All Piss and Wind Read online

  David Salter is an independent television producer and journalist who works to support his sailing habit.

  Born in suburban Sydney and beginning competitive sailing at the age of 12, David studied Music and English Literature at The University of Sydney while editing the student newspaper, Honi Soit. He worked on The Daily Telegraph and The Bulletin before switching to television in 1967 as part of the team that founded the ABC’s first nightly current-affairs program This Day Tonight.

  After three years at the BBC in London, David returned to Australia and current-affairs TV, including a stint in the Canberra press gallery. He produced the 1976 Olympic Games coverage for the Nine network, then with Peter Luck co-wrote, produced and directed the Logie-winning This Fabulous Century historical series for Seven. He has been Head of TV Sport for both the ABC and the Seven network, and was Executive Producer of Media Watch with Stuart Littlemore for five years.

  David has written, produced and directed a wide range of documentary programs and writes regularly on media issues for The Australian, and on sailing for Australian Yachting magazine. His last book was Breaking Ranks, an account of the HMAS Voyager naval disaster in 1964.

  David lives in Sydney with his wife Elva, and cat Misty.

  Also by David Salter

  This Fabulous Century

  The Australians (with Peter Luck)

  How to Insult Your Hosts

  Breaking Ranks (with Peter Cabban)

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  All Piss and Wind

  9781742754482

  Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  20 Alfred Street, Milsons Point, NSW 2061

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  Sydney New York Toronto

  London Auckland Johannesburg

  First published by Random House Australia 2006

  Copyright © David Salter 2006

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Salter, David, 1947–.

  All piss and wind.

  ISBN 978 174166 526 0.

  ISBN 1 74166 526 4.

  1. Yacht racing – Anecdotes. 2. Sailing – Anecdotes.

  I. Title.

  797. 124

  Cover photograph by Rudolph Salter, 1951

  Cover design by Christabella Designs

  For Elva

  who waits on shore, and never complains

  The master, the swabber, the boatswain and I,

  The gunner and his mate,

  Loved Mall, Meg and Marian and Margery,

  But none of us cared for Kate;

  For she had a tongue with a tang,

  Would cry to a sailor ‘Go hang!’

  The Tempest, II, ii

  Between us there was the bond of the sea. Besides

  holding our hearts together through long periods of

  separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant

  of each other’s yarns – and even convictions.

  Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1902

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Author

  Also by David Salter

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Imprint Page

  Dedication

  Foreword by Sir James Hardy OBE

  Introduction

  1 Offshore

  2 Big Time Fred

  3 Class Struggle

  4 But Weight, There’s More

  5 Able Seaman

  6 Charted Waters

  7 Dismasted in Paradise

  8 So Sue Me

  9 Happy Honeymoon

  10 Supply and Demand

  11 The Sweetest Landfall

  12 A Racer Reborn

  13 Shameless Shanties

  14 The Amateurs

  15 Evolution of the Oilie

  16 Dolphins in the Moonlight

  17 Galley Slave

  18 Memories of Ben-Bob

  19 Losing Your Way

  20 Shock of the New

  21 Left-handed Thingummyjigs

  22 There and Back

  23 New Dog, Old Tricks

  24 Night Moves

  25 It’s Longer than You Think

  26 Tales of The Mighty Helmsman

  27 Getting There

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing –

  absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as

  simply messing about in boats – simply messing.

  Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, 1908

  I’VE SPENT A LARGE part of my life in, on and around boats – simply messing about – and an enormous part of that has been the wonderful fun to be had with all the people involved.

  Yachties belong to a special community. You can’t spend a decent stretch of time sailing with anyone and not get to know quite a bit about them – their likes and dislikes, their strengths and weaknesses. If you’ve gone to sea together, then it’s quite literally a case of putting your life in their hands, and vice versa. Not many sports demand such a high level of trust between team-mates: that’s one of the many aspects of ocean racing that make it so special. It’s not just a test of skill and endurance, but of character as well.

  Character is, I suppose, the real theme of this book – the way so many of us have largely been forged by our lifelong love of boats, wind and water. Much like myself, David Salter grew up with sailing and has been messing about in boats ever since. Like most of us – but more than a decade later than me! – he moved from tiny centreboard skiffs up through the ranks until he was racing to Hobart in crack yachts at the front of the fleet. These days we both tend to take things a bit easier, moderating our competitive instincts with a medicinal mouthwash or three of Hardy’s Show Port (available at all good vintners).

  Not surprisingly, I first met David through sailing. It was the day before the Bond syndicate had to pack up Ben Lexcen’s tremendous 12-metre Australia to be shipped to Newport for the 1980 America’s Cup challenge. David, an independent TV producer, had said he wanted to make a television documentary about me for Channel Seven. I was the helmsman for that challenge, and this would be the last opportunity to film us sailing the boat before we all left for America.

