I woke up — success! At least I had been able to sleep and have one or two odd dreams that didn’t involve being in a tent. It was still dark, but the birds started to stir and, as soon as it was light, I got dressed and set about getting breakfast: porridge with fruit salad and another coffee sachet. Michael and I went off with some money to try and find the deposit box for our camping fees, but it wasn’t where Michael had seen it before. I had read a Google review for the Neranie camp site (our next destination at the head of the main lake) that suggested that Rangers came around to collect fees, so we supposed that they might turn up, but we didn’t see one while we were there. The weather had not improved. In fact, the forecast said that the strong winds were starting earlier than expected. We discussed trying to sort out Don’s rig but eventually decided that Don would stay at Shelly Beach while Michael and I would try to head on to Neranie. If the conditions were not good we would come back and we would all head downwind to find a spot on one of the smaller lakes.
Food and cooking equipment went back through the Tupperware–unfriendly forward hatch, and I basically reversed the previous evening’s camp setup process, with the modification of leaving the wet tent fly of the Nighthawk Black Angel II Ubertent out of the dry bag. Michael and I pushed out into the suspiciously calm water, waved farewell to Don and set out north towards Long Point, behind which the rest of the main lake waited.
Neranie is the northernmost point of Myall Lake. I actually went to school for a few months (long, true story, involving my not meeting Dr Who actor, Tom Baker) at Bungwahl Public School, only a few hundred metres from Neranie, but at the time Neranie was a private water–ski park, and so my family used to drive past it on the way to Seal Rocks without ever seeing the lake from the road. It is now part of the Myall Lakes National Park and Michael (and incidentally my cousin originally from Bungwahl who I saw earlier today) assured me it is a wonderful place. With the wind from that direction it would be a safe anchorage, if we could get there.
As before the wind came back a hundred metres or so from the shore, and gradually built in intensity. Within a few minutes it was back to the conditions of the previous afternoon (this was at about nine am) but, as we approached the point, the chop continued to build. Bullets (bursts of intense wind) started to hit the boat, so that with the mainsheet loose and the fully reefed sail flat, weathercocked and humming, the boat still heeled over so that the lee gunwale was within inches of the water, despite my hiking out. Michael was father out and I have no idea how he remained upright with that huge mast. I was starting to make the sort of “hrmming” noises I tend to make when I am not enjoying myself, or in fact am slightly scared.
My tiller extension was starting to work loose again so at one point between gusts I rounded up, sheeted in my mizzen and set to re–tying the lashing that connected it to the tiller. When I finished I looked for Michael and saw him reaching back towards the camp site we had left. I knew he was very keen to make it to Neranie and worried for a moment that he had taken my rounding up as a sign that I was heading back, which I hadn’t intended, but actually was very relieved to do. I bore away to follow him and continued to have a scary time for a few minutes, until I reached the more sheltered conditions in the lee of Long Point. As it turned out, Michael with his decades of experience sailing the lake, had decided to head back himself, so I’m glad it was a mutual decision. Looking at the topographic map now, I notice that there is a low saddle in the hill behind Long Point Bay, which may have been funnelling those concentrated bullets of wind down at us on the water. We closed with the camp, surprising Don who had settled in expecting to spend another day and night there, so Michael set up for tea while Don packed up camp in preparation for a downwind run to our lunch site the previous day, where I could look for my EPIRB.
The designer in his native habitat
My boat is a Ness Boat, one of the earlier Scottish whaleboat–inspired beach boat designs of the famous wooden boat designer Iain Oughtred, a longtime resident of Skye in Scotland, but native to my own hometown of Sydney. Robert Ayliffe, founder of Duck Flat Wooden Boats, encouraged me to consider the design when I asked about a boat suitable for beach camping. The sloping forefoot was suitable for beaching on unknown shores. It was a sea-kindly shape designed to carry terrified men and whale blubber around the North Sea, and the yawl rig looked suitable for stringing up a ridge pole for a tent between the masts. It was a lot of boat for a first project, but Robert’s “bite off more than you can chew, then chew like crazy” motto got me over the hump. I studied the plans, bought tools, went to woodworking classes to learn how to sharpen said tools, then set off with an empty boat trailer and my mother on new year’s day 1996 for one of Duck Flat’s boat building summer schools in South Australia, both of us still reeling from the funeral of my grandmother the previous day.
