STORMBREAKER

STORM BREAKER.

Living in the cabin and upper deck area of the boat is the closest thing I can imagine to life on board a space station or a shuttle I will ever get to experience.  The cramped conditions I had to endure on board my new home made the truck seem like a large and spacious dwelling.  After much experimentation and rearrangement my most important belongings including the computer and studio equipment found permanent homes. Things were so squeezed that no object was allowed to move a single centimeter from it's designated location or it would throw the whole arrangement into chaos.  If you can visualize the coffin that would be needed to encase adult Siamese twins that’s about the amount of elbow room I had to occupy. To avoid the persistent head banging I first experienced while trying to adapt to such a confined space I learned how to orchestrate my movements in and around the boat in a type of yoga routine.  When removing myself from my bed in the cabin and venturing out through the hatch to my kitchen it took exactly six deliberate, yoga'esque positionings of the body.  The black leather recliner I had permanently attached to the left side of the outer cabin was where I plonked my arse once I had done my morning yoga and it was my base position for the remainder of the day.  From the comfort of the recliner I did short excursions outside to work on the boat and I found this was the only way my lower back would allow me to keep plodding along with all I had to do.

With the passing of time and much profanity I managed to repair the holes in the hull and the various pockets of wood rot located throughout the structure of the vessel. The thinly covered ply and fibreglass pontoons that extended out on either side had sustained the most damage in whatever incident had caused the boat to be hauled out of the water. In my estimation the pontoons were too far gone to even bother repairing so they were removed from their mountings and relieved of their most useful components.  As I poured petrol over the pontoons and commenced to set them alight I noticed there were ocean dwelling life forms still inhabiting the rotted out insides. Fern like growths and things resembling starfish had somehow survived long after the sea water had drained away and been replaced with rainwater dripping down through the holes. While avoiding the heat of the burning pontoons I spotted something on the hull that I hadn’t seen before.  Barely visible under countless layers of marine paint I was able to read where the yachts original name had been inscribed.  It was ‘Stormbreaker’. The fact I had incinerated the original pontoon hulls meant I had to come up with something to replace them or there would be no point in putting the boat in the water. The option that first jumped into view was the possibility of welding up the drums the resin came in and mounting them four a side on home crafted outrigger arms. I could construct them from the solid hardwood beams I had carted over from Shoal Bay and use the long, stainless steel bolts off the original mountings to attach them to the hull. My plan was such that I would get by with the home made outriggers until I could afford to replace them with catamaran pontoons. I started acting on my makeshift pontoon strategy by gathering up all of the drums after I had drained them at the end of the month. Then I rolled them one by one from the Tip shop to Bucks wrecking yard which is about three hundred meters away.  Buck and I loaded the drums onto the truck and they were dropped off at the entrance to the boatyard in readiness to be welded.  One of Bucks more intelligence and personality enhanced workers was a young guy by the name of Brad.  He also happened to be the hotshot welder among the lads.  Brad and I spent an afternoon welding the pontoon floats together and by the time the sun had set over the paperbarks I was looking at the very thing I had visualized in my minds eye.  Walt Disney so I am told used to refer to his creative assistants as ‘Imagineers’ and this concept was perfectly applicable to how the new outriggers made me feel. Imagineering, bringing what is thought up into the realm of what is real.  The everglades underwent a dramatic transformation when a fast moving bushfire ripped through the area.

It was so close to the property that it ignited some of the car bodies scattered around the lot.  After extinguishing the burning cars the local fire crew commenced back burning around the fence line as I frantically cut away melting tarps from the tops of burning trees.  The blaze came so close to destroying the boat that there were a number of scorch marks on the freshly painted bow. The most amusing detail to come out of the bushfire was the fact the firemen had spotted my concealed seedling plots near the fenceline and they saved them with a friendly squirt. When I checked out the aftermath the following day I was as blown away to think those straight looking fire crew guys might be smokers.  It’s often said about dope plants … “If it doesn’t kill them it’s good for them” and those infant sprouts were a living testimony that the saying is true.  Large trees throughout the wetland had fallen during the fire and there were exposed root systems at every turn.  The grasses and low shrubs were all gone and what was left was a perfect, charcoal rich environment for growing a crop. I placed the surviving seedlings close to the roots of fallen trees where the soil had been turned and they flourished under a network of chicken wire cages.  When the swamp went up in flames it exposed a series of groundwater ponds that dotted the landscape and made my watering duties relatively easy.  As the growing season passed from spring to late summer the impact of the drought really hit home for me as all but the largest of the ponds dried up.  In the months after the fire I managed to cultivate seven plants to full maturity and I reckon my bush buds were as good if not better than Bucks chemically charged, hydroponic stuff.  I didn’t have to buy any pot off the Greedy bastard for ages after the harvest and my secret stash kept me going in the months that followed.  To keep his team of lackies wide awake when they are on the job Buck has always made it his policy to provide an amphetamine based bonus system.

