own. People would open conversations with:

“I hear you’re taking Vanity to Hobart for the Wooden Boat Festival?”

I would reply:

“Well, yes I was thinking of it but I’m using the Hobart Race on Maluka as my test sail”,

Or with some disbelief the opener would be — “You’re not seriously thinking of sailing to Hobart on Vanity. Are you?”

Answer being:

“Well, yes I was actually. Do you think it’s a bad idea?”

On balance I think half my friends thought I was crazy and the other half thought the boat would be fine, but the crew, well, that was another question altogether.

While the Maluka re‑build rushed ahead at a frenetic pace during the latter half of 2006, I spent time sorting out what was needed to convert Vanity (a 24’ 3” length‑on‑deck Sydney Harbour day boat) into a yacht capable of crossing Bass Strait. Category 7 safety requirements for harbour racing are hardly suitable for the Tasman Sea and I have experienced inclement weather in Bass Strait and have considerable respect (and fear) of its unpredictable moods.

Vanity has always been a minimalist boat, with nothing on board not deemed essential. She didn’t even have navigation lights. No electrical circuits, no head, no galley, no water tanks, no refrigeration, no radios, no compass, no lifelines, no cabin lights, no instruments, to say nothing of life rafts, EPIRBs, life rings, throw lines, charts, GPS, or flares. One of the great pleasures we get from Vanity is the fact she’s ‘junk free’. It goes back to the original design philosophy which was ‘if you think you need it, you don’t’, followed closely by ‘the difference between the dream and the reality’, which I estimate to be about 400 kilos.

For the trip to Tasmania, some things were deemed essential, in fact without some things the trip would have been regarded

as foolhardy. The last thing we wanted was to be a liability to others, so we needed to be able to take care of ourselves. What you take is very much dictated by what you are doing. It was not our intention to be days and days at sea, so food supplies for example were minimal. Our aim was to wait for our weather and do the trip in a series of hops down the coast. Before that could happen we needed to make Vanity ready for sea.

ON DECK

We decided to apply the minimalist approach to our sea safety decisions. Firstly we installed a cutter rig, which was more manageable and permitted smaller sails. This required the installation of an additional forestay from the hounds to the stem head. The plan was to cut down Vanity’s six‑year‑old mainsail to the first and only reef point and use that as our cruising main. Our six‑year old No. 3 also went under the knife at Macdiarmid’s and re‑appeared as a staysail, fitting neatly into the fore triangle created by the new forestay and the mast and sheeted onto the existing inner jib tracks.

Our new No. 3 was destined to reside at the end of the bowsprit for the trip down. It was sheeted outside the shrouds to give us enough angle and the sheets then ran aft to the spinnaker turning blocks and forward again to the leeward (lazy) runner winches. A new turning block was installed at the outboard end of the bowsprit and a retrieval line run from the cockpit, through the block and up to the second highest hank on the No. 3. This meant we could drop the jib, by releasing the halyard, hauling on the retrieval line, sheeting the jib on hard and then tying the sail off at the stem head, without having to go out on the bowsprit. Mind you, in any sort of sea the stem head gyrated wildly in all directions at once — just add salt water.

The alternative to this was to fit a roller furler but I hate furlers with a passion and when they go wrong they are a big problem, so we stayed with hanks which are simple mechanical devices with one moving part. Additional runners were paired with the existing runners and terminated at the crosstrees to prevent

the mast inverting due to the load from the new forestay position and the gaff which was lower on the mast due to the ‘permanent’ reef.

A jack stay safety line was run from our aft spinnaker turning block on port side, forward around the bowsprit and back to the starboard side block. The line was yellow 16 mm braided and harnesses could be clipped on in the cockpit before going forward. A strong point was fitted to the forward end of the cockpit easily reached from inside the cabin. On deck the existing traditional ventilated fore‑hatch was replaced for the trip, with a simple sealed hatch which was tied down inside and taped up outside.

A horseshoe life ring and line with auto light was kept on the cockpit floor and a throw line was clipped to the hawse on the stern ready to deploy.

Finally a dodger was installed. Our number one boating rule, ‘never drill holes in boats’, was observed by welding the dodger hoop hinge points (thank you Michael) to Ronstan track slides and then fitting the slides to the existing genoa tracks which extended aft as far as the raised deck and the cockpit. This neat installation worked well, cleared the boom by about 25 mm (luck) and but for some minor water problems, provided good protection and a sense of security we didn’t deserve. You could also see around it and over it from the steering position.

DOWN bELOW

Down below we needed some electrics. We decided that three electrical circuits were it. One circuit for our navigation lights, a tri‑colour at the masthead and a compass light in the cockpit. One circuit for the self‑steering gear (Tiller Pilot SP 2000) and one circuit powering two cigarette‑lighter plugs, used to charge our GPS, LED cabin lights, mobile phones, cameras and hand held VHF etc. The work was carried out quickly. Wiring for the masthead lights had been built into the mast six years ago when she was launched, but never connected, so we just had to complete the circuits and connect to our three gang switchboard. We also used the mast‑top aerial to connect to the hand‑held VHF for greater range.

Vanity has a single battery and it was decided that in spite of some fears that we might be stuck if the battery died, we would stay with one, albeit a new one for the trip. We were intending to motor sail whenever our speed dropped below five knots, so we figured there would be plenty of charging time.

Cabin lighting was dealt with by two re‑chargeable LED ‘trouble’ lights, which were a push fit into clips screwed above our chart table come galley. The light they cast was rather stark and they didn’t last as long we thought they would, but they worked and when the cabin you are lighting is miniscule you don’t need much light. Torches supplemented the LEDs.

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Ready for the voyage – Vanity alongside at the SASC.

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First leg crew preparing for the high seas.


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fOOD AND COOKING

Our galley comprised a two‑burner metho stove, hanging from a simple bracket over the starboard bunk. This was a less‑than‑half satisfactory solution to a difficult problem particularly as the brackets stuck out over the bunk, as did the stove and the crew were in constant danger of being thrown across the cabin and spearing themselves on the stove and its brackets. In the event the crew were never that hungry. This was either because what was on offer wasn’t that compelling or the corkscrew motion of Vanity at sea was a constant reminder that dinner could wait. In any case we intended to coast hop rather than stay at sea so we were never too far from sustenance.

Because we had no refrigeration (an esky was it) the menu was slanted toward food that had inherent keeping qualities. Smoked salmon, for example, keeps well without refrigeration due to the high level of natural oils. Salamis and cured meats figured high on the preferred list. Nuts, dried fruits and lots of chocolate were carried. Bread was not carried — first it needs butter which is messy without a fridge and breadcrumbs go everywhere. Ready‑to‑go gourmet soups which only required heating proved to be excellent value.

Finger food and table water biscuits were the go, easy to handle and no washing up. Since there was no running water, washing up wasn’t possible apart from being an easily eliminated irrelevant task. Cucumbers, apples, oranges, lemons, and limes dealt with the scurvy and Bickfords Lime Juice Cordial was used to supplement the rum (rum, lime and water helped the inner man), along with two bottles of 12‑year‑old whisky, Ginger ale for rum and ginger, Coke for rum and coke and numerous red and white wines for everything else plus some champagne to celebrate significant events.

Water was carried in a 60 L bladder which was placed under the aft starboard quarter berth. This had a flexible feed pipe and a tap that exited near the cabin sole. While this looked OK in theory, in practice the tap was exposed and got accidentally stood on late one night resulting in a bilge that filled very quickly with 60 litres of fresh water! The next half hour was spent with buckets putting things right. Vanity has a shallow bilge so a single bucket looks like the boat is about to sink, exciting stuff. She also has a bilge pump but because she is so flat the 60 L spreads over the 24 feet and you might as well bail.

Our bulk water supply was supplemented by a couple of 5 L bladder boxes of still water. We removed the cardboard box bit and stowed the foil bladders under the bunks, port and starboard. We were never short of water. Cardboard is not allowed on Vanity — it’s like confetti and it gets everywhere.

NAVIGATION

What do they say? Keep Australia on the right when going south and on the left when going north. Navigation is not one of my strong points. Yes, I have done a coastal navigation course and yes I know how to plot latitude and longitude on a chart and I know which way is up — but I cannot claim any great expertise.

For Hobart we decided that a hand held GPS (a Magellan Explorist 600) equipped with the supplementary electronic charts of the whole east coast of Australia would be the extent of our navigation equipment. In case of failure we carried hard‑copy charts of the east coast, but we never really used them and we always knew where we were thanks to the GPS.

