johnsmachines

One of my readers sent me a message recently, asking, in view of the long interval since my last post, whether all was well “down there”?  I assume that “down there” was geographical and not anatomical, although our model engineering group was two days ago treated to an expert lecture by a retired anatomical pathologist about diseases of the prostate gland.  Most of the audience was within a decade of my age of 74.99 years, and was most attentive to the information delivered.   While I can no longer pee over the wall of the male toilet, “down there” still functions, to a degree. (Your kind message was appreciated Rich.)

So, I thought about my recent activities which might be of interest to my readers.

First, I purchased a ship.  A royal yacht no less.  Being sold from a town about 3 hours away.  The photos were out of focus, but it looked interesting, and quite inexpensive.  So I had a very pleasant country drive, met the maker of the 750mm long ship, took one look, and could not hand over my money quickly enough.

It is a scratch build (i.e. not from a kit, just plans) model of a 1750 small frigate named HMY Royal Caroline.   Built as the royal yacht for George II of Great Britain, and named after his wife.  Later renamed HMY Royal Charlotte when George III succeeded, also after his wife.

The 80 year old maker of the model was moving to a small apartment following the death of his wife, and this was the last of his 5 or 6 model ships to be sold.  Regrettably, no family members wanted the model, so I became the lucky new custodian.  I showed the maker/seller some photos of my unfinished Constitution, and I think that he was happy that his ship was going to an appreciative home.

I did not tell SWMBO that I was looking at possibly buying another model ship, so I watched for her reaction when she first saw it.  I was relieved when she reacted very positively.

Also on the subject of sailing…..    When I was much younger, about 45 years ago, I sailed a Hobie 14’ turbo catamaran, usually solo, but sometimes with one or more of my young daughters.  It was great fun, often exciting, although I did cartwheel it a few times.   On one occasion I was becalmed with my eldest daughter aged about 7 or 8, several kilometers from home, and it was dusk.  We were paddling home using the rudders.   We saw some very large shapes about 20 or 30 meters away, surfacing and diving and rolling.  “Are they sharks, Dad?” she asked.   They were too big I thought, thankfully.  But I had no idea really.   They disappeared, and we continued paddling.   We were about 100 meters from the beach when the water police arrived and found us in their spotlight (totally dark by then, about 9pm).  My wife had rung them because we were so late returning.   They had come from Melbourne, about 60-70km away in their rescue launch.   We assured them that we were fine, so they left us to finish our journey and all was well.

But the end of that story came 10 years later, when the local newspaper reported that there were 2 WHALES in the bay, and that they had returned after an interval of 10 years!   So my daughter and I are quite certain that our becalmed small catamaran had been checked out by whales.  WOW.

And further to that, my daughters are married, have children of their own, and the 9 year old twins are having sailing lessons.  So, my son in law and I purchased and old 16’ Hobie catamaran for the 3 of them to sail.   About 2 weeks ago my SIL and I took it for a first test sail.   We wanted to make sure that the sails and rigging were OK, and no serious leaks and so on.  The two of us probably weigh about 170kg, so we were not too worried about the weather forecast of  15 to 25 knot winds, possibly with gusts of up to 45 knots later in the day. (p.s. those speeds were actually km per hour, not knots)   I had not sailed for at least 35 years.  My SIL had some sailing lessons in a mono hull, and he is reasonably fit.  I was unsure how I would cope physically but assumed that my old skills would quickly come back.

So, we picked a deserted part of the bay, rigged the cat, and set off.  Since it was a first voyage for us we did not don trapeze harnesses.  At that stage there was a brisk wind, just enough to send us scooting along.   A bit of stuffing around with familiarising the different rigging and rudder locking, but managed OK.

Then the wind really picked up.  The tops of waves were being blown off, and then we were on one hull and flying, crashing  through waves and trying not to bury the other hull.   I was handling the rudders and mainsheet and SIL was on the jib and hanging out.  It was fantastic!!   Maybe a bit too fantastic for SIL at times.    After about an hour or two, with the wind still rising, we decided to head home, and all was well. I was smiling for several days.

Then today this appeared in the local newspaper…

This one was filmed, and apparently there were two of them.  This is just around the coast a bit from where we were sailing.   Not sure when I will be going sailing again.  Might be a while.