Random Boats

I met Kurt Ashford on the gaff-rigged schooner, Ishmael, at Dangar Island, on the Hawkesbury River, Broken Bay, NSW, Australia, in August 1979.  Ishmael had just sailed in from Hawaii, and I had just returned from sailing a 19', 1500 lb sloop, Mistral, from Broken Bay to Bowen.  After sailing around between Broken Bay and Sydney Harbour aboard Ishmael the following summer, I shipped aboard as navigator (have sextant, will travel, back in those days), for a passage from Nelson, New Zealand, through the Cook Straits and on to Papeete, Tahiti in the autumn of 1980.  These stories are told in Last Days of the Slocum Era, Volume One.  Kurt and I were both close friends of David Lewis, the author of We the Navigators, participant in the inaugural 1960 OSTAR, and perhaps most famous for his voyage to the Antarctic in the 32' sloop, Ice Bird, and the book of the same name.

Ishmael anchored off Dangar Island.

Kurt Ashford (right) and David Lewis enjoying a glass of rum aboard Ishmael off Dangar Island, August 1979.

Ishmael's foredeck.  The anchor winch is a very old manual unit, repurposed from a decommissioned USCG cutter.

This is Mistral, the 1500lb (750kg) displacement sloop that I sailed from Sydney to Bowen in July 1979. with the owner, 17-year-old Rex Byrne.  The photo on this blog's banner is of Mistral surfing down the face of a wave in a rising gale on the central New South Wales coast.  Rex went on to sail Mistral across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand via Lord Howe Island, solo.  He met his partner, Louise Wilson, on Lord Howe Island, who joined him in New Zealand to sail onward to Tonga, Fiji, New Caledonia, and back home.  They have since sailed out from England to Australia on a Vega 27, Masina, circumnavigated the world on the Muira 31, Six Pack, and are currently cruising in North Atlantic waters aboard their Elan 40, Spela.

The author at the helm as Mistral scoots off to the north from Port Stephens, NSW, in a rising SE wind.  The forecast was for it to ease, but instead we faced a 40-knot gale that night and had the ride of our lives.  Besides steering three-hours on and three hours off, I was also navigating with traditional methods, paper charts, hand-bearing compass and careful Ded reckoning.  There wasn't much time to sleep!

Rex steering a careful compass course after Mistral departed Port Stephens, July 1979.  In those days, coastal navigation was an art, and relied on accurate steering, as well as maintaining a ded-reckoning position, until a compass bearing on the next headland or lighthouse gave you some confirmation of your approximate position.  It was rare to be able to get several simultaneous bearings and locate your position on the chart exactly.  Celestial navigation, when you were away from dangers, was much more straightforward.  Any smart 10-year-old could learn to do the calculations, or reduce a sun sight, in an afternoon.  The real trick is to get accurate sextant sights in a developed seaway.