What we didn’t have was a back‑up and had our GPS failed we would have been a bit stuck, albeit we were never very far from land. At $650 this was one of the best bits of kit that we had. Readily and quickly charged using the cigarette lighter plugs, the GPS proved amazingly accurate to the point where we had the confidence to navigate our way into Bateman’s Bay after midnight. Every nav‑aid appeared exactly on cue and all displayed on a tiny screen no bigger than four stamps. Talk about holding the world in the palm of your hand. That’s exactly what it was like. Batteries seemed to last forever, plus we could plot way points, distance travelled, speed, temperature, barometric pressure, distance to go, bearings to next way point or any point you selected.

A 75 mm Silva compass was vertically mounted in a Perspex bulkhead that occupied the starboard ventilation hatch position. Not perfect, hard to read at night (it was lit), but adequate and a simple installation that can be removed just like the hatch. The Perspex also gave us good natural light below, with protection from wind and water.

Our radio communication was limited to a waterproof handheld VHF which we could connect to our mast top aerial and theoretically increase our contact range. It didn’t work very well so we didn’t bother with it in the end. Weather reports were all we needed and apart from the middle of Bass Strait where nothing worked, we received all the information we required. The VHF was ‘backed‑up’ with a CDMA mobile phone which surprised us with its range, even in quite poor reception areas such as Wineglass Bay.

So, that was it. Vanity was ready to go to sea. Liam Timms and Pete McCorquodale had their hands up for the first leg — Sydney Amateur Sailing Club to Batemans Bay — and all we needed was the weather and we were off down the harbour. “Don’t turn left, turn right Mr Nicholson and out to the open sea……….”

To be continued

bLAkE ANDERSON PHOTOS CYAA MELbOURNE wINTER SERIES RACE 8 2 SEPTEMbER 07

Fair Winds

Kamiri Pastime III

Bungoona

Cyan

Scimitar


page 15


SHIP wRIGHT.... SHIP RIGHT

FERDI DARLEY

My introduction to the traditional boating scene was through

sailing. I left for England in 1988 at the age of 21 to begin

my career before the mast on the three masted barque

“Kaskelot” owned by Square Sail Shipyard. The English

traditional boating scene is similar to the Australian classic

boat scene, a saltwater coterie where most aficionados

eventually meet. Ship led to boat and boat to boat, eighty

odd thousand sea miles later, I began to realise that one day

the sea might loose its romance and I would be shipbound at

a ripe age and unable to work ashore.

I decided that with rigging skills in hand I could offer a yard something in return for an apprenticeship. I approached Tommy of T. Nielsen and Co., a ship yard based in Gloucester docks. Two weeks later I was to begin a six year apprenticeship in shipwrighting and ships blacksmithing.

There were many vessels restored and refitted at the yard amongst them, the restoration and fitouts of the Pilot cutters, the “Jolie Brise”, “Mascotte”, “Dolphin” and “Olga”, in which we even replaced the keel.

Other projects included a new main mast for the Schooner “America”, stepped and re rigged. A refit and fitout for the brigantines “Soren Larsen”and “Eye of the Wind”. The scale lofting out of “Jeanie Johnston” a replica 35m three masted barque as well as her masts and rigging and in our spare time deck furniture for the Sail Training Association.

I left Nielsens’ to Join Square Sail Shipyard, this time as number two, running 42 staff, the maintenance of the vessels, quoted and ran restorations and film jobs including the “Hornblower” series, where we built the sets and rigged the ship, “White Squall” and “Columbus 1492”. During my time there I also wrote a block and tackle seamanship course which was endorsed by the Nautical Institute and the Falmouth Maritime College. It still runs at Square Sail and I am endeavouring to establish it here for smaller traditional vessels.

Now my wife and I find ourselves in Australia to raise our two boys. The boats are not as plentiful but our life is filled with sun.

In Melbourne we have just finished the refit of the 120’ ex Sydney ferry “Lady Cutler”.

Currently I am working with Anthony Olver helping him restore his 63’ Abeking and Rasmussen, ketch “Le Pan” and fitting out and altering the deck housing on the Laurent Giles design, Wanita, owned by Richard Gates. I have a soft spot for Laurent Giles designs and maybe it was fate that we came to Australia for in Darwin we found “Ruthean” a 54’ huon pine yawl built in Triabunna and bought her just prior to a chainsaw demise. We are restoring her for ourselves to hopefully give Melbourne classics another challenge out there on Sundays.

Ferdi Darley 0421 340856

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Pilot Cutter ‘Herta’


page 17


During this blizzard of phone calls I learned from the insurance company that Nerida had already been quite badly damaged when a runaway yacht collided with her during a storm the previous weekend. Could this have contributed to her sinking? There was no time to speculate. Overnight, an email arrived from Sir James authorising me to act as his “owner’s representative” during the salvage. To be frank, it was a responsibility that I was not terribly keen to assume and I spent a restless night contemplating the task ahead.

Monday morning. The first problem was to keep the 180‑ton barge stationary above the yacht. The lads from Polaris solved this by using their crane to drop a temporary 5‑ton mooring block off the bow. The diver then took a second stabilising line from the stern down to Nerida’s mooring – a neat trick. We were lucky that the yacht was on an ‘outside’ mooring that allowed us enough swinging room to establish a steady platform.

The positioning of fore and aft recovery slings from the crane was going to be difficult. Nerida is huge and deep below the waterline. And, being a gaffer, she carries no permanent backstay so the counter sections are relatively weak. A sling under the stern might well break her back.

I drew a rough sketch of the yacht’s hull profile for the dive master and suggested that they try to thread the aft sling through the propeller aperture. That’s an immensely strong part of the boat and the sling would, at least, be held firmly in position. The forward sling could then go beneath the bobstay fitting, which is just below the waterline. In case that forward sling wanted to slip forward as the crane began taking the load, we agreed to tie the slings together on each side with

extra fore‑and‑aft lines. Developing that plan took us no more than a few minutes, but putting it into effect consumed the next two hours. As feared, the diver reported on the two‑way that Nerida’s nose was stuck in the mud. He would have to dig out a path under the bow by hand for the forward sling. Then came the laborious process of lowering the slings, bringing them around the keel and finally shackling their upper loops to the lift chains.

With the whole rig in position the crane driver slowly took up the slack while we waited for the diver to report from below on how Nerida was ‘hanging’. The news wasn’t good. The slings were compressing the upper topside strakes and threatened to crack the bulwarks at the deck join once the crane lifted the hull clear of the bottom. The obvious solution was to reconfigure the rig with athwartships spacer bars. There were only two difficulties with that approach. First, we had no spacers – but they could be fetched from the Polaris yard. Second, it is illegal to use lateral spacers without first suspending them from a longitudinal beam. But that arrangement would consume so much of our crane’s lift height that it would be impossible to get Nerida to the surface. Stalemate. Meanwhile, the BoM was confirming that the big Southerly blow they’d predicted was definitely on its way. We just had to get the old girl up and safe by the end of this day. It was a sickening feeling to give the order to lift, knowing that we risked doing the boat some damage. The crane’s deep‑throated diesel picked up revs, and up she came. Suspended beside the massive steel barge poor Nerida looked drowned, dirty and pathetic. The bobstay dangled

REFLOATING NERIDA

DAVID SALTER

(Article courtesy of Sydney Amateur Sailing Club)

Sir James Hardy’s classic 1933 gaff cutter Nerida sank at her

mooring in Sydney during the mid-June storms. David Salter

supervised the yacht’s recovery.

It never ceases to amaze me how precious SASC friendships can be in times of crisis. The call came early on the Sunday morning. “Dave? John Sturrock here. I don’t want to alarm you mate, but I’ve just been phoned by a bloke who lives overlooking Neutral Bay and he reckons Nerida sank in that big blow last night.” John had contacted me because he knew Sir James was in Valencia for the America’s Cup and that I was the yacht’s unofficial but longstanding bo’sun.

My initial reaction was disbelief. “Do we know for sure?” “No, Dave, but it doesn’t sound good.” Even for the ever‑laconic Johnno, that was a mighty understatement.

Within minutes I was in the car and trying to keep to the speed limit during the 20‑minute drive to the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron at Kirribilli. As I jumped out of the car into persistent drizzle one look across the bay told me it was true. Nerida’s distinctive topside profile, bowsprit and blue boat covers were nowhere to be seen. In their place I could just make out the cross‑trees and top 12 feet of her mast poking above the water. At least she’d gone down straight!

Motoring out in the Squadron tender to confirm the sinking was like being asked to identify the body of a relative at the morgue. My fears for the damage already done to the engine, interior and electrics were the stuff of nightmares. I asked the RSYS driver to circle the mast so we could check for trailing lines that might foul a passing prop. The rain strengthened and there was nothing more to do other than to ask that someone come back out and tie a few brightly‑coloured objects to the cross‑trees as a hazard warning.

