Isn't the world a small place?

Elaine and Neil (who doesn't like his photo taken)

 

By way of another late birthday celebration, we just had a seafood lunch with our good neighbours Elaine and Neil at the Innes Boatshed in the Bay when I saw a big burly chap and his mate feeding the seagulls at an adjoining table.

The back of his t-shirt was emblazoned with the words "Torres Strait", so I leant across and asked, "Are you two from Thursday Island?"

"No, not exactly, but we know it well", was the reply. The small guy turned out to be Captain Bruce 'Wildcard' Davey of Wildcard Luxury Cruises, and the big chap his mate Grant. They'd just come into port on their 36-foot trawler-rigged boat "Coralie" before heading farther south to Bermagui.

 

www.wildcardluxurycruises.com.au

More about Bruce Davey and Wildcard Luxury Cruises on YouTube

 

Of course, I told them that I had lived and worked on Thursday Island in 1977, and I told them of my visit in 2005. Had I known 'Bluey' Douglas, the skipper of the MV Melbidir? Not only had I known him but he had been my neighbour on Thursday Island who, when in port, would wake me up every morning with his incessant leatherwork; in fact, he had even pounded out a stubby holder for me inscribed with my name.

 

"Bluey" Douglas with MV Melbidir in the background, sometime in 1977

 

Not only had they known 'Bluey' but they also knew Ben Cropp; they knew Gary Duff and Tony Tardent; and skipper Bruce was best friend with the "Millionaire Castaway" Dave Glasheen on Restoration Island.

We could've talked and talked but the fish and chips were getting cold. What an amazing chance encounter! And isn't the world a small place?

 

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P.S. Next morning received this email from "Honest Bruce Wildcard":

Delighted to meet you by chance at the Innes family's wonderful fish & chip Boatshed on the Clyde River yesterday 17th September 2020 Peter.

Fancy meeting another who has had the good fortune of spending their formulative years living remotely on another of life's tempestuous adventures on Thursday Island in the beautiful Torres Straits.

We enjoyed our overnite stay in Batemans Bay in full appreciation of Neil and Ben Innes looking after us and making us feel welcome in your beautiful wee seaside village.

The Innes lads and the shop ladies cooked us up a huge free feed of local Albacore tuna, chips and salad washed down with brewed coffees for dinner last night. Delicious, got me a lil stiffy!

A fishermen's chin wag together after of our epic ocean adventures on the 36' steely fishing boat Coralie to date since leaving Newcastle a week ago stopping and overniting at Nelsons Bay, Pittwater on the Hawksbury River, Sydney, Wollongong, Kiama, Greenwell Point, and last night at the welcoming Batemans Bay.

It was quite rolly and rough tied up to the Starfish wharf last night after that stiff 20 knot Sou Easter popped up just after our arrival at midday. We were banging hard against the wharf pylons through the night on the tide change necessitating us to get up from our warm cosy, but small bed bunks to loosen off and double and triple up our mooring lines in the drizzling rain!

Grant and I were up early this morning at 5.30am checking Coralie bilges, topped up the 8V 71 Detroit GM main engine and gearbox oils etc. Cleaned up around the boat a bit, throwing off the mooring ropes at 6am and departing Batemans Bay on our way 50 nautical miles to Bermagui today on far calmer seas expecting to arrive tonight.

Today's weather forecast is glorious for steaming 8 knots south to Bermagui, 1-2 knots all day and small swells though turning nasty Saturday and Sunday 20-25 knots crappy Nor-Easterly on a 1-2 metre slop.

Thank you sending me your emails and your blog. The Somerset Maugham story on German Harry is a classic story of isolation and adventures so hard for today's young generation to find and experience as we have in our long past youth!

I've had an incredible exciting life of adventure as a 3rd-generation professional fisherman, growing up in Greenwell Point near Nowra, leaving Newington College Stanmore boarding school at 16 years old and heading straight to the Gulf of Carpentaria prawning where my wife Juanita and I owned two large prawn trawlers till the late 90s.

We had our four young children onboard doing Cairns School of the Air, their own school teacher for nine years before heading off to Peace Lutheran boarding school in Cairns.

All came back to the Wildcard family's fishing business after school as 4th-generation fishermen and now my two oldest boys Tiger and Tom run the fishing business in the Gulf of Carpentaria catching Spanish Mackerel with five wee 5.50-metre dories from Queensland's Cape York to the WA Kimberleys each fishing season July to Christmas.

