Random Boats

 Last Days of the Slocum Era, my sailing memoir / selective history of cruising under sail between the years of 1966 and 2024, was originally intended to be a one-volume work, but there was so much material there that it grew into two volumes.  It could easily have become a series, as, over the last 58 years, ever since I first visited the International Jetty in Durban, South Africa, as a 14-year-old in 1966, I've been collecting photos and stories of interesting cruising boats, their people, and the voyages they have undertaken.  The technological and cultural changes that have taken place in that time are phenomenal, both within the cruising world and in society in general.  While no Luddite (I love my GPS chartplotter), I have an affection for the smaller, simpler boats that I grew up with, and believe that they still have much to offer.  Despite most yachts these day being quite complex and expensive, and their owners more affluent than the voyaging community was 40-50 years, ago, there are still a few impecunious sailors out there on little boats.  This blog celebrates them, and the early days of cruising under sail.

The photo above is of the International Jetty in Durban, South Africa, in 1970 with foreign-flagged cruising yachts rafted alongside.  It provides a good illustration of the type and variety of cruising yachts in that era.

The red motorsailer on the left sailed down from Kenya, the boat inshore of it is Bachelor's Wife, an old timber yacht that was rebuilt in Sydney, Australia, over a period of 18 years, after sailing out from Honolulu to Sydney for the Hobart race in 1950, then later being wrecked on Lord Howe Island.  It went on to complete a slow circumnavigation.  The next boat in is Rodney Perkin's Weir, a 32' carvel-planked yacht, home-built in Sydney and sailed to Wales.  The three-masted yacht inboard of Weir is 56' Marakihau from New Zealand, aboard which the Chubb family circumnavigated between 1968-73. Next in towards the dock is Maristella, a 32' timber double-ender from Lyttleton, New Zealand, an Atkins Thistle design, home-built by John Morrison, who was reported to still be cruising aboard this boat in 2016, crossing the Tasman Sea on the way to New Zealand.  Inboard of Maristella is the one and only Kelasa, which features in Last Days of the Slocum Era, home-built in Victoria, BC by Harry Gilbert and cruised widely from 1966 until his death aboard in Mooloolaba, Australia, in 2001.

The large white yacht in the centre of the image is Eshowe, a steel ketch built locally and sailed abroad.  Inboard of Eshowe, against the jetty, is 37' Fortuna, a carvel-planked yacht built from a half-model carved by legendary Tasmanian boatbuilder, Percy Coverdale.  Fortuna sailed in seven Sydney-Hobart races in the 1950s, almost winning on handicap a couple of times.  The boat completed two circumnavigations before being wrecked on the west coast of New Zealand's North Island in the 1980s.  The little white yacht in the foreground with its mast on deck was built in Thailand and sailed into Durban by an American.  He told me he had planned to have a large yacht built in Thailand, but commissioned the smaller vessel to play with while the large boat was being built.  However, the builders made such a bad job of it that he abandoned the project and decided to sail home on the small boat instead!  Inboard of that vessel is a 26' Maurice-Griffiths designed Eventide, built in East Africa and bound for Europe.

This sort of diversity in the cruising fleet has almost vanished in 2024, along with the colourful characters who manned their decks.  Homogeneity rules.

This photo shows the Californian trimaran, Cetacean, an Arthur Piver design, outboard of the raft up.  They are about to depart for Cape Town, and eventually completed a circumnavigation.  Inboard of Cetacean is Maristella, followed by Myonie, a 36' John Hanna designed Carol Ketch, big sister to the ubiquitous Tahiti Ketch, sailed by Al and Helen Gehrman, who completed four circumnavigations with this boat, which had made one world trip before they bought it.  They had no self-steering gear, dodger, or any of the specialised equipment considered essential today.  Very few boats in 1970 even had a dodger over the main companionway.  Weir in inboard of Myonie.  These visiting boats rafted up to the International Jetty for free.  Most only stayed a month or two, arriving in November-December and departing for the Cape of Good Hope in January February, though some laid over for a year and worked to refill coffers.

 

Myonie on Wilson's Slipway, Durban, December 1970.

Cetacean having a scrub before leaving for Cape Town.

Harry Gilbert on the deck of Kelasa, doing last-minute checks before sailing from Durban to Cape Town, November, 1971.  Note the flax mainsail, which was new.  When Kelasa arrived in Durban on Christmas Day 1969, the old mainsail was rotten, the cranky petrol engine was at its temperamental best, and they were nearly swept past the port by the fierce Agulhas Current, after a 56-day passage from the Seychelles down the Mozambique Channel.  As you can see, Kelasa had massive scantlings, and was very heavy and slow, but in over 100,000nm, spanning 35 years, nothing ever broke, and Harry never got into any sort of difficulty.  He was a brilliant navigator, and an old-fashioned seaman in the Slocum tradition.  I still have the hand-written treatise he gave me on seamanship and navigation among the coral-strewn waters of the South Pacific Ocean.  Apart from the years between 1967-71, when he was accompanied by Adrienne Matzenik of Sydney, he always sailed alone.  More of his story can be read in Last Days of the Slocum Era.

Kelasa alongside the International Jetty, 1970.  Photo: courtesy David Matzenik.