But the comfort and support of Amateurs mateship is never far away on Sydney Harbour. The Azzurro boys happened to be having an anti‑foul weekend at the Squadron and Trevor Cosh was soon jolting me out of my shock with a host of invaluable hints and suggestions about the salvage I’d have to supervise the following day. ‘Snake’ and Sherro cheered me up with a few salvos of gallows humour and within minutes I’d recovered enough sense of purpose to start making the first of many phone calls. Time is the enemy of effective salvage. Every hour a yacht remains submerged is an additional threat to its recovery. Compounding the situation was news on the radio that another big East Coast Low had formed in the Tasman and that Sydney could expect a SW blow of up to 70 knots within the next 36 hours. Nice!

Polaris Marine could give us a 40‑ton tug, 180‑ton barge and 10‑ton crane. The Diving Co would bring their punt and a three‑man dive team. We agreed to assemble at Nerida’s mooring as soon as possible after first light the next morning. A brief text message was sent to Sir James in Europe alerting him to the sinking. Next, a call to Sean Langman — another SASC comrade — to ask if he could help with a lift‑out and temporary hardstand space at the Noakes yard in North Sydney once we’d raised Nerida. Sean, who has a very large soft spot for classic yachts, agreed without hesitation. Then I reached Norm Hyett, the Mosman Bay shipwright who’s yet another old friend. Norm has looked after the yacht for decades and kept her in splendid trim. He was away on holidays, but gave me some valuable advice about the many problems I would now be facing.

It wasn’t hard to locate the sunken yacht.

The author’s sketched recovery plan.

Nerida surfaces after 30 hours on the bottom of Neutral Bay.


page 19


PART I I 0F I I

THE INCREDIbLE HISTORY AND TALES OF THE “SIRIUS” THE FIRST AUSTRALIAN YACHT TO CIRCUMNAVIGATE THE GLObE.

SIMON MORRIS MAY

When the staysail schooner Sirius dropped anchor in

Watson’s bay at 7 p.m. on 20th May 1937 Sirius earned her

place in maritime history as the first Australian Yacht to

circumnavigate the globe.

From then until the outbreak of war, Sirius was a well‑known racing yacht. Unfortunately the fore mast which was made of Norwegian Spruce had dry rot and Harold’s son Ben had to chop it down. Ben was the youngest of the four Nossiter sons and he became a pilot in the RAAF. He went to England in 1941 and flew Spitfires on 503 Squadron based in South East England. During the war Sirius was impressed into service with the Australian Army Small Ships Division and used first as a training vessel at Bribie Island, then as a patrol vessel in the Torres Strait. After the war she was returned to Harold Nossiter who sold her to Jim Booth and she returned to the racing circuit with the sail number CYC 53.

Sirius was in two Sydney to Hobart races, the first time in 1946/47 (when Jim was 33). Only 11 yachts finished the race, Sirius was blown off course and was one of 8 boats to retire and didn’t get into Hobart until after New Year. The weather was reported as: Light north‑east winds for the first two days, then a 65 mph sou’ westerly hit the fleet in Bass Straight with seas up to 25 ft. In 1947/48 she finished 15th from 28 starters. Twenty one yachts finished, there were five retirements and two disqualifications. The weather was reported as: Fleet subjected to hard 40‑50 mph northerly across Bass Straight. Some yachts trailed sea anchors or hove to, others logged

from the end of the bowsprit. The timber cross‑trees were split and bent forward. The flaked mainsail bulged with tons of water trapped between the gaskets. The lift seemed to have caused no real damage beyond a split running between the scuppers on the starboard side. The first thing that floated up through the for’d hatch as the crane slowly lifted Nerida to the surface was a half‑drunk bottle of Hardy’s Black Bottle pot‑still brandy. That symbolic little moment of larrikin defiance gave me my first laugh for more than 30 hours.

Nerida was held in the slings so that her decks stayed level with the water. Two big pumps were rigged and the scene was soon dominated by the sound of petrol motors straining to lift thousands of litres from inside the hull. Inch by inch, the topsides began to appear. Nobody needed a degree in physics to understand that if the pumps could keep ahead of the leak that had sunk her Nerida might yet live to fight another day. My impatience soon got the better of me and I clambered aboard to take a look below. This is a boat I’ve sailed regularly for more than 25 years and the gorgeous old saloon has become part of my own emotional fabric. The scene that greeted me now was one of total disorder. Internal planking lay everywhere at bizarre angles. Lockers and drawers had either burst open or swollen shut. Wet weather gear and sails swirled around my feet. Everything was tainted with the stench and slime of diesel and engine oil.

The pumps chugged on. Eighty minutes after her boom first broke the surface, Nerida was again floating on her marks. We shut down the pump motors as a smaller tug came alongside and secured the yacht for the gunnel‑to‑gunnel tow down the Harbour to Berry’s Bay. As a precaution, we left the pumps and their motors on board just in case moving the yacht aggravated the leak. The light was already beginning to fade as Nerida was manoeuvered into the dock. Sean Langman operated the travel lift himself as the yacht was gently raised until her deck was level with the hard stand. Two engineers scrambled aboard to see what they could do to save the Perkins diesel. The boat was a mess, but at least she was safe.

It had been a long day and there was now not much more we could do. Sean and I stood beside the yacht chatting about the salvage and the best way to now handle the long repair job that lay ahead. An insurance assessor chose that moment to appear out of the gloom. “You know, this boat could well be written off completely,” he declared. “It mightn’t be fixable.” I stared at him, so taken aback by that horrible prospect that no sensible response would form in my weary brain. “Wha…?!?” But Langman is made of sterner stuff. He just fixed the assessor with a steely frown and declared: “Let me tell you something, fella. This boat will be fixed.”

WHAT SANK NERIDA?

All it needs to sink even the most well‑found boat is a sequence of bad luck. Not until the yacht was drained and propped up on the hardstand did a thorough inspection reveal the cause of the disaster.

During the first big Sydney winter storm on June 10 Irish, another boat moored nearby in Neutral Bay, broke away from her mooring and tangled with Nerida. That collision caused some major damage at deck level – the port runner was snapped, stanchions were ripped out, lifelines broken, a bulwark cracked and the toe‑rail badly mangled.

But, not noticed among all that damage, was a major whack to the headfoil a few inches above the furler. The upward force of that blow was transferred down the bobstay and loosened the two bolts that secure the bottom end. Those bolts pass through a V‑plate set into the stem, just below the waterline.

During the next storm, on the night of June 16, a steep chop was whipped up in the bay. Nerida’s heavy pitching at her mooring slowly loosened the bobstay bolts and they eventually pulled out, fracturing part of the V‑plate and leaving two holes as they left the stem. Water then entered through those holes and the yacht filled through the chain locker as the storm continued.

9‑10 knots, Sirius was said to have gone across the strait “under bare poles”.

Sirius elapsed time: 6‑02‑51‑07, Corrected time: 4‑20‑00‑47

In 1950 she was in the second Brisbane to Gladstone race and in 1951 finished in 4th out of 14 starters in the same race.

Sirius’ racing crew in the Sydney Hobart race were family, friends and people who worked with Jim. I have not been able to find any of the racing crew still alive. They included:

Jim Booth owner and skipper

Albert Booth Jim’s brother

Jim Simmons Jim’s brother‑in‑law

E.V. (Ernie) Campbell Jim’s business partner

V.A.D (Bunky) Auland

Colin Campbell Ernie’s son

Geoff Gyngell Bill Parcell

Harry West Tim Watt

Cyril Rostrum Dick Pederson

Bill Ryan Stewart (Porge) Johnston

Ken Dixon

Cecil O’Dea (who took the caul that was over his face at birth in a bottle in the Hobart race as the caul is supposed to bring good luck and be an infallible preventative against drowning!)

The photograph of the crew at Constitution Dock in Hobart was taken when they were “ready for lunch”. Minimum dress code for meals at the table was singlets and shorts, so those without shirts had put on their singlets ready for lunch. As beer was still rationed in Sydney at that time but not in Tasmania they were in no hurry to return home.

For fishing trips, family holidays and ocean racing Sirius was loaded at Alexandra Street Wharf in Alexandra Bay, Hunters Hill, where she was the only boat moored in the bay. This is only a few miles upstream in the Lane Cove River from where Nossiters kept her in Woodford Bay at Northwood. Nerida filled through the damaged stem plate.


page 21


The photograph of Sirius being rigged on the mooring shows Jim’s parents’ house at 4 Vernon Street, Hunters Hill where he grew up. In the background directly behind the main mast is the boatshed, somewhat obscured behind the boom. The slips alongside the shed were built for Sirius and are still in working order, but not these days for anything as big as Sirius. The boatshed is in Mornington Reserve and has public access so you can see it if you are in Sydney.

