Saturday 27 April 2013

Kerry's Member-ship at the Black Swan

When Bill and I went looking to purchase a vessel over in Gibraltar, we spent a great deal of time in the pubs dotting the main street of ‘The Rock’. Those of a skeptical nature might be inclined to construe this as a waste of time—as nothing more than an excuse to pour copious quantities of grog down our throats. But nothing could be further from the truth.
The Rock

It is a well documented fact that seafarers are rather partial to a drop—Bill and I simply capitalized on that fondness in order to enhance our knowledge of the marine market. We also met some interesting people—some of them being members of the fairer sex.

We’d been in Gib. about a week when the two of us walked into the Black Swan one evening for a couple of relaxing beers (as opposed to those consumed in the line of research) and were greeted by a group of five ladies. I had a couple of words then detached myself and headed for the bar to get our drinks.

Standing there alone, scowling into his beer was one of the seafarers we’d met during our travels. His name was Kerry and he’d lost most of his teeth in a car accident. “I can’t believe it,” he said forlornly, his voice slurring through toothless gums, “I’ve been here two years and I hardly know anyone. You and Bill are here for a week and the girls are all over you.”

Instead of telling the truth—that Bill simply had the gift of the gab when it came to flattery and bullshit—I said, “Didn’t you see what we did when we walked in the door?” Kerry replied in the negative. “We gave a quick flash of the merchandise. Girls like to see what they might be getting.”

I don’t know how I kept a straight face but I did—and incredibly, Kerry appeared to believe me.

Me and Bill
I rejoined Bill and the ladies and we chatted with them for a while then went to stand at the bar. We were at one end—Kerry was at the other. I had my back to him when I mentioned to Bill what I’d told him about impressing the ladies.

Bill glanced over at Kerry and his eyes went wide as saucers. His mouth dropped open and his face flushed crimson. I turned around.

There was Kerry, facing the bar as he swilled down a pint of beer with his private part hanging out. He was obviously quite drunk and attempting become even drunker in order to work up the courage to turn around and introduce Mister Dick to the ladies.

Choking back the laughter that threatened to overwhelm us, we waited with bated breaths to see what would happen. As it turned out the beer did not measure up to the task of steeling Kerry's nerve. He finished it, tucked his appendage back into his pants and left the bar without a word.

Bill and I agreed it was just as well—the man was endowed like a horse!


(Edited by Davina Chapman.  Comment: If these blogs get any ruder, I shall be exercising editor’s right of censorship!)

Sunday 21 April 2013

Duel by Sextant


Paul was one of the best hands I’ve ever had the pleasure of sailing with. He knew what he was doing and possessed boundless energy. Sadly, a couple of years back he was lost overboard while sailing the Indian Ocean in his steel schooner.

On one of our voyages, Paul and I were about two hours out of Antigua after a trans-Atlantic crossing when he produced a surprise bottle of champagne to celebrate the completion of the voyage. “Might be a little warm,” he cautioned, “but it’s be wet.”
Paul*

The thought of warm champagne brought to mind something my father had once told me: He’d been stationed in Borneo during WW2 and had not always enjoyed the luxury of refrigeration. When he and his mates wanted cold beer they would put the bottles in a sack, hang it from a tree and dribble gasoline over it. The evaporation, Dad claimed, cooled the grog to a surprising degree.

When I mentioned this to Paul, his eyes lit up and he darted below, returning shortly with an old pair of jeans and the sewing kit. In no time at all, he’d whipped up a bag from a severed leg of the jeans, stuck the champagne in it and hung it from the boom. Above this, he suspended a plastic bottle of alcohol (from the stove), the bottom of which he’d punctured.

In the twenty minutes it took for the alcohol to drip from the bottle, our champagne had cooled to the point that the outside of the glass was frosted. Inside was superb.

That was Paul—constantly looking for a challenging project. He was also extremely competitive:

I think it was around 1990 when I purchased a 33ft. Moody in Mallorca, Spain, and Paul volunteered to assist in sailing her to Gibraltar. We had a good nor-wester of around fifteen knots to skim us past Ibiza, but after that the winds turned fluky and our speed dropped to around four knots. But we were basically headed in the right direction.