  So out we went into a stiffish late-summer nor’easter and thrashed up and down Sydney Harbour testing headsails and spinnakers. I noticed that David seemed much more interested in the 12-metre than his filming. He was dashing all over the boat, helping out with the runners and sail trim.

  Once the filming was over we got to chatting. ‘Sail a bit, do you?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes, I love it,’ David replied, beaming. ‘It’s always been one of my great ambitions to crew on a 12-metre.’

  We’d just rounded the Manly East mark, hoisted a light kite and were now running very square back across the Heads. Time to test him out. ‘Care to take us home, David?’

  Now, as any
experienced skipper will tell you, the surest test of helming skill is having to drive a big yacht dead downwind under spinnaker. The slightest inaccuracy or loss of concentration can spell serious trouble. Most sailors would have gently declined my offer, but not David. He leapt onto the helm and stayed there all the way back to Rushcutter’s Bay, including an uneventful gybe off Clifton Gardens. It was like breaking Araldite trying to pry his hands off the wheel. But the bloke clearly knew boats.

  More than a quarter of a century later we’re still sailing together. David crewed for me on the mighty Police Car, a brutally uncomfortable sloop that dominated IOR racing in the early 1980s. We’ve cruised to Lord Howe Island and back in some of the worst weather I’ve ever encountered crossing the Tasman. David has done the foredeck for me in Etchells regattas and been a dependable bosun for more years than I care to remember on Nerida, our family’s 45-foot gaff cutter. Some of these boats, and our adventures together on them, feature in this book.

  The second string to the Salter sailing bow is that he writes with engaging affection, good humour and knowledge about yachting. It’s always been a pleasure to pick up a sailing magazine and find an article that carries his by-line. David is equally happy describing a recent race to Southport or the loving work that’s gone into restoring a classic yacht. He isn’t afraid to tackle the serious issues of the sport, and obviously likes passing on some of his hard-won advice about the challenges of racing offshore.

  However, for my money, the thing David does best is write about the unique history and characters of our sport. He’s somehow able to capture that special conversational flavour of sailors swapping stories in the cockpit as they while away the last hours of a long, cold watch. Nobody tells a yachting yarn better. I’ve really enjoyed reading All Piss and Wind – even those parts of the book that have a bit of fun at my expense – and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it too. There’s nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing.

  Safe sailing!

  Sydney, 2006

  And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

  And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the

  seagulls crying.

  John Masefield, Sea Fever, 1902

  NOBODY IS BORN with a love of sailing and the sea. It can’t be genetic because – Ian Thorpe excepted – we’re land animals. Some of our finest sailors, particularly in the offshore racing community, came to the sport quite late in life, then quickly blossomed. Others, such as Iain Murray, were blessed from childhood with an astonishing natural aptitude for making wind-driven boats go fast. But there’s little doubt that the rest of us – the vast anonymous majority who’ve derived a lifetime of enjoyment from sailing – were largely shaped by our earliest experiences of boats and water. It’s been my great good fortune that all of my early contacts were happy ones.

  The first real toy I can remember owning was a little sailing boat. I didn’t quite understand what it was, but just loved its shape. Later, my uncle bought me a proper model yacht with a lacquered hull and cotton sails. It was almost too good to play with in the bath, but if you blew really hard against the mast it would wallow away on a half-hearted reach until it fetched up against the taps. ‘Do it again, Mum! Do it again!’ There was something endlessly entrancing about watching wind converted into forward motion. That boat was my favourite possession. I can feel it in my hands still.

  Being on the water has always been magic for me. In the early 1950s we had the first of many seaside family holidays. The rented house at Sussex Inlet came with its own little jetty and a gorgeous 18-foot clinker fishing skiff with tiller steering and a Chapman single-pot petrol engine. No electrics, just a magneto to deliver the spark. The special mix of those old boating smells rushes back to me now – saltwater, marine paint, prop-shaft grease, prawn bait, spilt petrol, fish heads – all gently blended into one distinctive aroma by the morning sun. Starting the donk was a wonderful ritual of wrapping an old leather strop around the flywheel, rocking it gently back and forth to build up enough compression and then giving an almighty upwards tug. Whup … whup … and then (with a bit of luck) whup! whup! whup! whup! and away we’d go, slicing across the bay to the best fishing spots. Dad used to dispatch any flathead or bream we caught with a forehand whack from the rusty old plug wrench that lived under a thwart. Sometimes I’d be allowed to steer. Could a four-year-old Australian boy have more fun than this?