The photographs of numerous “boys fishing trips” to Broughton Island off Port Stephens tell of huge catches of beautiful big snapper, lots of beer, no women, so no “rules” and no shaving! Ken Dixon’s son remembers his father pushing a wheelbarrow full of snapper along the street near his Sydney home yelling “Free fish! Get your free fish!” There were also fishing trips to Ulladulla on the New South Wales south coast.

On one February 1949 trip they were moored in Esmerelda Cove at Broughton Island and the crew were playing cards. A big storm blew up and the yacht dragged its anchor. Two of the crew, Bunky Auland and Ash Gay went forward and threw a heavy admiralty pattern anchor over when they were six feet from the rocks and close to foundering. Comment was made that although Sirius was insured, it was not covered north of Port Stephens. Ernie Campbell said that he wasn’t in danger because he could have jumped onto the rocks.

Wonderful times were had when Sirius was moored for the summer holidays at Clareville Beach, a beautiful place on Sydney’s Pittwater when the family lived on board with friends and with Merv and Dot Davey’s “ Trade Winds”, the 1949 Sydney‑Hobart race winner, moored nearby. In the early years they were the only yachts moored in the bay. Jim’s kids had great adventures learning to row, sail and fish, and watching dolphins right next to them in the bay and seeing torpedos being tested on the Pittwater range. Lyndall Precians, Jim’s daughter, remembers being fascinated by flying fish landing on the deck. Her sister Judy, who was 14 when the boat was sold and was regarded as a “tomboy”, could spin the red flywheel herself and start the green Lister diesel engine. The engine room was painted beige although it was all varnished in Nossiters days. There was a porcelain hip bath which was much admired, built into a panelled cupboard aft of the main saloon.

In the 1953 Ernie Palmer from Guiso in the Solomon Islands bought Sirius in Sydney. Steven Nossiter (grandson of the first owner) remembers, as a ten year old, seeing her moored in Manly Cove when sailing with his father Dick, who recognised her immediately. They moored nearby and went across to meet the owner who had a son about the same age as Steven. The two lads were allowed to spend the night aboard and Steven remembers the spacious interior was large enough for them to leap from bunk to bunk across the cabin, while their fathers were ashore.

Palmer took the Sirius back to his home in the Solomons. He owned a copra plantation on Guiso Island, which is about half way between Bougainville and Honiara, near the area known to the locals as “Jack Kennedy’s swimming pool”. Kennedy was sunk there in a pt109 during the Second World War. Alick Wickham, a friend who lived on neighbouring Rendova Island, used to sail the Sirius with the owner. Alick, a famous swimmer and high diver, would please everyone by climbing the mast to the cross trees and diving into the sea, swimming under the keel and popping up on the other side of the yacht.

In 1955 Sirius was sold to Lever Brothers Ltd., a British company that made soap. They were the world’s biggest buyer of copra and needed a vessel to carry this cargo. They based her at Yandina Island in the Russell Islands (Solomons), unbolted the 7 tonne lead keel and let it drop on the sand in one piece so that they could carry that much extra freight. They added a wooden keel and removed her masts and interior fittings.

In 1963 an airline pilot called Laurie Crowley delivered a de Havilland Dove aircraft from Woomera in South Australia to Honiara for his new airline, Megapode airways, the first airline in the Solomon’s, which is now Solomon Airlines. Laurie was an old friend of Palmer, the previous owner and he knew the Pacific Islands manager of Lever Brothers.

Sirius was in a pretty bad state and Laurie thought it would be a good boat to resurrect and take back to his home base in Lae, New Guinea. He paid Lever Brothers £750 for the “old girl” and had her towed from Yandina Island to Honiara to carry out some repairs and to make her seaworthy for the trip to New Guinea. There was no way of lifting the 7 tonne lead keel off the sand at Yandina so it was decided to cut it into smaller pieces and put it into the bilge as ballast. They first tried to cut the lead with an oxy torch but that didn’t work. A German yachtsman called Eddy Haering turned up with a chainsaw and cut the lead into easy to handle pieces in a few minutes. The lead was removed again after making it to Lae to make room for cargo once again. It was stored next to a shed to be refitted later but someone stole it and sold it for scrap.

Eddy Haering and Harry Moss, Laurie’s chief pilot, made the repairs to Sirius in Honiara. They fitted a new engine, a 6 cylinder Lister MGR616. Then they repaired the deck with a teak‑like timber. The nails were out of sight as the timber was notched before nailing and then the next piece, which was also notched, went over the lower piece.

When she was ready, Laurie Crowley with his son Shane and Harry Moss motored Sirius from Honiara to Lae, New Guinea. Both Laurie and Harry, being aircraft pilots, knew how to navigate. Laurie hung a whistle around his neck and told his crew to do the same but Harry didn’t think he

needed one. After a couple of days Laurie noticed Harry was wearing his whistle. When he asked why, Harry told him that he dreamt, during the night, that he was hopping off a tram in Melbourne and he woke up to find he was trying to climb over the guardrail around the Sirius. On the trip a huge wave deposited an enormous tree trunk across the deck which was too heavy to remove so the crew had to work for two days with an old saw to cut the trunk in half.

Laurie had another airline in Lea, New Guinea called Crowley Airways, which had a fleet of helicopters doing mostly survey work for mining companies and government bodies. So, when the Sirius arrived in Lae, Laurie had a platform built on which to land a helicopter. The first job was to do a survey from Lae to Samarai and the offshore islands so the cargo was Avgas (aviation fuel).

The work was measuring the earth’s gravity in different spots for the Department of Mineral Resources in Canberra. The crew consisted of Harry Moss, the captain and his engineer, a native named Kandelope. He was New Guinea’s first aircraft engineer, taught by Laurie. Kandelope not only kept the Sirius going but also the helicopters whose spares, tools and fuel were kept aboard the Sirius.

The very large and beautiful Lister diesel engine driving the boat never let them down. With it, Sirius would cruise at 8 knots at 650 rpm. The maximum revs were about 900 rpm. She would go faster but 8 knots was the best speed for fuel economy. Even though the engine had been under water several times over the 20 years that Laurie owned her (Sirius sank about 4 times from cyclones and tsunamis) each time she was re‑floated the engine would start at the first attempt. There was many a beer won over that very fact.

After Harry retired, Laurie’s eldest son Denis became the skipper of Sirius. One memorable trip he was ferrying the Sirius home to Lae from New Britain after some helicopter work and was overdue by a couple of days. The rest of the

Crowleys went searching for him in a piper Aztec and found him about 10 miles North of Finschhafen, slowly making his way into port there. They landed and went down to see him. Apparently he had been battling storms across the Vitiaz Strait and only making about 2 knots. Everything was soaking wet below deck and the engine was snow white with salt. He lost the speedboat, which he was towing, and it was never seen again. It probably ended up somewhere in the Philippines. Denis had his native friend Atrula Samana with him as crew.

Denis had another incident in the late sixties. He was delivering Avgas to Cape Killerton in New Guinea down the coast from Lae. He had left Greg Pike, a school friend, on deck to do the early morning shift, while he and Eddy Haering were asleep below deck. For some reason Eddy woke up and decided to go up on deck. He found no one on the helm and as he peered into the distance astern, he saw someone in the water waving to him. It was Greg Pike, who had fallen in while everyone was asleep.

Early one morning in the early 70’s while moored at Lae, a tsunami struck the Sirius and beached her high and dry. Laurie was a bit concerned as to how he was going to put her back in the ocean, as there wasn’t any heavy lifting equipment in Lae capable of raising a thirty‑ton vessel. That afternoon, miraculously, another tsunami turned up and refloated her but not before the newspaper reporter and cameraman recorded the event. After the Sirius was washed back out to sea she was half full of water. Laurie organised Jim Hoyle from Lae to tow her across the Huon Gulf about 20 miles from Lae to a place called Salamaua. Laurie managed to get back to her six weeks later to tidy things up. He hired Jim Hoyle’s boat again and put a couple of batteries on board and headed for Salamaua. Laurie’ son, Randal was on school holidays at the time and went with them. Jim wanted to know why Laurie had brought batteries. Laurie said he was going to run the engine after pumping the water out and thought that the batteries on board would probably be no use, after being submerged for six weeks. Jim scoffed at the idea and so Laurie bet him a carton of beer that the old Lister would go. When they arrived at Salamaua, Laurie and Randal set about pumping out the water and setting up the batteries. Jim was watching with amusement, thinking that was the easiest carton of beer he would ever win. Laurie set all the cylinder decompression levers, started spinning the engine over and one by one pulled each cylinder decompression lever into the start position and the old Lister fired into life purring like a kitten. Upon their return to Lae, Jim promptly went into the Lae Yacht Club and returned with a carton of South Pacific lager, or as the locals called them SP Brownies.