Based from Nhulunbuy January to April we operate Wildcard Luxury Cruises and Fishing Seafaris offering 8 or 12-day private cruising through Arnhem Land, Arnhem and Buckingham Bay barramundi fishing, cruising through the stunning Wessel Islands and back to Gove.

Thanks putting the link to WLC website, Peter.

Some links below to several film crews that have come out and filmed us Spanish Mackerel fishing for you to watch.

I'm back in Batemans Bay in a week or so staying with Ben Innes. It would be great to catch up again for another chin way and more yarns of adventures.

Bruce Wildcard xo
M: 0428114413
E: fvwildcard1@bigpond.com

Fishing the Wild Season 2 Episode 9. Jumping sharks of Cape Carnage.
Watch: youtu.be/GGNMEBd8cSY

Andrew Ettinghausen Seafood Escape Season 2 Episode 1 onboard FV Wildcard Spanish Mackerel fishing.
youtu.be/AdsXeuiXdqE

A Marine Parks documentary I filmed in 2012 Drawing the Line DTL Trailer:
youtu.be/JI8uvLM9txE

DTL promo video links:
www.youtube.com/user/drawingthelinefilm

Full DTL Documentary watch:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=bDMy88RqsDY

 

Tide Tables September to December 2020

Tide Tables May to August 2020

 

Nelligen Tide Times and Heights

 

Three Men in a Boat

 

Jerome K. Jerome's hilarious story of what is probably the worst holiday in literature has an air of delightful nostalgia and is still laugh-aloud funny more than a hundred years after it what first published with this preface:

 

Here is the whole book

 

And yet, it is full of wisdom as well, "... not merely as regards the present case, but with reference to our trip up the river of life generally. How many people, on that voyage, load up the boat till it is in danger of swamping with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really only useless lumber.

How they pile the poor little craft mast-high with fine clothes and big houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do not care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha'pence for; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with - oh, heaviest, maddest lumber of all! - the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries that only cloy, with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the criminal's iron crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that wears it!

It is lumber, man - all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, you nearly faint at the oars. It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment's freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment's rest for dreamy laziness - no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o'er the shallows, or the glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the great trees by the margin looking down at their own image, or the woods all green and golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the sombre-waving rushes, or the sedges, or the orchis, or the forget-me-nots.

Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

You will find the boat easier to pull then, and it will not be so liable to upset, and it will not matter so much if it does upset; good, plain merchandise will stand water. You will have time to think as well as to work ..."

There is so much insight packed into this little book - useful information indeed, to say nothing of the dog! - that you almost regret having come to their final toast, "Here's to Three Men well out of a Boat!"

But that's a whole 184 pages later, so sit back and enjoy! (or listen here to the audiobook)

 

Free Yacht Club membership to every prospective buyer!

www.thisisaprivatesale.com

 

How can we afford to give away a membership to such an exclusive yacht club, we hear you ask? Well, here's how: by saving on the overheads!

Overheads such as paying hundreds of dollars for the pleasure of letting some agent advertise his real estate business or paying them their 'hard-earned' commission for some arcane skills and secret knowledge (which consists mainly of pressuring the vendor to drop the price for a quick sale).

Look, we are not suggesting that all real estate agents are a bunch of shifty, lazy, money-grabbing sleazebags who think ethics is the English county near Suthex; we just think that we are far better qualified than any agent to sell our own home - which, by the way, you can read more about at www.thisisaprivatesale.com.

So here's the deal: you can join the club as a prospective buyer (pretending to be a prospective buyer is permissible!); then, after you've bought "Riverbend", you can throw out the other members (prospective buyers or otherwise) and make it again Australia's most exclusive Yacht Club with a membership of just one - YOU !

Looking forward to your joining the Club!
Peter Goerman
Membership Secretary (also only member!)
email NelligenYachtClub@gmx.com

 

Survive the Savage Sea

 

In June 1972, the 43-foot schooner Lucette was attacked by killer whales and sank in 60 seconds. What happened next is almost incredible.

In an inflatable rubber raft, with a 9-foot fiberglass dinghy to tow it, Dougal Robertson and his family were miles from any shipping lanes. They had emergency rations for only three days and no maps, compass, or instruments of any kind. After their raft sank under them, they crammed themselves into their tiny dinghy.

For 37 days, using every technique of survival, they battled against 20-foot waves, marauding sharks, thirst, starvation, and exhaustion, adrift in the vast reaches of the Pacific before their ordeal was ended by a Japanese fishing boat.

The Robertsons' strong determination shines through the pages of this extraordinary book - click here - on which the 1991 film of the same name was based. It describes movingly their daily hopes and fears, crises and triumphs, tensions and heartbreaks.

