THE SAGA OF MY DINGHY

In the background you can see the good ship Mariner ( she is just behind the yacht with the dinghy tied to her stern and has a blue cover over the mains'l on the boom). In the foreground is my trusty dinghy with my yachts registration number painted in the stern sheets - KZ4472. She is a fibreglass clinker dinghy of approximately 8 1/2 feet long of unknown design. I bought her a couple of years ago off the online auction TradeMe for $460 when my older and smaller wooden dinghy nearly drowned me one day (long story and too embarrassing to tell). I keep the dinghy permanently tied to the pontoon and use her to get out to the good ship Mariner and also as my tender when going away for day trips around the harbour or short trips up the coast. For longer trips I take an inflatable which I can easily get up on deck.

I picked this new dinghy up from the seller at Snell's Beach about 100km away. If you were ever wondering how well an upturned dinghy travels upside down on the roof rack of an aging Honda then the answer is it depends on the driver (long story and too embarrassing to tell).

If you look closely at the bow of the dinghy you will see that she is chained to the pontoon. This is not as satisfactory as how she was originally secured, which was with a long length of stainless steel wire rope which enabled the dinghy to float well away from the pontoon allowing other dinghies and their occupants easy access.

Well shipmates, about four weeks after I had this new dinghy back and wired to the pontoon, I went down one day and found the dinghy had disappeared! - I don't think I have been as furious for a long time and I was a long time furious believe me. It wasn't so much the money involved, it was the time taken searching out and bidding on the online auctions and having to drive all that way to pick her up.
I knew the dinghy had been stolen because I could see that the piece of thin wire painter still attached to the pontoon by the padlock had been flexed backwards and forwards until it had broken. A pair of oars had also been stolen from a dinghy close by belonging to the owner of the yacht opposite mine on the moorings.

I reported the theft to the local Police Station - and I must say to my embarrassment that there was a point where I was describing with great eloquence the pedigree of the thief, where a certain glance from the constable had that - tone it down or you will be arrested look about it.

The dinghy was found two days later by my friend whose oars were stolen. My dinghy had one of his oars in it, we never found the other one. In the bottom of the dinghy was a plastic bag with fish bait in it - so someone had stolen the dinghy to do a bit of night fishing.

My dinghy doesn't have a name and I shall have to think of one - something along the lines of 'Rinky Dink', 'Calabash' or the dinghy equivalent of 'Hunky Dory'. - Just had a thought and a Dilemma - because I got my dinghy back perhaps I should name it 'Boomerang' - Hmmm, as a Kiwi I might have to think about that one.

THE FILM "MAMMA MIA" AND TAI - MO - SHAN

The Yacht Tai - Mo - Shan in the English Channel approaching Dartmouth - 1934

This is a photograph of the Tai Mo Shan taken in the English Channel at the end of her voyage from Hong Kong.

This is the yacht that played the part of the yacht ‘Fernando’ in the vastly popular film “Mamma Mia” which featured the music of ABBA.

In many ways the history of this yacht and the exploits of its crew both during this voyage and during World War Two are the equal of any applause for the film “Mamma Mia”

Two yachts designed by H.S.Rouse were to become very famous in the post-war era. The Tai Mo Shan and more famously the Tzu Hang, the 46 foot ketch, built by Hop Kee in 1938. The Tzu Hang survived fifteen years of world cruising in the hands of Miles and Beryl Smeeton and underwent a terrifying pitchpoling in 1954 and later a capsize off Cape Horn in 1956. These exploits are featured in Smeetons book “Once is Enough”.

In 1932, five adventurous young naval officers financed the building of a 54 foot ocean racing ketch in the yard of the Hong Kong & Whampoa Dock Co Ltd. She was designed by H.S. Rouse and constructed in teak and named Tai-Mo-Shan [High Hat Hill], after the highest mountain in the colony.

The Voyage of 16,217 miles without a motor, from Hong Kong to Dartmouth is told in Martyn Sherwoods book “The Voyage of the Tai – Mo – Shan.

After deciding to economise by not installing an engine, the officers had to ask the formidable Admiral Howard Kelly for permission to sail the new yacht to England by an unorthodox route, that is against the prevailing winds, via Japan, the Kuriles, the Bering Sea, the Aleutians, California, Panama and the West Indies. "Quite rightly", wrote Lt Martyn Sherwood later in his book, "We were placed on half-pay for the entire voyage". The admiral's approval, came with the comment that it was "refreshing to note this spirit of adventure and initiative", and also with a pay cut, down to seven shillings a day for each man. This lack of money, in sailing Tai-Mo-Shan to Britain without a motor, was to leave them stranded for sixteen days on Crooked Island in the Bahamas. Admiralty penny-pinching was somewhat balanced by a splendidly-timed congratulatory telegram, sent to Dartmouth by King George V.

The crew were four submariners and a naval doctor; Lt Martyn Sherwood, 32, Lt George Salt, 24, Lt Philip Francis, 24, Surgeon Lt Bertie Ommaney-Davis, 27, and sailing-master Lt R.E.D. "Red" Ryder, 24. All these crew distinguised themselves during World War Two by winning four DSOs, a Croix de Guerre and a VC between them.

It has been revealed recently that the voyage was in fact fully supported (except for full financial support) by British Naval Intelligence with the brief to see and record as much as they could about Japanese naval movements.