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By 1972 Laurie had sold his airline Crowley Airways to Helicopter Utilities owned by Bryce Killen in Australia. Laurie was starting to move back to Australia and used the Sirius as a way of getting all his belongings, collected over 24 years in New Guinea, back home. The cargo would also act as ballast. Amongst that cargo was a 4wd Suzuki jeep which would be used as a map table while under way and hoisted out at ports of call, for transport.

They left Lae in 1974 with Laurie Crowley as Skipper, Lloyd Neale, Tommy Ott, and Laurie’s three sons, Shane, Randal and Kieren. Lloyd and Tom were a couple of handymen who whacked up six bunks and made the Sirius a bit more liveable for the journey. Laurie wouldn’t let them do too many improvements, as he wanted her looking a bit rough, when she was valued by the Customs in Cairns, in order to avoid paying too much import duty. Tommy Ott had built his own speedboat in Rabaul, New Britain and together with Lloyd Neale they motored it down to Lae from where it was towed behind the Sirius to Australia. They used it on the journey to do a bit of fishing and as a runabout. The towrope for the speedboat was designed to set off an alarm if it broke away as they knew that Denis had lost a speedboat on a previous occasion.

They travelled down the coast from Lae to Samarai and then across the Coral Sea to Cairns. They spent a couple of weeks in Cairns waiting for the weather to improve before heading further south to Brisbane. While in Cairns they tied up to the Marlin Jetty and went down to the nearest pub for a beer, still swaying with the waves while standing at the bar. There were some famous people pulling up beside them as there was a marlin fishing tournament in progress. They included Lee Marvin, Jack Nicklaus, Bob and Dolly Dyer. Each evening they would bring in their big marlins for weighing on the Marlin Jetty. Whenever Sirius pulled into port there was always someone who had known her and could tell the crew a story about her.

One day a beautiful yacht pulled in beside them and the crew helped to tie him up. The owner was Admiral Robinson,

skipper of the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne. He had just bought his yacht, in Thailand, and was going to do some charter work because he had to leave the Navy due to the collision with the destroyer HMAS Voyager. He was later found to be innocent of any wrong doing in that accident. Laurie asked him what it was like having a waterproof boat and Robinson quickly replied, “Be buggered! It gets wet in this beautiful yacht too.” While in Cairns Laurie fitted Sirius with radar and an autopilot.

On the trip from Cairns down to Brisbane the Sirius was nearly blown up, twice! Tommy Ott was cooking some peas in a pressure cooker and when the time was up he pushed the relief valve on top of the cooker. Thinking he had got rid of the pressure, he proceeded to remove the lid. The cooker let go with an explosion and the inside of the cabin was decorated green. Apparently a wasp had blocked the valve and so the pot was still under extreme pressure. A little later in the trip they were all relaxing on deck when an almighty explosion came from the engine room. It turned out that a diving bottle, stored behind the engine, had blown a heat disc, which released 3,000 psi of air and frightened the life out of the entire crew.

When they arrived in Brisbane, they moored in Manly harbour. Randal Crowley remembers “We had just dropped anchor when we heard a lady screaming for help on a yacht about 100 yards away. There was smoke coming from her boat so we grabbed a fire extinguisher, leapt into the speed boat and went to her rescue. We were the only people around so it was her lucky day. She didn’t have a fire extinguisher on board!”

They found that they couldn’t unload properly at Manly harbour, so they went back up the coast to Mooloolaba where it was more convenient to unload and put the Sirius up on a slip for cleaning and servicing. Lloyd overhauled the engine while they were there. In 1975 they departed Mooloolaba and headed back to New Guinea to pick up some more of their belongings. On board were Laurie as captain, his wife Elizabeth, sons Randal, Kieren and Lloyd. This trip was going to be more pleasant due to the improvements that had been made in Cairns, on the way down.

They struck some very rough weather for a few days and couldn’t do any cooking so decided to pull in for some shelter at an uninhabited island called High Peak. When they anchored there was plenty of depth so the decision was made to stay overnight not realising that there was going to be an extremely low tide. A few hours later that evening the keel started to hit the reef. Laurie immediately tried to get back out to sea but it was even shallower behind them. Surrounded by shallow reef and with the wind picking up Sirius was drifting towards some rocky cliffs about 500 meters away. Laurie dropped the anchor again but it wasn’t strong enough to

hold her. Launching the new dinghy with an outboard motor they laid out four more anchors and warps which finally held her. The storm was now bouncing Sirius up and down while she lay on her starboard side. Elizabeth, who couldn’t swim was down below watching the side of the Sirius bend in and out each time a wave pounded them. Randal made her put on a life jacket just as an extra large wave dumped them so hard on the reef that it broke some timbers and water started pouring in the side.

They had a Yanmar 2” diesel pump on board which was started, to keep the Sirius from flooding. The rudder post was pushed up through the deck as she bounced on the bottom. By day break the tide came back in and Laurie was able to back out into deeper water. Then they set off for MacKay where they thought there might be a slip where they could make some repairs. The Yanmar pump was running 24 hours a day for a whole week, struggling to keep her afloat. If it stopped, this history would finish here.

When they finally arrived in MacKay they found there was no slip big enough to take the Sirius, so they had to sail a further 360 nautical miles to Cairns where they knew there was a dry dock, the Yanmar running all the time. At Cairns, Laurie and Lloyd spent a few weeks repairing the hull and the rudder. They decided to postpone the trip to Lae as time had run out and work was awaiting them back in New South Wales. Laurie moored the Sirius at Cairns to await his return some time in the future while Lloyd flew back to New Guinea where he was working as a ships engineer.

Laurie didn’t manage to get back to Cairns until 1978 by which time a cyclone had hit and the Sirius was half full of water. He picked up an old air force friend called Jack Dew from Tully, Queensland, to help him pump her out. They made her ship shape and tried once more to head for Lae, New Guinea with just the two of them on board. About half way across the Coral Sea, the weather became intolerable as they were hit by another cyclone. They decided to abandon the trip and return to Cairns, planning to try again when the weather improved.

Laurie organised a caretaker to look after the Sirius while he went back to attend his farm in Junee The caretaker was a man called Harbrow who had a hire boat service in Cairns. A year later Randal and Kieren, Laurie’s sons and a few friends were on a fishing holiday along the east coast of Australia which took them as far as Cairns. They used the Sirius as a base for about a week. They had a couple of speed boats which they would use to go fishing during the day and then return at night to sleep on board the Sirius.

It was quite dry and liveable at the time. When they returned home they took the radar and auto pilot back with them for

servicing. This is about the time the rumours started about the Sirius being occupied by squatters.

Laurie had been sending cheques to the caretaker, Harbrow quite regularly when in 1983 he received an urgent message from Harry Randall the Cairns wharfinger saying “Sirius is on the bottom please remove ASAP”. Laurie tried to contact Harbrow but couldn’t find him anywhere. A cyclone had dropped 30 inches of rain on the Sirius in a short time and seeped through the deck weighing her down in the water until the topsides, which had shrunk over the years let more water in until she sunk. She could have been saved if she had been pumped out earlier.

Laurie headed back to Cairns to rescue the Sirius once again. He found some old wartime, rubber fuel tanks which were used in ferrying aircraft long distances. He inserted them in the hull and filled them with air, which lifted the Sirius until the deck was level with the water and then started pumping out to raise her further. He then towed her up to Smiths Creek to some land owned by Mr. Halsted, where they used Dick Fry’s crane to lift her onto dry land to carry out repairs. Laurie estimated that there was nine tonne of mud inside the hull.

At this time Bill Cotter and his wife Margarete were looking for a restoration project. Bill was a boatbuilder and cabinet maker by trade and when they arrived in Cairns they spotted the Sirius up on chocks. Bill approached Laurie wanting desperately to buy her. He offered Laurie $5000 and so, after 20 years of fond memories, the deal was done and reluctantly, Laurie let her go.