Riverbend's very own movie

 

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said ‘Bother!’ and ‘O blow!’ and also ‘Hang spring-cleaning!’ and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat. Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gravelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, ‘Up we go! Up we go!’ till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow."

Okay, keep on reading! I know you want to! Click here.

 

Sailing across the Atlantic

Part 2 missing

Part 3 missing

Part 4 missing

 

Arved Fuchs and his team on their most recent expedition across the North Atlantic begins on the 80-year-old sailing ship "Dagmar Aaen", from Greenland's west coast, via Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ireland and Scotland to the North German coast. It is a journey full of unforgettable experiences: unspoilt nature, rugged coasts, remote islands and extraordinary people who live with and off of the sea. For more than 30 years, German Arved Fuchs has undertaken ships expeditions to the most remote regions of our planet. He is mostly attracted to ice. There, on the west coast of Greenland, the cutter Dagmar Aaen, spent seven long winter months. This is where the five part series begins, which will come to an end after 12,000 nautical miles (ca. 22,000 kilometres) and more than four months later in the native North Sea.

 

 

Joshua Slocum, sea captain and author (born at Wilmot Township, Nova Scotia 20 February 1844; died at sea sometime after 14 November 1909). Largely self-educated, Slocum began his deep-water career at 16, gaining experience in the American, European and Far Eastern trades.

His book, "Sailing Alone Around the World", has become a classic, known to everyone who's ever set foot on a boat.

 

O listen to the sounding sea

 

O listen to the sounding sea That beats on the remorseless shore, O listen! for that sound will be When our wild hearts shall beat no more. O listen well and listen long! For sitting folded close to me, You could not hear a sweeter song Than that hoarse murmur of the sea.           George William Curtis

 

For more, go to the Anarchist Yacht Clubb.

 

The Sailing Sixties

Die letzte Fahrt der "Deutschland"

 

Am 4. Dezember 1875 legt der deutsche Dampfsegler "Deutschland" in Bremerhaven ab und nimmt Kurs auf New York. Mit an Bord zahlreiche Auswanderer, amerikanische Touristen und Kaufleute mit Waren für die Weltausstellung in Baltimore. Das Kommando führt der erfahrene Kapitän Eduard Brickenstein, der das Schiff erst wenige Tage zuvor übernommen hat.

Schon 48 Stunden später, am 6. Dezember, gerät die "Deutschland" vor der Ostküste Englands in einen Sturm der Windstärke 10. Heftiges Schneetreiben und die aufgepeitschte See behindern die Sicht. Brickenstein lässt umgehend den Ausguck verdoppeln und per Lotblei die Meerestiefe messen. Als plötzlich an Backbord aus dem Dunkel ein Licht aufblitzt, befiehlt der Kapitän halbe Kraft voraus und korrigiert den Kurs. Eine fatale Entscheidung, denn in diesem Moment läuft der Dampfer in der Höhe des Themse-Deltas auf eine Sandbank. Der Kapitän unternimmt verzweifelte Manöver, das Schlimmste abzuwenden - ohne Erfolg. Von den 230 Menschen an Bord lassen 57 ihr Leben in den eisigen Fluten des Atlantik. Erst am 7. Dezember 1875 kann ein Radschlepper die 173 Überlebenden in Sicherheit bringen, die schwer beschädigte "Deutschland" versinkt im Meer.

 

Upper Thames or Upper Clyde, the fun is just the same

The Great Ships

BØREN - A film about sailing & wooden boats

 

Børen, the boat with an incredible story. From the East Coast to the Bahamas and all the way to Alaska, she's seen it all. She sailed through hurricanes, ran into a coral reef, broke the boom and keel and yet still survives in all her artistic beauty. Boren now resides with a crafty sailor in the San Juan islands of the Pacific Northwest. This is her story. A story about sailing.

 

Great Canal Journeys

 

Thank you, Timothy West and Prunella Scales, for these enchanting videos of narrow-boating on Britain's canals and abroad ...

 

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The Cook Islands' Old Man of the Sea

 

In Tom Neale's evocative book "An Island To Oneself", he describes how his friendship with Andy Thompson led to his meeting with Robert Dean Frisbie which ultimately made him to go and live on Suvarov Island:

"I was very happy in Moorea. I quickly learned to speak Tahitian, I made one or two friends, I worked fairly hard, I read a great deal. My taste in literature is catholic-anything from Conrad or Defoe to a Western; the only thing I demand is an interesting book in bed last thing at night.