At the time, Paul and I were purists who frowned upon the use of any navigational device other than a sextant. I can’t recall whether this attitude was of a philosophical nature or came about due to Paul’s mistrust of Russians. He was born in Hungary and had fled his country some time after the Soviets invaded it in 1956. I seem to recall him worrying that if we came to rely on GPS for navigation and the Russians gained control of the satellite system they’d perhaps send us crashing into uncharted Russian rocks.

At the time of the Majorca voyage, neither of us had done any sailing for a couple of years and were both kind of hesitant to go through the process of re-learning the sextant. You get rusty quickly when you’re not using the instrument on a regular basis.

We knew roughly where we were—or thought we did—so I wasn’t overly concerned about hitting any chunks of land. I’d been hoping to spot a lighthouse or pick up the mainland Spanish coast and just follow it to Gibraltar, but this wasn’t to be. Two and a half days past Ibiza, there’d been no sign of either light or land.

It was mid-afternoon of a hazy day when I figured it was time to take a fix with the sextant. Paul saw what I was doing and instantly came alive—fired with the promise of competition. “I’ll grab my sextant and we’ll see who gets the best position,” he joyfully announced.

So there we were, the two of us perched on the coach-roof peering through our eye-pieces at a hazy sun, scribbling down readings and times in our respective notebooks. I swear Paul was shielding his book with a hand lest I sneak a peek and copy his results.

Paul finished his sights first and with a triumphant bray, headed below for the almanac and mathematical tables to plot our position. He’d managed to turn the exercise into a race as well.

Leaving the wind-vane steering to keep us on course, the two of us sat at the saloon table working frantically on our figures. Again, Paul beat me. After close to an hour (remember, we were both out of practice), he let out another triumphant bark and grabbed the chart.

But somewhere along the line he’d erred. According to his plot we were a few miles off New York.

I was closer. I had us in Portugal. And when I say in I mean about twenty miles inland from Lisbon! Back to the almanac and tables.

Caught up in our competition, we’d kind of forgotten that we were sailing in an area where we might expect to encounter other vessels. Occasionally one of us would poke his head out the hatch, take a cursory glance around, then race back to his calculations. It was not what you’d call keeping a proper watch.

I was first to recalculate my position line and plot it on the chart. “Holy shit,” I exclaimed, racing for the hatchway. The haze had lifted a little to reveal, some five hundred yards in front of us, a beach packed with tourists.

And in our wake was a clustered group of small fishing boats. We’d managed to sail right through the middle of them. What a strange sight we must have presented to those fishermen—an apparently unmanned vessel cleaving blithely through their fleet.

*Paul worried that the Russians would drag him back to Hungary--maybe.

 ( Edited by Davina Chapman)

Saturday 13 April 2013

The Sargasso Sea and the Frenchman's Fish


People frequently ask the question, “Didn’t you ever get bored sailing for weeks on end across the ocean?”

I may appear simple when I answer in the negative, but I can honestly say that I cannot recall one moment of boredom. Maybe it’s because at sea I have no expectations of being entertained by someone else’s idea of entertainment.

Lure me to a fireworks display and after four or five of the things have exploded in the sky, I’m ready to go home. Perhaps because I can pretty much understand how it all works. The world we live in is different—it baffles me a great deal.

A lot of movies and the bulk of television bore me. But nature never has. Even as a kid I could sit and watch waves crashing on rocks for hours on end with my mind conjuring up all kinds of pictures and stories.

Nature is something that tends to free my imagination rather than tying it to some other person’s thoughts and ideas.
Judy

Judy (first wife) and I were drifting through the Sargasso Sea aboard our twenty-six foot Westerly Centaur. Our only routine once we arrived in calmish waters was to perform half an hour of exercise of a morning. These contortions were none too formal though—more of a laugh than anything else.

As we were well out of any shipping lanes, we kept no formal watches. Ocean-going ships adhere strictly to the lanes in the interest of fuel economy. The days were warm and sunny and neither of us had bothered with a stitch of clothing for over a week.