When Sirius was raised it was found that her hull was in remarkably good condition thanks to the superior timber and quality of construction demanded by Harold Nossiter. Although the hull was fine the interior, deck and everything above had to be completely rebuilt. The renovation made a few minor alterations to the original layout such as an extra cabin and a larger galley but overall it is faithful to Nossiter’s design while subtly incorporating the latest in modern technology. The deck beams were replaced with laminated Queensland Maple and Silky Oak that have slightly more camber. This gives more height in the cabin and the deck a better fall. The deck itself was White Beech, which Bill found stacked behind a disused railway station. It took ages to find out who owned the timber but eventually it was bought “at the right price” and taken to a sawmill to be cut into planks. The wooden keel was removed and replaced with lead, bought from an old fellow who went around collecting little pieces of the metal and melting it down in his frying pan. Bill also fitted a newer engine. Again a Lister was chosen, this time a 1975, 6 cylinder, 170 horsepower JWS6M.


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Re‑launching Sirius carried a heavy price for the Cotters who sold their business and house and moved aboard to complete the restoration. They fitted aluminium masts with self‑tailing winches and all the latest navigation equipment including radar and depth sounder. Sirius was invited to join the Bicentennial fleet sailing into Sydney Harbour in 1988 but bad weather down the coast and delays prevented this. This came as a great disappointment to the organisers when she was unable to take her rightful place with the tall ships.

The Australian registration had lapsed and when Bill tried to re‑register the vessel he found that the name Sirius had been allocated to a new yacht. So on the 1st December 1989 she was registered as “Sirius 1935”. Sadly, when the vessel was finally ready to sail they divorced and Margarete got the yacht. She registered the Sirius in her name on 14th October 1991 and put her up for sale.

At that time David Plant, an English yachtsman with a yacht charter business in Bali was searching for a larger boat. He had heard of Sirius and knew her history so he flew to Sydney in October 1992 and bought an old car, which he drove up the East coast of Australia, looking, for her. He found her in Cairns where the purchase was quickly finalised and he sailed his prize back to Bali. With a young Indonesian lady named Sri, David was sailing through the Indonesian archipelago on his way to Bali, when he made the decision to continue sailing through the night instead of mooring up, in a bay for some sleep. They were sailing under a light breeze, in the pitch dark, with no moon, when they felt the yacht rise under them and swing right round through a full circle, a most un‑nerving experience. The next day they arrived at a port that had a jetty sticking out into the bay. The first thing David noticed a lorry that was hanging off the end of the jetty, suspended by its back axel and Sri noticed that the bay was full of debris. There were logs, whole trees and then many bodies floating everywhere. Looking around they realised that the entire bay was wrecked to a height of 100 feet above sea level and that would have been their fate if they had stopped in a bay for the night instead of pressing on. Their weird experience during the night must have been the passage of another tidal wave.

In Bali, David and Sri continued charter cruises with Sirius before sailing to Sumatra where they carried out charters off the Mentawi Islands. The passengers were surfers and there is no way of enjoying these waves unless you live aboard a yacht. One morning in August 1996 they hit a reef and stuck fast. The inside of the boat quickly filled with water and for a while it looked as though the ship was lost. All their possessions were being washed out through the hatches and Sri was swimming around inside the boat rescuing their

personal effects. Then the wind picked up and blew them further on to the reef. David struggled for four weeks to save her. At low tides he had to flatten 50 meters of coral with sledge hammers into a track to drag her off. The locals tried to persuade him to give up but eventually he got her afloat again and moved into a dry dock. With sheets of tin, cork and bitumen he patched the badly bruised hull and departed for Thailand where he could get her repaired.

Rounding the Northern end of Sumatra they encountered a violent storm and due to some contaminated Indonesian diesel, the engine wouldn’t run. Sirius had a very narrow escape sailing between two islands in the dark in a storm while being blown towards a lee shore. She was leaking badly and as the batteries had gone flat they had to pump the bilges by hand. For four days they took turns to pump non‑stop and had no sleep between them. On arriving in Phuket they dropped anchor in Ao Chalong and David went ashore to organize a haul out. Once the vessel was anchored, the leak was slightly less so Sri took a break from pumping and tried to start the genset. Fortunately the batteries had recovered some charge and the water in the fuel had settled so she was successful and the electric bilge pump started to work. The water which had been up to the top step of the companionway, at last started to drop. The yacht was slipped at Ratanachai shipyard six weeks after running onto the reef and repairs were started. David hired a very skilled shipwright from Bangkok called Perm who repaired the hull with Mai Dekian a Thai mahogany similar to Jarrah. The keel was strengthened with a Stainless Steel box section over the lead, bolted through the keelson and the interior was repaired. After a $100,000 re‑fit she was re‑launched on Christmas Eve 1996.

After two more seasons in the Mentawi Islands David bought a new boat better suited to the surf charters, then back in Thailand in December ‘98 Sirius won one of the races in the Classic class in the Kings Cup Regatta.

In the eleven years that David had Sirius he did 14 charters per year during an 8 month season carrying 120 passengers and covering 11,000 nautical miles per year. The yacht was hauled out every year and had around $30,000 spent on her each year in maintenance.

In January 2000 Simon Morris was a customer on David’s new boat, Saranya, about to embark on a diving trip for a few days in Southern Thailand. He noticed a fine gentleman’s ocean‑going schooner moored nearby and remarked how attractive she looked. David said she was his yacht, Sirius, and he offered to show Simon over her when they returned from the trip. Two months later Simon chartered the yacht for a diving trip with his son James and expressed an interest to buy the vessel. He put his own boat, a 1934 Dutch Barge,

up for sale and bought the Sirius in November 2001. At that time she was moored in Langkawi where, exactly sixty six years earlier, to the day, Tunku Abdul Rahman was on board. She was in need of some maintenance and investment, which Simon set about straight away. Due to the bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon two months earlier, his company, British Airways asked for volunteers to work part‑time. This suited Simon and gave him plenty of time to put Sirius back in order. He replaced the stainless steel stanchions and guardrail, recaulked the decks, serviced and repaired the engine and electrical system and the steering. With his son, James and youngest daughter, Fey‑Louise he did a couple of trips around Langkawi and after a lot of work and many improvements, by February 2003 they were ready to sail her back to Phuket.

After sixty‑eight years Sirius still has the strange characteristic of pointing in a different direction from all the other boats at a mooring. All the previous owners have noticed this and some have suggested that it takes forty‑five minutes from anchoring after a trip, before she points the same way as the other boats. Many theories for this have been aired and other boats sometimes look aghast at Sirius, then before long, they up‑anchor and depart. Often catamarans find it untenable when moored near Sirius; they start sailing around their own mooring and soon leave in disgust.

One night (the first time Simon took the boat out after he bought her) they were moored in a rather large but shallow bay that had a very tall hill just behind the beach. (Off Pulau Dayang Bunting, Langkawi, Malaysia.) After midnight the wind started howling from the shore, as if it was coming straight out of the hill. Sirius was pointing across the mouth of the bay at 90 degrees to the wind and the yacht was being blown sideways. The anchor held but the chain was pressing hard against the bobstay and she just would not turn into the wind. The wind strength increased to over 40 knots and the Sirius healed over to an angle of 25 degrees, just as if she was sailing. It was impossible to walk on deck and Simon could only just struggle up to the bow. He even

thought she might have been aground but there was still plenty of water under the keel. Simon let out more anchor chain to try to cure the problem, which did nothing except terrify his daughter and her boyfriend who were in the forepeak. They thought that the anchor was dragging! The most likely explanation, put forward by his son, is that the ghost of Harold Nossiter has other ideas about when and where the Sirius should stop for the night.

Sirius has since undergone another major re‑fit and is insured for $ 720,000. The genset and refrigeration unit installed by Bill Cotter nearly 20 years ago had given sterling service but had to be replaced. We now have a 7 K.W. Onan generator and a new refrigeration unit. New battery banks have been built and a new day tank installed. The fuel and water organisers have been re‑designed and an inverter and water maker have been fitted to bring her up to date. With new teak deck, radar and an autopilot, she is now sailing again and has clocked up over 5,000 nautical miles in the last 5 years. Apart from dive trips in the Andaman and South China Seas, Sirius is an active participant in the South East Asian regatta circuit. She has sailed in the Singapore Classic Race, the Western Circuit Regatta and the Raja Muda Regatta twice, winning the Vintage Class in 2006.