It was in Moorea that I first stumbled on the works of the American writer Robert Dean Frisbie, who was to have such an important influence on my life. Frisbie had settled in the Pacific, and had written several volumes about the islands which I read time and time again, though it never entered my head then that one day we should be friends.

I might have stayed in Moorea forever, but around 1940, at a moment when I thought myself really happy, a character came into my life who was to change it in a remarkable way. This was Andy Thompson, the man who led me to Frisbie, captain of a hundred-ton island schooner called the Tiare Taporo - the "Lime Flower."

I met Andy on a trip to Papeete and immediately liked him. He was bluff, hearty and a good friend, though after that first meeting months would sometimes pass before we met again, for we had to wait until the Tiare Taporo called at Papeete. We never corresponded.

I was astounded, therefore, to receive a letter from him one day. It must have been early in 1943. Andy was a man used to commanding a vessel and never wasted words. He simply wrote: "Be ready. I've got a job for you in the Cook Islands."

At that time I didn't particularly want a job in the Cook Islands and Andy didn't even tell me what the job was. Yet when the Tiare Taporo arrived in Papeete a few weeks later, I was waiting. And because I sailed back with him I was destined to meet Frisbie, who in turn "led" me to Suvarov.

To this day, I do not know why I returned with Andy - particularly as the job he had lined up involved me in running a store on one of the outer islands belonging to the firm which owned Andy's schooner. The regular storekeeper was due to go on leave and I was supposed to relieve him. On his return, I gathered, I would be sent on as a sort of permanent relief storekeeper to the other islands in the Cooks. I suppose, subconsciously, I must have been ready for a change of environment. Nonetheless, I didn't find the prospect entirely attractive.

First, I had to go to Rarotonga and here, within two days of arriving, I met Frisbie. Since this man's influence was to bear deeply on my life, I must describe him. Frisbie was a remarkable man. Some time before I met him, his beautiful native wife had died, leaving him with four young children. He loved the islands; his books about them had been well reviewed but had not, as far as I could learn, made him much money. Not that that worried him, for his life was writing and he had the happy facility for living from one day to the next with, apparently, hardly a care in the world. He was, he told me, an old friend of Andy's, and any friend of Andy's was a friend of his. It was Sunday morning and, unknown to me, Andy had invited us both for lunch.

I could not have known then what momentous consequences this meeting was to have. None of us suspected it then but Frisbie had only a few more years to live (he was to die of tetanus), and on that Sunday morning I saw in front of me a tall, thin man of about forty-five with an intelligent but emaciated face. He looked ill, but I remember how his eagerness and enthusiasm mounted as he started to talk about "our" islands and told me of his desire to write more books about them. We liked each other on sight, which surprised me, for I do not make friends easily; and it was after lunch - washed down with a bottle of Andy's excellent rum - that Frisbie first mentioned Suvarov.

Of course, I had heard of this great lagoon, with its coral reef stretching nearly fifty miles in circumference, but I had never been there, for it was off the trade routes, and shipping rarely passed that way. Because its reef is submerged at high tide - leaving only a line of writhing white foam to warn the navigator of its perils - Suvarov, however, is clearly marked on all maps. Yet Suvarov is not the name of an island, but of an atoll, and the small islets in side the lagoon each have their own names. The islets vary in size from Anchorage, the largest, which is half a mile long, to One Tree Island, the smallest, which is merely a mushroom of coral. The atoll lies almost in the centre of the Pacific, five hundred and thirteen miles north of Rarotonga, and the nearest inhabited island is Manihiki, two hundred miles distant.

That afternoon Frisbie entranced me, and I can see him now on the veranda, the rum bottle on the big table between us, leaning forward with that blazing characteristic earnestness, saying to me, "Tom Neale, Suvarov is the most beautiful place on earth, and no man has really lived until he has lived there." Fine words, I thought, but not so easy to put into action."

According to this notice in the Pacific Islands Monthly of November 1939, Andy Thompson took command of the Tiare Taporo in 1939 and was her skipper until the mid-60s:

He died at his home in Rarotonga on 17 October 1975 at the age of 88 years and nine months. A life well lived! And thanks to him - and Robert Dean Frisbie - we today have Tom Neale's fascinating book "An Island To Oneself" - click here.

The Siege of Suwarrow

For a full description of this book, click here

 

I've written elsewhere about Tom Neale and his years spent on lonely Suwarrow. Here's another story about Handley Bathurst Sterndale and the "Siege of Suwarrow":

 

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Click here for further information. Also here.

 

Slow Canal Journey around London Borough of Hillingdon (Rickmansworth to Yeading)