Build Montage Part One
The summer school was wonderful therapy and we departed a fortnight later with a recognisable hull on a building frame on a trailer, towed by my mighty 1.3 litre Holden (really Suzuki) Barina. We made it back to Sydney before the boat, which was retrieved on a separate, Australia Day weekend, trip to Naranderra with my then new girlfriend now wife, as that’s where the NRMA had been putting a new axle and wheel on the trailer, the previous wheel having departed at speed on the original return trip.
Build Montage Part Two
The boat followed various house moves, marriage and the birth of our two daughters, who spent their formative years believing it to be a thing that sat in the carport for them to recline in while they ate their lunch. The nob on the end of the tiller was an off-cut I retrieved from a fishing trawler being built in a yard at Macduff Scotland on a holiday. Finally it was launched into the waters of Hen and Chicken Bay in 2004, named Harry Henry for my grandfather, whose family originally hailed from Macduff.
Many years later I was reading Nic Compton’s beautiful coffee table book biography of Iain Oughtred. At one point Iain talks about the rig choices of the beach boats and says that after drawing yawl rigs like mine for many years he had an epiphany in a sloop rigged beach boat when he realised it handled perfectly well when stopped head to wind to put in a reef, something that had always been considered an advantage of the mizzen sail–equipped yawl rig. He went on to say that he now prefers the sloop–rigged boats.
I had certainly taken advantage of the mizzen–as–park–brake to fix my tiller extension twice in the past day, but I have perfected another mizzen–only technique that had possibly not occurred to an uber–competent sailor such as Iain (artistic license here: it is an article of faith that Iain is omniscient in all things boat–related). It is, in fact, a technique only a card–carrying member of the live coward’s club such as I would consider leveraging in polite sailing company: behold, “Gentleman Mode”.
I told Michael and Don that I’d head off early because they’d probably catch up with me. I then lashed my mainsail firmly in the bottom of the boat, loosened the snotter on the mizzen sail to give it a bit of downwind power, put the outboard down ready for action and pushed off again into the calm water over the beautiful sandy shallows of Shelly Beach. I barely had any way on the boat, and almost drifted into some trees off where the other boats were pulled up, before a puff of wind got me moving away from the land. Again, as I moved away from the land, the wind and waves built up, but this time all I had in its way was my mizzen: a baby windsurfer sail in the back of the boat. Within minutes I was at full hull speed (double enders don’t plane) with a train of waves running off either side in my wake, completely in control and running back down towards the passage leading to Violet Hill. Normally, I’m a little uncomfortable running because of the danger of an unexpected gybe, but if the mizzen gybes, all that happens is that there’s a muffled thump, and I look around to see if the sheet needs to be trimmed. In heavy weather downwind it’s like having a very powerful, silent outboard, except that it emits a kind of mental radiation that makes you feel scandalously smug.
Gentleman Mode as viewed through a Smug–O–Scope
I was already a kilometre or so out when Michael and Don launched. I was rather concerned for Don, as he was going to be sailing downwind and the fullness of his sail meant he was going to have a lot of power to deal with. They were clearly gaining on me but only got into clear visual range as we approached the mouth of the passage. Michael had warned me not to cut the eastern channel marker as it really did get shallow in there. I kept looking around to count the sails, in case Don disappeared and I had to start the motor to head back and effect a rescue. At some point he was going to have to gybe to make the channel and in those conditions I wasn’t sure the Muffin would survive. In the event, I wasn’t looking when he gybed, and he pulled it off with aplomb. In his honour I think we should introduce a unit of measure for RAID ballsiness: gybing a hybrid sailing dinghy assembled on the ramp the day before, that only goes downwind in over twenty–five knots of wind and a steep chop, carrying your camping gear and outboard while suffering from some form of influenza = 1 DON. If you want to know what constitutes a BARNES (ten DONS) or a DYE (one hundred DONS) just read their books…
With some more attention to the mizzen sheet I can reach in Gentleman Mode, so I aimed for each channel marker, waited to see its colour, and passed on the correct side, although coming off the huge lake into the narrow passage you have to remind yourself that you’re still heading towards the sea, not away from it. As we moved into the shelter of Violet Hill, the mizzen was no longer enough, and the other two boats passed me, with their rigs able to keep them moving with the puffs that made it past the hill. I knew that when we came out of the wind–shadow we would be back in the wind and, as I was still a bit loathe to repeat my experience earlier that morning, I started the outboard.