A LITTLE BIT OF DETECTIVE WORK

Painting - Jack Coggins

This is a yawl with a bone in her teeth. The yacht is one that has been built from a particular yacht design. I am going to take a punt as to the identity of that design.

I see from the flag that is flying off the leech of the mizzen that she is from the United States. By looking at the point at the bottom of the stern I can see that she is of hard chine hull form. Comparing the size of the crew with the size of the boat I would estimate that the yacht is about 34 feet in overall length excluding the bowsprit. The other features of the yacht that are worthy of note are the combination bowsprit and boomkin and the cabin form without a doghouse.

So what yacht is this? Well what gives her identity away is really the overall look of the boat. Its not really a hard bit of detective work at all and many sailors who know their boats would pick her for what she is. So what is she? - well I think that she is an example of the V-bottom Sea Bird design, a type developed by Captain Thomas Fleming Day and yacht designers on the staff of the Rudder Magazine. The reason for using the V-bottom type was that it is easier for the amateur builder to lay down and construct this type of hull form.

A smaller edition of this yacht (26 feet) was sailed across the Atlantic in the very early 1900s by Fleming Day. It was one of the great early transatlantic crossings.

But a more famous voyage was completed by the bigger 34 foot edition pictured above by the legendary Harry Pidgeon who completed a single handed circumnavigation in the 1920s in his yacht Islander. He wrote a classic book about his exploits called "Around The World Single - Handed". It was at the beginning of the golden age of small boat circumnavigations - an age marked by the spirit of courage and the robustness of simplicity.

These were far off and much simpler days when a small yacht could come and go throughout the Pacific Islands and many other areas of the world without the red tape and bureaucracy of today. These adventures were uncommon and the sailors of this era were treated as heroes.

They were heroes. These were the days before GPS, SSB radios, VHF, EPIRPs and air searches. You left harbour and your return depended solely on your seamanship, the seaworthiness of your little ship with a little bit of luck for good measure.

Many of this type of yacht were built by amateurs all over the world. My Uncle built this larger version here in New Zealand in the late 1940s and called her Joy. He started the ill fated 1951 Wellington to Lyttleton yacht race in her that saw four yachts perish. He left Wellington but returned because of storm force winds and huge waves in Cook Strait - but shipmates that's another story.

Harry Pidgeon and Islander - I salute you, and all circumnavigators old and new - such a voyage is a huge accomplishment indeed.

NIGHT PASSAGE

Photo - Alden Smith

NIGHT PASSAGE - Poem by Denis Glover

Plotted sure for set, eye to weather,
The revs eased down
I nosed happily along
The dark coast where I belong.

"Now look at dawning froth
Beating at hills held by rock teeth.
If you like it's like a frilly petticoat
White - beaten against the reef."

"Aye," grunted Mick, wise in the ways
Of the swirl and flick
Of women and wave. "Aye, purty - purty,
But a sea petticoat can be dirty."

At least in the east light seen
The hills' breasts rose clean.

OFF BANKS PENINSULA

Painting by Jack Coggins

OFF BANKS PENINSULA - By Denis Glover

Clear and sweet in the crystal weather
The sail and the shroud
Are walking and talking together.

Wind tumbles from the sail, the blocks
Clattering, and the hull dies.

To drift at the cliff's foot
Is to feel the south. The swell
Heaves wide and free like a mature woman,
And the rocks,
Bannered with weed among the gulp
And tumour of the tide
Accept with patience each long kiss.

The far brown hills swelling triumphant
From the plain of blue to the blue sky
Bosom the easy cloud,
Serene and self-possessed rising
Amid illimitable seas endlessly sad.

Wind whispers in: the yacht again
Asserts direction on the trackless tide.

I MUST GO DOWN TO THE SEAS AGAIN

Painting by Jack Coggins

Sea Fever

I must go down to the seas again,
to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship
and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song
and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face
and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again,
for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call
that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day
with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume,
and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again
to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way
where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn
from a laughing fellow rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream
when the long trick's over.

Poem by John Masefield

MAKE WAY FOR THE RETURN OF SAIL

The Cutty Sark, Greenwich London - Photograph - Alden Smith

Any sailor worth his sea boots and his medicinal purposes only hip flask of rum, knows that when she starts taking it green over the bows and the spindrift starts flying, you turn your pipe upside down and suck harder. This keeps the tobacco in and the embers alight! Its really just a question of common sense and basic physics. Sailors are full of common sense and Triston Jones was a sailor with a good understanding of the physics and agelessness of wind propulsion. This is what he said about the world and its reliance on oil.

"I can't wait for the oil wells to run dry, for the last gob of black, sticky muck to come oozing out of some remote well. Then the glory of sail will return." - Triston Jones

You know as well as I do shipmates that this desire flies as high as a warm wind filled spinnaker in the hearts of those who love sail. When peoples faces appear gloomy at the words 'Peak Oil' we smile a smile as broad as the Mississippi in full flood. Aye, its an ill wind that blows no one any good and what's blowing a cold blast around the smelly empty tanks of noisy petrol heads is blowing a warm trade wind song around the poetic hearts of sailors. The beauty and strength of this lyrical wind shipmates is that it is free, just as its always been.