One day, while I was below decks enjoying an afternoon nap, Judy shook me awake. “There’s a sailboat coming toward us,” she announced.

“You’re seeing things,” I replied. “There’s no one out here but us.”

That got her. She had to poke her head out the hatch to check with the binoculars. “It is another boat,” she exclaimed.

And sure enough, something of around our size was heading directly toward us. Amazingly, if we hadn’t seen each other in that vast ocean, our bows would have clunked together. There was little wind so no damage would have resulted, but it would obviously have been quite a surprise.

As it would have been grossly improper to attend a mid-Atlantic meeting in the buff, I pulled on a pair of shorts while Judy donned a bikini and busied herself in front of a mirror with lipstick and other stuff.

A lone Frenchman was aboard the other vessel. We both dropped our sails and he plunged into the water and swam over to us bearing a full bottle of Johnnie Walker Red. Needless to say, we made him most welcome.

Judy cooked up some lunch and we spent a wonderful afternoon downing the scotch and swapping yarns. Every now and again I’d pop my head out through the hatch to see where his boat was and if it had drifted too far I’d motor closer to it.

As darkness descended, a light breeze came up. The grog was finished so we decided to go our separate ways—he toward France, Judy and I toward Canada.

For most of this voyage we had also enjoyed the company of three little blue fish swimming just in front of our bow. They were fascinating little guys and obviously had boundless energy as they held their position day and night regardless of our speed. I’ve no idea what they ate but it must have been the marine equivalent of fast-food taken on the fly.

They became our pets and we’d check up on them at regular intervals to make sure they were okay. After our mid-Atlantic meeting, we had five fish—the extra two obviously purloined from the Frenchman.

Some two months later we received a postcard from our mid-Atlantic friend. It was gratifying to note that he'd survived the remainder of his voyage, despite the loss of his fish.

(Guest editor Davina Chapman)

Saturday 6 April 2013

Studying the Principles of Trajectory


I’m lurching back half a century here to my days at North Sydney Technical High School in Australia.

Modern thought has it that corporal punishment is not a deterrent to bad behaviour. I say rubbish. It worked in my day—why would it be different now?

Johnny Woods, our woodworking teacher, was ferocious in his application of the cane. Nobody messed around in his class.

By contrast, Mr. Pugh the physics teacher, was only a moderate caner - I was never reluctant to test his patience.

We are led to believe that temptation can be overcome with a strong will. But not all of us are adequately equipped in this department. Take Adam in the Garden of Eden for example. He succumbed to the temptation of naked breasts and other delightful feminine parts.

My temptation—regarding the incident I’m about to relate—was far more prosaic. It arrived in the form of an orange. A green orange. A rotten orange.

It was a temptation I was unable to resist.

The orange—obviously a remnant of someone’s lunch—must have been lurking in the shelf under this particular desk for at least three weeks.

Normally all that would be encountered under a desk in an all-boy school would be gobs of chewing gum and the gleanings from a number of different noses, so I have no idea as to what prompted me to reach under there in the first place.

Maybe simple boredom. It was mid-afternoon on a roasting summer’s day and Mr. Pugh droned on interminably as he wrote up a lengthy dissertation about something-or-other on the blackboard.

Jeff
Whatever it was that had led me to discover the orange however, became incidental at that point. The fruit took on a life of its own. It was dusted with green mould…soft, sensual.

Oblivious to the whirring cogs of my Machiavellian young mind, Mr. Pugh ploughed on as he scratched chalk over the blackboard.

Cradling the squishy green orb in my hand I turned to my desk-mate Jeff Campbell and put to him the following proposition: “If you can hit Pugh on the back of the head with this, I’ll give you a dollar”.*

Jeff was always willing to embrace a challenge that flouted ‘the rules’. He removed the orange from my hand, stood, took careful aim…and let fly.

But he missed. The orange whipped past Pugh’s ear and splattered spectacularly on the blackboard.

Even at the time, I mentally awarded Pugh full marks for his reaction. He simply paused—chalk in hand—and without turning around said loudly but very calmly, “Lawson and Campbell GET OUT.”

Needless to say, Jeff and I failed Physics that year.

*Probably worth around twenty today.