Harold Nossiter lives on in history as the first Australian yachtsman to circumnavigate the world. He died in 1956 aged 81. He had four sons, Harold, Dick, John and Ben. The eldest son, Harold married three times and has two sons, Ben and Tony, a tugboat captain in Sydney. Harold died in July 2005 at the age of ninety seven. The kris, a rather lethal and rusty dagger with a wavy blade, which Tunku Abdul Rahman gave him in Langkawi, seventy years earlier, was left to the National Maritime Museum in Sydney. Before he died he also gave the museum the first aid chest from the original Sirius voyage which was packed full of all the negatives that his father had developed on board the Sirius back in the thirties. The museum has recently made excellent quality prints from these negatives, which can be seen in the Vaughn Evans library.


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H.M. bARk ENDEAVOUR HObART – DEVONPORT FEb‑MAR 2007ROGER DUNDAS

I thought I had given camera flying away. 36 years of poling a

helicopter around, the last 25 years with cameras attached

in a variety of different ways shooting everything from car

commercials on the Great Ocean Road, more laps around

Phillip Island chasing Motorcycle Grand Prix bikes than I

care to remember, the devastation of drought, flood, and

raging bushfires, cars, boats and aircraft come to grief, to

the grace and the fluidity of blue whales in Bass Strait, and

much between.

But…

Would I be interested in shooting the ultimate wooden ship, HM Bark Endeavour, the Australian built replica of James Cooks’ vessel of 1770, off Tasman Island in southern Tasmania?

Would I what!

As with many documentaries that I’ve been involved with, money is always tight and as I’d recommended the most expensive (and most capable) remote operated HD camera

system, “Ms Moneypenny”, the production manager was looking pallid. So to improve her complexion I offered a “contra”. I would fly for $0 if she can get me aborad as voyage crew for the trip from Hobart to Devonport. She had already committed $???,000 chartering HMB Endeavour for a week of filming so a few more $ wasn’t going to hurt thought I. After contemplating where the catch might be she agreed and to cut to the chase we got all the shots the director needed and more and I slept fitfully awaiting my chance to emulate the sailors of the 18th century, aboard one of the world’s most celebrated tall ships.

I had very little “sea time” as most of my sailing has been done in protected waters so my stomach tightened at the thought of rolling seas and tall sails requiring attention at all hours. But what is life without a little tightness?

The inevitable greet, stow and allocation to watch, 11 crew on each of the fore, main and mizzen watches. A mix of age and experience, academics, bankers, artists and scumbags like me, all with a sense of what might befall us in the next seven days. Under way and southward into the Derwent River and Storm Bay with a steep learning curve ahead. In no time we were aloft, the odd shaking knees amongst the watch as we clambered for the first time under then over the futtocks and tentatively slid our feet out along the yards. We are now about 40’ above the water and because we are motoring, not a feature of the original design parameters, the Endeavour is both pitching and rolling with vigour. We pay attention to our Topman as he explains furling is not enough to dissuade some stomachs from discharging, but the height above the deck and the stiff breeze sae the crew below.

A lunch of pork chops seems like an unsubtle challenge from the galley girls and the training continues into the afternoon. By 6 bells into the dog watch (1900) we were clear of Cape Raoul and with the wind at force 6 from the SW we set topsails and staysails and the whole motion of the ship changes to a gentle pitching and under a superb waxing moon we crank the blunt bowed Bark to 8 knots. This is what she was designed for, running before the wind!

Apart from the modern galley, heads and mess, the replica Endeavour is as originally designed and the crew are allocated two eyebolts in the deck beams to tie their canvas hammocks. Most have never spent more than a nap in a hammock so seven nights of interrupted sleep is yet another of the challenges we face. Forewatch is on at midnight so with some trepidation of the need to debunk quickly to see those pork chops overboard I settled in early. What a fantastic way to sleep aboard a moving vessel. Your bum stays pointing at the ground no matter which way the ship rolls and a kick at quarter to midnight is my next memory. “Your watch!”

Dick Nossiter went to England in the war and served with the Royal Navy. His experience as a navigator was put to good use as he guided convoys through the Baltic Sea to Murmansk in Russia. In England he met and married Nancy, and brought her back to Australia after the war. Dick is a very sprightly ninety six years of age and a senior member of the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron. He visits the Squadron occasionally, where he can see the original compass binnacle from the Sirius, on display in the foyer of the clubhouse. Dick and Nancy had three sons, Steven, Hugh and Timothy, all sailors and yachtsmen. Tim lives in Tasmania where he is the Captain of a converted trawler “Penghana”. Steven lives in Belmont North, N.S.W. just around the corner from his father. He sails his yacht on Lake Macquarie and has a son called Ben. Hugh also lives there and is famous locally, as a magician known as “Super Hubert”.

Their brother John who sailed the Sirius with his younger brother, Ben in those halcyon days before the war moved to Perth, WA where he lived to the age of 87. Ben was never to return home from the war. He was killed in his Spitfire over the English Channel and is remembered on the Commonwealth Air Forces memorial at Runnymede. His body was never recovered from the sea.

The spinner for the trailing log and one of the pulley blocks for the running backstays are now back aboard the Sirius after an absence of over sixty years as is one of the original chain plates. The present owner has been given the original sheer plan dated 10th August 1933 signed by J.D. Thistlethwiate which has been framed.

Jim Booth, the second owner, was James Samuel Booth (1913‑1982), he was born and lived in Sydney he married Jean who died in 1976 Ernie Palmer, the third owner, is buried on Guiso Island and Alick Wickham on Rendova Island in the Solomons. Alick was the man who showed the world how to swim freestyle, then known as the Australian crawl.

The fourth owners, Lever Brothers don’t have any records of the Sirius or the decade that they operated the vessel in the copra trade.

The Crowleys, Laurie, Elizabeth, Shane, Randal and Kieren, all live together on their sheep and wheat farm in Junee, NSW. Laurie wanted to do a circumnavigation in the Sirius when he retired but he is still working at eighty‑five. Their son, Denis was killed in a motorbike accident in Lae on the 5th February 1971 aged 18. His head stone has a bronze plaque with a relief of the Sirius. Denis’ friend Greg Pike is now a colonel in the Australian army and his native friend, Atrula Samana, went on to become a senior minister in the New Guinea government after independence in 1975. He never forgot his trips on the Sirius. Harry Moss died in his

nineties, after writing a book on his exploits called “10,000 Hours Harry Moss”. Tommy Ott, of exploding peas fame, died from cancer not long after the trip from New Guinea to Queensland and Lloyd Neale was killed in a rock climbing accident a few years after returning to New Guinea. Lloyd had worked at sea for about 30 years. The Suzuki jeep is still in use on their farm and Laurie is still looking for a certain Mr.Harbrow.

Bill Cotter, whose seven‑year labour of love saved the Sirius, lost his home, his business, his wife and then his yacht and must have very painful memories. He can be credited with the fact that Sirius is proudly afloat and in use today. His son Mike is a photographer and he took some pictures of the restored vessel under sail with dolphins swimming in formation at the bow. Margarete wanted no memories of those years. She gave all the photos of the restoration to the new owner when she sold the yacht.

Perm who is greatly appreciated for the repair work he did on the Sirius in Phuket returned home to Bangkok where he died of a brain tumour. Soon after David Plant sold the Sirius, Sri, who saved her from sinking, returned to her home in Bali and started a new chapter in her life.

The present owner lives in Thailand and keeps the boat in Langkawi. He also has a home in Mooloolaba QLD, with his daughter and her young family and he hopes to sail Sirius back there one day.

For pictures go to www.Sirius1935.com

Acknowledgements:

The Vaughn Evans Library of the Australian National Maritime Museum, H.F.& G.Witherby Ltd. and Charles E.Lauriat Co. for excerpts from the books Northward Ho and Southward Ho by Harold Nossiter Snr. The late Harold and Jean Nossiter, Harold’s sons Ben and Tony and Jean’s niece Heather Patchet. Richard “Dick” and Nancy Nossiter and their three sons Steven Hugh and Tim, Steven’s son Ben (who produced the line drawing of his Great Grandfather’s yacht). Graeme and Lyndall Precians, Belle Booth, Nancy Simmons, John Tankard, Tilly and Stephen Auland, John Dixon, Ash Gay, Val Watt, Annie Reynolds, Jim Murrant, Jeanette York, Laurie Crowley and his son Randal. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (interviews with Harold Jnr. and Dick Nossiter and with Bill Cotter for “Blue Water Australians”). David Plant and Sri. Also the many people whom I have met and were able to tell me some more of the history of this Classic yacht. I have lost count of the number of times I have been asked: “Do you know, this was the first Australian yacht to sail around the world?” I do now.

