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.

Our next task was to get her out of the water for her annual antifouling. Last year, we hauled her out with a cradle, which meant that there was quite a large area that remained unpainted because it was under the sling and we couldn't get at it. This year, we went to the excellent Noakes Boatyard in Nelson Bay, who took her out with a crane and plunked her down on four little pads, so that we could get at almost the whole hull.

One thing that was patently obvious was that although last year's expensive hull paint had done a fine job, the cheap stuff that we'd used on the saildrive and propeller had definitely been a false economy. This time, we would use better stuff. We also needed to add an extra couple of inches to the waterline to account for all the extra stores she now carried aboard.

The nice guys at Noakes also gave her a thorough polishing and fixed some gashes in the fibreglass that were the legacy of a lee wind on an old wooden pontoon at Lake Macquarie and, after some detective work with a high-pressure hose, we located and taped up the defect in the deck that was the source of our freshwater leak.

We invited John Herrick, a local sailmaker, to come and check our sails. He professed them baggy but repairable, and also agreed to add a third reefing point, as well as to make us a new small, strong cruising genoa and a storm trysail.

Later on, as we let down the mainsail, we discovered (courtesy of a bloody finger for Bronwyn) that all the battens were fractured, as well as a few of the sliders; maintenance was well overdue. I loaded both sails onto the back of the motorbike and then contrived a tube so that I could also take the 3 metre battens, stayed with guy wires to stop them whipping around too badly. It was an interesting ride into town, avoiding overhanging trees and, in downtown Nelson Bay, a 3 metre clearance footbridge which meant that I had to slalom the bike to get safely through. However, I got to John's workshop without any problems, and left them with him while we rode back to Sydney.

Then came the cyclone, which destroyed a whole marina in Lake Macquarie, damaged yachts up and down the seaboard and even tore up one of the bulk carriers and drove her onto the beach at Newcastle. The roads were closed to traffic due to flooding, so we couldn't even get up there to check if Pindimara was OK, and it was several nervous weeks later before we saw her again. Bouncing around on her mooring, she had scraped some of the antifouling off near the bow but, apart from that, she had sustained no damage at all and, as a bonus, there wasn't a drop of water in the forward bilge.

The poor old Zodiac, however, which was our sole method of access to our boat, was getting more and more battered with every use. The supposedly indestructible, lifetime guarantee rowlocks broke again, so I threw them away and poked the oars through the carry straps instead. This made everything a bit slower and less efficient, but at least I didn't keep falling backwards when the rowlocks snapped or jumped out.

Then the spring lock broke on one of the paddle blades. I taped it back on, but then the floor came away so that I had to row with gallons of water aboard. The whole thing was by now in such a bad state that I was just leaving it rolled up behind the bins, trusting that nobody would bother to steal it. It was definitely time to buy a new tender, but we couldn't really afford it and, even if we'd bought one, there was nowhere at The Anchorage to store it. We decided to move to a marina that provided a free taxi service.

Soldiers Point Marina had a spare mooring and a little metal speedboat that they used as a tender. They were also the home base of Bluewater Stainless, who we had chosen to do our steelwork. It seemed like an ideal choice, so we said goodbye to the fine people (and fine dining!) at The Anchorage, and set off around the bay.

On the way, we picked up our refurbished sails. What an incredible difference! As well as repairing and strengthening the seams and replacing the battens, John had taken out all the bagginess in the sails, restoring the balance of the boat to 'as new'. We had been fighting the weather helm for so long that we'd forgotten that it used to be any different; now we could sail close-hauled with but a single finger on the wheel. Pindimara was reborn.

Once installed on a swing mooring at Soldiers Point Marina, we had to wait for the guys at Bluewater Stainless to fit us in to their schedule. The weather was conspiring against any marina work, so they were concentrating on other projects. The months wore on.

One weekend, I rode up from Sydney to check that she was OK and to do some minor maintenance. I hopped into the marina's tender for the quick trip over to the boat and sat back and chatted about the weather as we motored out to the swing moorings. The tender lacked fenders, being a simple aluminium dinghy with a steel scaffold pole welded around the bow, but this didn't matter much because Pindimara's sugar scoop stern entry is protected by a full-width rubber bumper.

There was a bit of chop, so the helmsman announced that he was going to tuck under the side rather than head straight for the stern. I often do this myself. When the yacht is streaming off a buoy, it can be worthwhile to come up in the lee of our big fat beam and hand-over-hand around the corner to the stern entry, rather than try to crab sideways into the wind and current for a direct approach.

We were powering up to the port side and, as I waited for the turn alongside so that I could catch hold, I admired the fantastic job that Noakes had done with buffing and polishing the fibreglass. Pindimara looked like a million dollars. At the last second, the helm said something like 'Can you fend off?' and then t-boned her amidships. I had reflexively jumped onto the bow and did get one hand to the toe rail, but I was pushing against the thrust of the outboard motor and all that I really achieved was to get a grandstand view as the scaffold pipe punched a hole straight through the fibreglass with an awful crunch. We bounced and hit twice more until the helm finally got the outboard into neutral, leaving me staring in disbelief at the palm-sized hole and long black streaks down our pristine hull.

I was not best pleased.

The pole had gone in across the junction of our blue and white gelcoats, meaning that two separate repairs were required on the same hole, one for each colour. Incredibly, the marina were very slow to admit responsibility and it took a lot of arguing before they finally agreed to get it repaired. Then they said that 'for insurance reasons' they would have to withdraw the tender service to our boat, which left me with a bad taste and us stranded without transport again.

Nevertheless, we didn't want to leave for another marina until the fibreglass had been repaired and, in any case, we didn't want to miss out if Bluewater suddenly got a chance to do our steelwork. I unrolled the Zodiac again from its resting place on the hatch cover. Although the main structure was failing fast, at least my puncture repairs had held up for all this time. I reckoned that it could survive a few more trips, and, once back on shore, I tucked it rolled up under a pile of scrap in the shipyard. Hopefully we would be gone in a couple of weeks.

Another month passed without any action. Then, finally, our yacht was moved into the work berth and Bluewater made a start. They disassembled our safety lines and stern rails and made some progress making up frames in their workshop. However, the weather was not cooperating with actually fitting the steelwork to the hull. Because of the configuration of their berth, they had to ensure that they were not welding in a westerly, because that would blow the sparks onto craft in the surrounding marina. Naturally enough, we had weeks and weeks of alternating westerlies, storms and rain. More weeks passed, with no progress that we could see apart from some holes in the stern that precluded any sailing and the four-hour commute at weekends to sit on a stationary, half-disassembled boat started to get a bit tiring.

At last, some six months after we first arrived, the weather started to cooperate and it all came together. The hull was patched up and our new stainless went on. Rather than just build and fit our 'targa top', the guys at Bluewater had pulled out all the stops and provided us with complete solid siderails all the way along the cockpit and even some gates on either side. It looked absolutely spectacular.

It was at about this time that we began to get suspicious about the amounts that the marina were debiting from our credit card for our mooring. The numbers didn't match up with what we had originally been quoted and, after an uphill struggle to obtain a copy of the invoices, we found they had also charged both us and Bluewater for the time that we'd spent on the work berth. It was pretty clear to us that this was their way of raking back the costs of our hull repairs.

We had intended to use a third local company to make the canvas for our targa, but when we found that they wouldn't be able to start work for another six weeks, we decided that it was time to leave for friendlier waters.

The Virtual Reinhard Archive

Pseudemys

22.05.08 Front Page

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