How did it happen that two landlubber computer programmers, on contract in the far corners of the world, decided to exchange their perfectly good if somewhat hectic lifestyles for the uncertainties and trials of bluewater cruising?


This is the tale of the how. The why you can figure out for yourselves.

Pindimara came equipped with a neat three-blade folding propeller, designed to collapse in on itself when under sail in order to reduce drag. It was supposed to be nice shiny brass but, in fact, bore a closer resemblance to an old hub cap that had been languishing in a coral reef. Wielding a wire brush on an angle-grinder, I made short work of all the white stuff, and then took the whole thing apart and greased it and reassembled it with a liberal coating of lanolin (which made me smell like an old sheep). Then I painted the saildrive itself with several coats of special aluminium-friendly light blue paint, and stood back to admire my handywork. Lovely, it was. A work of art.

On the Monday morning, we were up bright and early to supervise Pindimara's return the water. However, we couldn't find any of the slipway staff; because of the rain they were all hiding somewhere and wouldn't answer their radios, so we had to go to work and hope that they'd reappear up and do the job later that day.

In the evening, we turned up and she was waiting for us on the fuel dock. While Bronwyn drove the car around the bay to our home marina, I motored off into Pittwater to meet her. Once in the open water, I couldn't resist opening the throttle to see what would happen. Remember that before we started this work, she would barely make one knot. Four knots... five knots... six knots... seven knots. Incredible, and very, very smooth.

Pretty happy, I made my way through the falling dusk to the marina dock, where I could vaguely see Bronwyn standing on the decking, and the low shape of the Zodiac in the water beside her. The tide was low and opposed to the rain and wind. I had to be careful in my approach and so nosed up ever so carefully, squinting in the dying light. Then, suddenly, nothing seemed to be working. The engine started hammering loudly on the deck under my feet and I couldn't get any control. I managed to swing away, and came around for another try. Had I hit the bottom? Was I tangled in fishing line?

Bronwyn waited, puzzled, on the dock as the boat ran around in circles. I really couldn't make any sense of what was happening; steering and power seemed to come and go at random. Finally I got the nose up to Bronwyn, who hopped aboard, trailing the tender behind her. Immediately I powered away to prevent the current from ramming us into the dock and, although the bow peeled away, it still all felt very wrong.

We were almost around and clear when the engine started banging again and the yacht started to crab mysteriously sideways toward an oyster-encrusted piling. I glanced back; if I let off the power, the stern would connect with the dock; if I did nothing, we would hit the piling. Bronwyn stood on the pulpit, shouting something and I realised that she still had the tender's painter in her hand. I hit the power, the engine slammed up against the soles of my feet and the yacht ploughed into the Zodiac inflatable and crushed it against the razor-sharp oysters.

Seconds later, we bounced free. I killed the power and watched as the crushed remains of our tender bobbed sadly to the surface, remarkably still afloat despite the slashes down its side. Getting to the mooring was hard work with little in the way of power or steering and eventually we realised that we would have to stay the night and sort it out in the morning because there was no way that we were rowing back to shore in half a tender.

Morning came. The tender looked pretty bad in the light of day, but the yacht had sustained no hull damage at all. With a slack tide and no wind, we motored around a bit trying to figure out what was wrong but, in the end, crabbed our way to the water dock and asked a local firm of engineers to take a look. Later that day, I got a phone call. They'd sent a diver down and, apparently, one of the blades of our shiny beautiful folding propeller was twisted backwards, giving us two thirds forward power and one third back. No wonder the engine was banging, trying to drive such a thing. I asked the engineers to take her back up onto the slip and fit our emergency backup prop so that we could take a look at the old one.

For a couple of days, I thought that I'd somehow fitted one of the blades backward and I couldn't understand how that was possible. However, once we got hold of the failed prop, it became clear that I hadn't been immediately to blame. The brass teeth that work the folding mechanism were old and worn and, in fact, the layer of coral was all that had been holding the thing together. They would have failed eventually, but cleaning them up had hastened the day.

The tender came home to live on our balcony. Every day I would pump up the poor flaccid thing, add soapy water, draw circles around the biggest bubbles, and then patch them. As the days (and expensive patching kits) passed, it soon became clear that this wasn't really sticking-plaster territory. The gashes were so big that I was having to patch my patches just to cover them. Something more drastic was needed.

Taking it to Zodiac for repairs would cost almost as much as a new tender. However, we had been noticing adverts for something called 'Tuff-Cote', which was a repair paint alleged to bond to hypalon and 'repair pinhole leaks'. Well, we certainly had pinhole leaks; dozens or perhaps hundreds of them. We resolved to give it a go, but to stop repairs when our material costs exceeded $500; after all, a brand new Zodiac only costs a couple of thousand, and ours had already enjoyed a number of owners before we laid our hands on it.

My daily routine changed. Every day I would pump it up, add soapy water, draw circles around the largest bubbles, and then dry it off and add another layer of Tuff-Cote. The stuff certainly seemed to do the job, but for every hole that was repaired, a bunch more would be revealed. It became a bit of a joke, checking to see how soft it had got while we were away at work, but one day we returned from a whole weekend away to find our tender standing as full and proud as the day we'd left it.

The aged rowlocks had broken long ago and, since then, we had been paddling canoe-style. This was fine for two people, but tricky with only one. I celebrated the end of my nightly balcony visits by fitting shiny new rowlocks with lockable paddles, and painting all the woodwork a nice bright gloss blue. It was a proud moment for 'Mr Stubborn'.

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Pseudemys

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