LAYING THE KEEL

  • ““Nico” my Mother screamed as my Father tossed me off the back of a small sailing skiff, (not unlike the one below) into the freezing water of Spaarndam. That was my earliest memory of boats. It was 1951, not long after the war, life was probably less precious in Holland in those days than it is today. I was five years old, with the end of a rope tied around my tiny waist. I sometimes wonder why such a frightening memory, such a rude introduction to sailing, was the start of my lifetime obsession with boats.”

  •  
  • I guess that my fascination with boats also has something to do with my Mother’s genetics and not my Father’s idiotic compulsion, to teach me how to swim. Not that seafaring is unusual for any Dutchman. About half the country lays below sea level and Holland was once one of the great seafaring nations, the Dutch charting the oceans of the world.
  •  
  • Zeeman, was my mother’s maiden-name, translated from Dutch, it means sailor, or men of the sea. This heritage was a challenge for my mother who would become seasick just by looking at a boat. I saw her become ill once, after only two steps onto the gangplank of a cruise-liner. So, my attraction to the sea is even more curious.
  •  
  • So why the fascination? Today, we may be drawn to boating by the grinning-boating Facebook pictures and YouTube videos of everyone having a great time, waving, drinking, laughing, swimming, sailing etc. I hope not because let me tell you, only last week a bloke had his arm ripped off by a shark, whilst swimming off the back of his boat. Another took his fly-bridge off because he forgot to check the clearance of the bridge he was passing under. Boats sink, they burst into flames, they cost buckets of money, the materials they are built out of are incompatible with seawater, they pitch and roll, cause chronic sea sickness and death. That’s the warning that should be stamped onto the side of every boat, because boat-brokers won’t tell you. Most of them are stupid or brave enough to own boats themselves. But don't get me wrong, they can also be fun! And if you like messing about in them, why not? Besides, it’s big business and has become an industry.
  •  
  • My next boating adventure was at age seven. This involved the discarding of my native-tongue and much of what I had learned up until then. My parents decided to migrate to Australia, on the ten-pound government subsidized work program. Between that departure and arrival in Australia there was a long, grey sea voyage, peppered with dim, cruel memories and sea sickness.
  •  
  • It was in 1953, that we set sail on the Johan van Oldenbarnevel. She was a post WW2 ocean liner bound for Australia. The largest diesel-powered ship ever to have been constructed in Holland when she was launched in 1929. She served as a troop carrier in both WW11 and the Indonesian War of Independence before being refitted and converted to a migrant ship. 
  •  
  • One rough night, I woke with a thud and a bleeding nose as I was flung from my upper bunk in a storm. Another night the ship came to a halt, everyone rushed onto the decks to see lifeboats being launched and searchlights blazing onto a black sea. A fight had broken out amongst the crew and we were told someone had “fallen” overboard.
  •  
  • More upsetting involved the parting from family and country. The worst of which was separation from our constant companion, Bobby. Bobby was our devoted pet Bouvier, a Belgian breed and much-loved family pet who I fondly remember as a cross between an overgrown poodle and a small bear. My Granny, with her billowing Dutch skirts, a much-loved school teacher, cousins, aunts, uncles and our home, all were left behind as we sailed on my parent’s hope for a better life.
  • Whilst there was the pain of separation, my seven-year-old migration also contained an unfathomable trust in my parents, with the promise of an adventurous sea voyage. One such adventure involved the demon-child-chaser, a big ugly crew member. His job was to catch children who escaped from childcare. He would literally pick you up by the back of the pants and carry you kicking and screaming back to day-care prison. Childcare was boring, even though it was for our survival. So, who could blame my younger sister and me for escaping? 
  •  
  • On one occasion we escaped back to our cabin and decided to take a closer look at the ocean. Somehow, we managed to open a porthole and my six-year-old sister managed to squeeze out to her waist with me holding her by the feet. A scream from the deck above alerted the ugly ogre and, back to prison we went.
  •  

  • And so, the hewing of a child’s life, punctuated by a strange new language, separating all that came before arrival in Australia and all that followed thereafter, punctuated by an unforgettable ocean voyage and laid the foundation of my seventy-year, fascination with boats.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CYCLONE DAVID Chapter 1. Lord Howe Island - Gateway into Hell

Image
    My t-shirt, felt soaked to my underpants. The warm tropical rain was beating almost horizontally into my face and had soaked through the toweling, tucked under the collar of my hooded sailing jacket. It was just after 4am in the morning and the night was pitch black on deck. I’d been awakened an hour earlier by the thumping of Valhalla’s lead keel against coral heads. We had made landfall late, the afternoon before, on our fifth day of a slow uneventful sailing leg from Auckland, NZ. When we encountered what I can only describe as eerie weather conditions. The sea was relatively calm, but most of the afternoon we had battled sudden squalls, very unusual for way out in the Pacific. No sooner would we get all the canvas up and we’d be pulling it down again. Small banks of clouds would suddenly appear in the clear azure sky and rush towards us, hammering us with the squalls they carried in their bellies. But not just from one direction, they came at us from different directions, a
Read more

Ann Britton - 'Dolly on Deck'

Image
Ann Britton, a yachtswoman of the 60s and 70s was a figure who like many women of her time lived in a world where a man’s story was worth telling but a woman’s story went untold or was scoffed at. A world and a time when the media, and sailing clubs were run by beer swilling, Penthouse reading, cigar-smoking men. I want to tell her story, or at least what little I know of Ann Britton, yachtswoman.  Ann’s story, as first woman to skipper her yacht around the world stands alongside famous yachting figures such as Sir Robin Knox-Johnston (first solo nonstop) and Sir Francis Chichester who had their circumnavigations made famous. Whilst at the very same time she was circumnavigating, Ann’s story was relegated to a series of articles, “Dolly on Deck” in yachting magazines. Stories about men of valor and their adventures, whilst yachtswoman where what? Dolly deckhands? She wrote those articles I suppose, but it was p
Read more

CYCLONE DAVID Chapter 2. Eye of the Storm

Image
Chapter 2.         Eye of the Storm              “She’s free, she’s free.” The yacht’s chain had gone slack. As Valhalla slipped off the back of the wave the chain pulled taught and with a tremendous twang, snapped! My reflex was to ram the throttle forward hard. Miraculously the fourteen-inch prop pushed her bow ahead through the next wave which thankfully broke behind us. We were free from our anchorage, and I steered her to a north-east compass bearing into rough but deep water, leaving our anchor and fifty fathoms of chain behind. I’d sometimes though of putting a folding prop on her and now I thanked Neptune that I hadn’t. The sky was getting lighter, the seas were short and sharp and if I think back on it, the wind was probably blowing at least twenty knots as the crew began busying themselves around the deck to quickly set some sails, to steady her and get us away from the island. First up was the stay-sail then the mizzen, which steadied her roll and gave her the power she
Read more