Simon Morris May 2007 www.sirius1935.comIrilla amcor sequisl dolobortio exercipit diam alismolobor sed tatum am dipsustisl ea feugiam consed etum nim euip ea at. Equat dolorem

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NEw MEMbERS

Andrew Wilson – Wraith Granville – NT

David Hales – Emma Jean – Vic

Kate McCombie – Crew – Vic

Julian bethwaite – Crew – Qld

James Rist – Svalan – NSW

Noel Essex – Calaban – Vic

Dan Deburiatte – Nomad – Qld

Keith Glover – Wraith of Odin – Qld

Craig brown – Cyan – Vic

John barnes – Alexa – Vic

Gordon Tait – Crew - Vic

Ian Phillips – Crew - Qld

Jennifer Russell – Chance – Vic

Timothy Melville – Serifa – Vic

David McKenzie – Crew – Vic

Michael Rhodes – Crew – Vic

John Price – Crew – Vic

Craig begbie – Vahine – Vic

Glenn fitzgerald – Christine – Vic

Danny Pearsall – Canaipa – NSW

Jonathan Dawson – Crew – Tas

basyl Johnston – Crew – Vic

Micheil Anderson – Peggy – WA

Peter Gray – Paulina – Qld

Michael MacTavish – Ella – Vic

Jonathan Crockett – Ventura – Vic

Rod Martin – Lisa – Vic

Carl Costelloe – Crew – Vic

Antony Perri – Crew – Vic

John Raff – Jean – Vic

Assembled, counted and allocated tasks on a one hour cycle, Forewatch took their first shift. The isolation of the original crew and their dependence on each other becomes increasingly apparent as each task is completed. Lieutenant Cook gave very good account of his crew and their skills, between giving them the odd lash for misdemeanours that would seem paltry today, but the strength of will, the courage in facing the unknown and the considerable endurance of all aboard is testament to leadership and fortitude.

The wind is kindly and abated to a gentle sou’easterly as we approach Maria Island and the conditions allow the shaking out of a heap more canvas. The main top staysail, fore topmast staysail, main topmast staysail, the main topsail, main topgallant and the fore topsail all eventually appear and fall gently beneath their halyards and yards. An incredible amount of physical effort from skilled crew and unskilled voyage crew, heaving and sweating to get that beefy bow to break a wave. Cook’s men all had tasks in which they specialised and their efficiency in sailing this ship, designed originally as a “cat built collier”, broad beam and shadow draft, is difficult to appreciate until you realise the complexity of the process of setting these heavy unwieldy canvas sails.

The rhythm of life (is a powerful beat) and it takes only a couple of days to settle in to that rhythm, the bonding between watch members becomes an integral part of your waking hours, ensuring all are there, aware and prepared. A modern climbing harness is an encumbrance not afforded the early sailors but neither firm grippy shoes, warm and

efficient wet weather gear, sailing gloves and importantly a full belly on a regular basis was theirs. Whilst life on land was unquestionably tough for the lower classes in England life aboard gave them regular meals(?) and great adventures but was no easy passage.

For us the taste of the 18th C sailing only got better. We poked our bowsprit briefly into Wineglass Bay on the Freycinet Peninsula, gathered the southerly wind in all our sails, supped on fresh tuna sashimi and tended to the eternal maintenance of a wooden ship. Ahead is the transit through Banks Strait, the weather has turned squally, gusting to 30 knots and I am on the helm as we bear way NW to run up the inside of the Furneaux Group of islands. What an exhilarating feeling to have 500 tonnes of wooden ship in my hands and with favourable 3 knot current we are humming at 10.4 knots (over the ground). As dusk settles we are all aloft to shorten sail. Wet, wind to 35 knots standing on the outer yard furling the topsail square in the closing dark, you know you are alive!!! The following dawn sees us on watch again as we peer at land on either side. Our charts and GPS see us safe, but again we are reminded of the voyage of 1770 as Endeavour approaches the eastern shore of Australian that Cook named Point Hicks, they had nought but their skills as seamen to keep them safe.

We are approaching Marshall Bay on the NW coast of Flinders Island and use the traditional sounding technique to call the depth until our captain calls to “let go the starboard anchor” and with 6 shackles lying on the sandy bottom Endeavour

holds position. There’s an opportunity to go ashore for more photos but best shots are to be had as the replica Dutch jacht “Duyfken” anchors nearby and a couple of hours later the “Enterprize” joins us with a withering blast from her cannons as she prances into the bay. All three wooden ships are returning north from their ventures at the Hobart Wooden Boat Festival and we revel in the knowledge that it is a rare occasion that three of the finest wooden ships in Australia would be anchored together in this stunningly remote part of the world.

That night saw the traditional dinner on the 18th C mess deck. The captain and crew dressed in their finest serve the voyage crew a (non traditional) roast lamb with all the trimmings. We are ready to receive our pay for our week of toil and the “heaped” teaspoon of rum serves us well. The night completed with “sod’s opera” a mish mash of performing talent from all and sundry who are game to make merry on the last night.

The morn dawns clear with our chance to dive into the pristine water to race to the Enterprize and enjoy the freedom prior to our final leg to Devonport. This has been a superb experience sailing a traditional 18th C ship in Tasmanian waters, creating just a taste of the reality and hardship of those who mastered the original charting of the east coast of Australia.

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page 31


FOR SALETANDANYA TALES NO.1.RObERT MUNRO

“There is no more beautiful, more thrilling, more stirring

sport than the Sport of Sailing.

“The slim, gently swelling lines of a racing hull are a joy to the eyes, the fineness of the mast soaring upwards towards the sky and that of the rigging form an incomparable composition of harmonious grace and beauty awakens, is animate, shivers and vibrates under the hand of the helmsman, surges onto the blue swell snorting like a living steed, but one ever faithful to the call of the helm and ever obedient. And all around extends the moving blue sea, the breeze that plays its joyful tune through the rigging and the bracing air that embraces you in its pure and inebriating caress. And then there is the struggle, at times difficult and tenacious, against the natural elements, the courteous yet intense encounters of the regattas where the competitors demonstrate knowledge, skill, cunning and daring, disdaining fatigue and danger.

Add to this the attention to the sails throughout the race, the heart‑stopping anxiety of rounding the last marker and the joy and exaltation of victory, sportingly obtained, magnificent to the highest degree in the case of a National triumph. This is the Sport of Sailing” Madame Virginie Heriot

YACHTSwOMAN EXTRAORDINAIRE.

Born 1890, Virginie Heriot was the heir to the Le Printemps department stores. She possessed no less than thirteen yachts built to the International Rule of 1906. A 10 meter in 1912, seven 8‑meter yachts acquired between 1922 and 1931, all named Ailee from I to VII, and five 6 meter boats all named Petit Ailee for the One Ton Cup and Italian Cup She won Olympic gold in the Amsterdam Olympics of 1928 at the helm of Ailee VI.. In 1928 she commissioned C.E. Nicholson to design and build Ailee II, a three masted schooner of 187 feet. She sailed this last yacht in a number of ocean races repeating the success she had enjoyed in the “small” meter classes. She died in Paris on 27th August 1932 the day after pulling out of a race for the first time. She said she had been ill.

fLOATING CARAVAN Priceless Stuart Stubbs’ final strokes before selling Eleanor

HEATHER bELLE

R93, Designer Lyle Hess 1956. Launched 1990.

Dimensions LOA 24’6” Beam 9‘3” Draft 4’8”

Construction Carvel Nyatoh on Yellow tallow Wood. Copper fastened

Gaff main, Jackyard topsail, jib staysail, Genoa on furler.

All spars clear Oregon. Volvo 2cyl MD7B. Many Extras.

POA. Contact Andrew Wilson.

Home 03 98074156, Work 03 98075489, Mob 0416 058 458

ENDEAVOUR’S GIGANTIC STOP wATCH

Discovered the secret of Colin Anderson’s starting magic.

2001 Colin went to Cowes to witness the 150th anniversary of the Americas Cup.. It was a huge regatta with all the top worlds yachtsmen and classic yachts present. While there he slipped across to Gosport to visit the yards of Camper and Nicholson. Here he found the gigantic stopwatch that T.O.M. Sopwith used on Endeavour. The rumour now is Colin is going to China to visit the Rolex – Beijing factory to have them reproduced.

At the start of a race any helmsman has little time to look at a stop watch, and so T. O. M. Sopwith had a stopwatch almost as big as Big Ben, which was carried up from below and lashed down to the binnacle, the watch during the start being of greater importance than the compass. He was thus able to see at a glance just how the time sped or crawled by, for when we are a long way from the line the time seems to go faster, but when we are roaring at it and hitting with the gun the stopwatch seems to be stopped and lifeless.


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‑yacht.asn.au Issue 24 ‑ December 2007...

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Transcript of ‑yacht.asn.au Issue 24 ‑ December 2007...