I originally had a British Seagull motor which, despite being an old thing with barely a thread or two holding the flywheel on the crankshaft, absolutely looked the part for a wannabee work boat. Eventually I bought a Tohatsu, which is a great motor, but looked far too modern. Recently, for the first time, it had experienced starting problems, so the previous Sunday I had taken off the covers, replaced the spark plug and checked the carburettor. I realised that, without the covers, the Tohatsu looked like a black Seagull, with the advantage that I could visually see the fuel level and whether or not the carburettor was flooded, so I decided to leave the covers off.
Now with the others sailing ahead I thought I’d give the newly retro–look outboard a good run, so I continued in Gentleman Mode past Violet Hill. I wasn’t quite paying attention to where the others were heading and realised that I was up the bay to the west, past the entrance to Boolambayte Creek, so I corrected my course and followed the others into the creek, pulling up in the spot I had used the day before. We looked around the lunch tables and in the water (the EPIRB floats) but couldn’t see it anywhere. Later reviewing Michaels’ video of our arrival at the creek on the previous day I confirmed the EPIRB was no longer on my arm, so it must have gone overboard: maybe it got caught on the tiller during a tack. After the morning’s excitement I felt like something hot for lunch, so I put some two minute noodles together with a Continental cup–a–soup, and wound up with something so salty that it probably took a year off my life. I washed it down with a bottle of diet soft drink, which didn’t really help to get rid of the saltiness. Getting back into the boat, accustomed to the accomodating sandy bottom of my Shelly Beach mooring, I stepped off one of the afforementioned slippery tree roots and discovered there was nothing to stand on even a few centimetres into the creek. Luckily my embarrasing scrabble for purchase on the foredeck of my boat was obscured from the others by a screen of trees.
Heading out again, I nosed into the reeds on the windward side of the creek to raise sail, because I’d seen the others doing that the previous day, and it seemed a very Arthur Ransome thing to do, reeds being rare around the waterways of Sydney. I decided to put my main back up but in deference to the conditions I slid the downhaul back on the boom as a way to put more of the sail in front of the mast, because I’d noticed in the past that this made gybes a lot gentler. Off we set, the wind pushing us along the thin section of Boolambayte Lake where we had launched our boats the previous day. On the whole, I must have been having fun, because I had no regrets as we passed the launch ramp and headed on south towards the entrance of Two Mile Lake. However, rounding the point into the lake (Michael’s notes on the map say this is the best lake for prawns), the apparent wind picked up again and, to get to the new campsite on the eastern shore, I had to work to windward again.
There wasn’t enough fetch for a chop to build up but the wind was really hammering, occasionally as bad as the morning’s attempt on Neranie. It would have been okay, but I seemed to be tacking back and forth making very little progress towards the shore and getting frazzled by the gusts. I didn’t see how the others did it (I assume Don motored) but it took what seemed like ages to get up into the glassy sheltered water off the campsite. Again, learning more about the rig with these longer tacks I now suspect that sliding the downhaul back reduces the already low aspect ratio of the reefed sail (the yard lowers as the boom goes forward) to the point where it can barely work to windward. I’ll have to try sliding it a bit more forward the next time I’m working to windward and see if it makes any difference.
