A STIFF NORTHEASTER on Pittwater

• The lifeboat style craft was anchored astern and to port of us. We were hunkered down in Valhalla’s cockpit and into our second or third coldie, watching the gale tear at the canvas cover of the Ranger’s boat, exposing the small single piston engine of the 18ft dory. Suddenly we heard yelling, carried on the wind from behind us, from the direction of our bow.
• My mate Rastas and I were sheltering from the 25-knot northeaster. Our 60ft ketch securely anchored in Pittwater, off  The Basin Campground, a popular weekend destination in the early 70s. With anchor chain taught, she hung parallel to the shore and adjacent to a great big yellow sign, warning of a submarine cable. If you’re a Sydney-boatie, you’ll know the spot. We stood up, turned and peered over our cabin roof to see what the fuss was about, to discover a forty-foot fly-bridge-cruiser, a Hawksbury Halvorsen rental, sprinting into The Basin at about the same speed as the northeaster, 25-knots. 
• 
  
  
•  For those readers who know the spot, you will also know that beyond where we were anchored there is very little seaway with a bunch of old public moorings (which may no longer be there today) allowing very little room to manoeuvre. It must have been mid-week because I recall the buoys were all empty (hard to believe today). On the bow of the rapidly approaching Halvorsen crouched a feeble looking old man with a boat hook in one hand and hanging on for dear-life to the rail with the other, whilst a young skipper shouted commands from the fly-bridge. The length of the pole on the boat-hook, from some eighty meters, seemed shorter than the distance from the bow to the water.
• Rastas, an old sailing buddy and an experienced surf boat captain, (still sweeping a surf-boat at 74 years of age), ducked his head down.
  “Shit here we go. Get down! I want to finish this beer first”, he winged prophetically. Laughing he pulled me down behind the cabin roof, out of sight, into the cockpit. 
• When you are a young single man, looking for adventure and not fully aware of, or concerned with the consequences of dangerous manoeuvres, seeing this type of boating-bravado can be extremely funny to watch. So, we sucked on our cans, hunkered down again and waited in amusement to see how things might unfold as the interloper raced past and into view. 
• Actually, to our surprise, the boat pulled up right on a mooring buoy and spun into the wind quite adroitly, unfortunately, to little advantage. Because as the skipper powered down, the northeaster caught the top-heavy rental causing events to happen very quickly. The young helmsman, caught by surprise applied power-on again and barked orders to his old man to grab the mooring (with the very short boat-hook). The boat lurched forward towards the Ranger's dory, the old man fell to his knees, his ashen face clearly visible, he managed to snag the mooring momentarily, then abruptly dropped the boat-hook overboard, before it could pull him over with it. 
• With the engine now on full bore, the hire boat pirouetted in its own length, missing the dory by a few feet when the propeller snagged the dory’s mooring rope and stalled the hire boat’s engine.
  Rastas sucked furiously on his can, “F**ck!” he chortled as we watched the weight of the wind on the cruiser half sink the dory. 
• The panicked, young skipper leaped down onto the bow and without spotting the big yellow sign, released the anchor. The anchor snagged instantly and held. The Halvorsen now listing to starboard, hung broadside to the 25-knot wind, stern tangled to dory mooring-rope and anchor snagged forward on a submerged cable. The stern of the hire boat pointed in our direction. The skipper rushed aft to help his old man, to save the dory from sinking, it was filling up with water fast and I think it was at this point he, the skipper, spots us in our grinning hide. Quick as a flash he whips out what looks like a Bowie knife and hacks at the mooring rope… the rope twanged loose, taking half the index finger of his right hand with it. We could see the blood spurt and were no longer amused. 
• The Halvorsen’s stern now loose, swept around 90-degrees on the anchor which now held the bow steady into the wind. Bow-on to us she lay about two sheet-rope lengths astern, about 200 feet, or about 3 of our boat lengths. The missed buoy lay 50ft ahead. 
• The Ranger’s boat, half full of water has stopped sinking. Suddenly the young skipper reappears on the bow. His right hand crudely wrapped in a towel bandage, eyeballing us he shouts,
• “Help!” as he starts waving both arms frantically. I jumped up and gave the poor bugger a wave and a nod, to settle him down.
  “John, you realise we’re going to have to give this clown a hand, no pun intended” I told Rastas, whilst finishing my beer. 
• After a quick chat, we decide the best plan is to club-haul the cruiser off the submerged cable and moor him to the missed buoy. I had recently renewed my Genoa-sheet ropes, each was 120 feet long, I consider the risk. Damaged braided sheet rope is useless and I was well aware that buying into someone else’s trouble can mean trouble for those attending. But what else could you do? 
• I tied two of the sheet ropes together and fasten one end onto a stern-cleat and tossed the rest into our dingy, moored astern. The cruiser was now moored directly downwind so we eased our way in the dinghy, towards the Halvorsen by letting out our rope. 
• Just a couple of polite niceties were exchanged then I told the young man the value of my new sheet ropes, and explained how we could help. I managed to extract a promise that if he stuffed-up my sheet-rope it was going to cost him $300 for new rope. His promise didn’t seem sincere, probably he was in shock, what can you do? 
• I explain that we will haul him forward, from our yacht, onto the empty mooring buoy about fifty feet ahead of him. As we do so, he will have to try and free his anchor and secure his boat to the mooring. We secured the other end of my sheet-rope to his anchor-post and pull ourselves along the rope back aboard Valhalla. As it turned out, hauling him forward against the wind was fairly simple, retrieving his anchor wasn’t, so he cut it loose and dumped it.
•  “Only a rental” he explained with a shrug later, right?
•  
• We secured him to the buoy, and were invited onboard the cruiser. Down below, we were introduced to Mum and Dad who were sitting close, side by side on the leather saloon settee, stiff backed, hands clenched on thighs, clearly shaken. Mum's face was as ashen as dads had been on the fore-deck earlier.
• “This is our first time on a boat” dad blurted out, looking up at me apologetically.
• What numbskulls power into a blind cove, under full throttle, with a 25-knot wind up their arse?
• I turn to hand bandaged son and his younger wife and ask with a droll smile.
• “Well, did you learn anything new today”? 
• “Yea, we sure did. I’m never, ever coming into this f**king bay again.”  replied the cocky bastard.