  Yes, he could. My father had a workmate who owned one of the earliest Bluebird 24-footers on Sydney Harbour. This bloke’s idea of a great weekend was to go down to his boat on Friday evening with a big glass jar of water, tin of walnuts and a paper bag full of dried fruit. He’d just rig up, sail out the Heads and not come back until Sunday night. No engine, no radio, no navigation lights – just pure, solitary sailing. Somehow, my dad talked him into taking us out for a day. For me, the feeling as we jogged a few miles east into the Tasman under sail was wonderful in the most literal sense of that word: I was full of wonder at the sea moving under us, the silence, the brilliant sunshine and the startlingly vivid blue of deep water. I was hooked.

  A year or so later my ever-indulgent aunt arranged a ride for me with friends who owned a big, clipper-bowed old sloop moored at Middle Harbour, called (I think) Tui Karoi. She was massively strong and had been cruised out to Sydney from Singapore in the early 1920s. This was the first real yacht I’d sailed on, and I was soon scrambling all over her like a disobedient monkey and nursing every cabin boy’s secret dream that the boat was actually mine. There’s a photo of me standing on the coach house in bare feet and boxer shorts, proudly hanging on to the galvanised wire-rope rigging and pretending to be regular crew.

  By the age of 12 every Saturday was being spent racing as for’d hand on an ancient little VJ dinghy at the Concord & Ryde Sailing Club on the Parramatta River. (Our tiny weatherboard clubhouse was later demolished to make way for the new Ryde Bridge.) The skipper and proud owner of that battered Vaucluse Junior was also my best classmate, Les Donovan. We were both total sailing tragics. Instead of concentrating on our French or Chemistry lessons we’d be secretly drawing boats. Hours were spent devising new rigging systems for the spinnaker – maybe we could drill a hole through the mast to lead the kicker to a cam cleat? Detailed variations on these schemes were passed surreptitiously from desk to desk. Our other staple was making sketches of fantasy yachts – usually sleek, low-freeboard yawls whose lines owed a lot to Solo, the Alan Payne 50-footer that was the ‘hot’ ocean racer of her day. And if we weren’t drawing boats, we were reading Seacraft magazine propped up behind our textbooks, or plotting how to qualify for the next State Championships.

  On Sundays we’d often crew for Les’s father, who kept a delightful 30-foot double-ender called Primavera moored at Gladesville. It was a traditional little timber yacht – today it would be much prized as a ‘classic’ – with cotton sails, manila ropes and a laid teak deck. If the breeze got up we’d fool around using the fall of the main halyard bent to the bosun’s chair to rig a makeshift trapeze. Those relaxed afternoons on Sydney Harbour also offered us an occasional first-hand glimpse of the boats and sailors who we worshipped from afar through the pages of Seacraft. It was a great day if we spotted Janzoon II, Siandra or Southerly. The centreboard superstar Richard Coxon might be out for a training sail on his new Flying Dutchman. We couldn’t believe our good fortune to come upon Anne, the top-secret new ‘C Class’ catamaran, on her first outing – and rushed home to draw her unusual lines for our scrap-books.

  The dominant yachting story of my high-school years was Australia’s first challenge for the America’s Cup. Frank Packer’s Gretel was built at the big Halvorsen boatyard at Kissing Point, an easy Speedwell cycle ride from home. With loyal Les as my accomplice, I’d sneak under a hole in the fence and then let both of us in through an unlocked side door. Inside, alongside Gretel, the legendary Vim stood on the slips in all her breathtaking Olin Stephens elegance. The lovely smell of fresh wood shavings hung
in the still, dark air of the massive shed. To us this was all incredibly exciting – to reach out and touch the most famous 12-metre in history, and the new Australian boat that would soon be demolishing the Yanks!

  Months later – forbidden by my parents (quite rightly) from staying up to listen to the America’s Cup race reports on radio – I went to bed but secretly tuned in on my crystal set under the blankets, using the bedspring as an aerial. When Gretel won the second race of that 1962 series the thrill was intoxicating. I couldn’t wait to get to school and talk the whole race through again with Les, tack by tack. (Within a few years I’d be working for Frank Packer at the Daily Telegraph and listening to his disgruntled staff complain that money they thought should have been spent buying new typewriters was instead ‘wasted’ on sails. Les went on to become an eminent optometrist and champion Northbridge Senior sailor.)

  At 17, as a first-year university student, I used to earn a few extra pounds during the term breaks working in my mother’s old-fashioned ‘health foods’ shop at Drummoyne. Making fruit-cake mix in a laundry tub out the back was my specialty. Invariably, I’d be up to my elbows in sultanas, raisins, mixed nuts, cherries and candied orange peel when Mum would have to yell out ‘Shop!’ because another customer had wandered in. One morning I was called to the front to serve a handsome, suntanned woman in what was plainly a sailing shirt. Measuring out her eight ounces of best currants, I noticed the logo on the shirt featured an embroidered Australian flag below a single word: GRETEL.