Frazzled Arrival Photos By Michael Smith
The campsite had a single beach just big enough for the three boats side by side, although my boat is a lot heavier and was not pulled up as far as the others. There were some small trees not much taller than our masts lining the shore. At the back of the beach there were a few low bushes with sandy paths on either side, and behind them were some campsites between some tall gum trees. This was a less established camp site than the last one, with no toilet and no grass. The ground was sand and tree bark with, as we quickly discovered, a disappointing amount of broken glass, particularly around the fireplace. As a child I had got my first stitches by stepping out of a canoe onto a broken beer bottle at Smiths Lake (the same beach where I had picked up the stick for my previous tiller extension) so it was a strictly shoes–on (or at least thongs, that’s flip–flops for you Cruising Dinghy Association people and jandals for your NZ equivalents) campsite for me.
I did a careful scan of the tree branches around the camp to see if any looked dodgy in case the wind came up in the night, but they seemed to be okay. Considering that there was a National Parks sign proclaiming this as a campsite, I supposed that the Rangers would have to give a cursory check of the trees every now and then, given the litigious nature of modern society. Putting those thoughts aside, I considered the ground where my Beverly Hills RoboCop Lethal Untouchable 3000 would be pitched, a reasonably flat bit of sand with a small anthill and large tunnel in the middle of it. I had spotted a few bull ants as I walked around, so I was particularly happy that I had the ground sheet with me, because it gave me a sand and ant free area to work on. This time the tent went up quickly, and I paid attention to the direction the fly guy ropes went so that there was a lot more tension in the head–to–toe direction to keep the fly off the inner tent. The other improvement on the previous night’s arrangements was to keep almost all of the dry bags outside the inner tent under the eaves of the fly for more room to sleep. I figured that they’re sealed and nothing is going to crawl into them, particularly if they don’t contain food. I found that I could use towels and yesterday’s shirt to brush the sand out of the tent and then off the groundsheet, so I wasn’t going to have a problem with a sandy sleeping bag.
Transfering the water, food and cooking equipment from the boat I realised that my programmer’s hands were not holding up very well to the sailing camping lifestyle. One of my nails was split and others were either bloody or sunburnt. Opening the hatch catches (my own design, a hardwood tongue held in place with rubber bands) was normally not a problem, but this time it was quite painful. I heated up a tin of soup and picked at other bits and pieces. When I returned the food to the boat I left my water container in the camp chair to save carrying it back up from the boat in the morning, and to hold the chair down in case the wind came up during the night.
Michael had checked the weather report, and with conditions looking like they were going to deteriorate even further overnight, reasoned that it might not be worth camping another night after this one. I was feeling like I had already learned a lot, and felt that I may need a day to recover and dry everything out when I got back to Sydney before going back to work. My daughter was also starting her HSC exams on Thursday and I thought it would be good to get back earlier, so that if anything alarming happened, it didn’t happen on the day before her exam. All this (and the state of my hands) considered, I said that I’d aim to get back on the trailer at lunchtime the following day. Michael and Don weren’t going to make up their minds just yet and would see what the weather was like in the morning.
Day Two Camp Site
This evening was more social, and discussions ranged from reverse–engineering land yachts and what to do when your farm produces more food than you can possibly eat, to whitewater rafting on the Nymbodia River — apparently where Don honed his high scoring DON abilities — and island properties. Michael told me about some of the historical research he’d done into Nelson Bay’s WWII defences and local Aboriginal dreamtime stories recorded by earlier settlers. He also showed Don and me a tiny “Flying Duck” orchid growing in the sand right there in the camp that looked like a wasp, and that reacted to touch by springing upside down to cover a real wasp trying to mate with it with its pollen.
This evening was more comfortable despite the weather, which got more emphatically wet. I was startled at first by the noise my newly taut fly made when large drops of rain concentrated by the branches overhead drummed on the fabric, but the mind is impressive in its ability to tune these things out and I didn’t need much of the news (I still had excellent mobile Internet here) to put me to sleep.
Thanks again to Mark Walker for the edit. Continue reading with Day Three.
Vast Similitude 