The regular brand of speed like the stuff we used to snort in the nightclub days was getting harder to find and the introduction of ‘Ice’ into the equation sent things into a rapid decline.  I blew the shit a couple of times with the crew in Bucks office but the voice in my head said ‘The effect does not justify the outlay”. I was only surviving on welfare payments and I couldn’t risk any expensive habits.  This rare act of drug use responsibility saved me a whole lot of cash but it further distanced me from everyone else. My decision not to participate allowed me to witness the transformation of my old mate ‘Quick Bucks’ from a millionaire and then some, to a stressed out bankrupt, in hiding from the sheriff.

As I neared the end of my boat restorations behind the locked gates of the compound enraged fishermen dominated my thoughts.  There had been no return visits but I knew they were just waiting for the right chance to pounce. I assumed it wouldn’t happen at Hollywood as there were always too many potential witnesses around but the same thing couldn’t be said for my intended home out on the water.  The whole Port Stephens area was patrolled by the brothers and their cronies and once afloat I didn’t like the idea of getting a late night visit when they found out where I was moored. In light of this factor I made a spontaneous captains decision that my maiden voyage would only be to make sure the yacht didn’t leak at the hull. Then I would take the boat out of the water and hide it someplace where the threat of personal violence no longer existed.  It was at this point my imagination went completely haywire as I considered the range of wonderful new options before me.  The one that jumped out and went “me”, “me” “pick me” was the possibility of putting the boat into storage while I grew an even larger crop than the last.  If I could get enough cash together I might be able to transport the whole boat and trailer rig to Byron Bay by rail and then have it towed Brunswick Heads. 

With work on the hull complete and the last of my budding heads harvested there was nothing keeping me at Hollywood so I started making preparations to get the boat out on the water.  The first thing I had to do was disconnect both of the outriggers at the mounting bolts and strap them close to the hull with the drums resting on the mudguards of the trailer.  It was no easy task on my own but it had to be done to enable a balanced load for the tow.  A small, plastic dinghy I had scored through Dave was winched at great effort onto the upper deck then the rig was ready to travel.  The final component I had to come up with was an outboard motor to make my man living on a yacht with his dog fantasy complete.  I dismantled the boatyard over a sweaty and exhausting three day period and what wasn’t packed away in storage I donated to Bucks recycling empire.  He had started selling everything in sight to settle an overdue mortgage payment and it made me feel good to give a struggling meth amphetamine addict a hand.  Buck was always one of the most easy going blokes I know, but for the first time in our twenty year history as buddies, cracks were beginning to show.  The stresses were getting to him big time and it manifested in ‘Hitler’esque’ tantrums designed to inform all concerned that he was “Still the King of the Shitpile”. A big work burst was underway to get him out of debt which involved the use of an excavator to crush most of the cars on the lot and sell them as scrap metal.  The yacht was at great risk of being damaged in the process so at the first sign of a clearing among piles of crushed cars I towed it out of the Hollywood lot.

In more approachable moments Buck allowed me the use of a Ford station wagon to tow the boat out to the ramp. I suspect I got to use the car more because he wanted to create room for his crumpled wrecks than any sudden rush of brotherly love.  Whatever the case I am unlicensed and both the car and trailer were unregistered so I opted for a midnight run down to the water. It was just a couple of days to Christmas which seemed like the best time to make my move as there would be so much boating activity happening around the bay. The Waterways Authorities are kept busy at holiday time with drunk boaties and the like so what I was planning had a reasonable chance of escaping their attention. As luck would have it a dirty great storm broke overhead while I was connecting the towbar of the car to the boat trailer. I was drenched to the bone as I jumped in behind the wheel, but it felt wonderful to be on the move.  The rain dropped off as Husky and I completed the short run down to the Taylors beach boat ramp so on our arrival I unhooked the unregistered car and stashed it up a side street.  Now even if the cops drove by a yacht and trailer sitting at the top of the ramp wouldn’t look out of place or suspicious. The car was out of view so I stretched out on my bedroll with a cold one and counted the minutes to sunrise. There were holidaymakers hitting the beach from all directions as I brewed morning coffee and scanned the horizon for cruising police vessels. 

My rig received no shortage of attention from the early morning boaties but it wasn’t obstructing the ramp in any way and that was a big plus.  One mobile phone transmitted complaint to the Harbor Authorities could stop my big new adventure dead in it’s tracks before it even got started.  As I was remounting the outriggers I got chatting with a Taylors Beach local called Peter who was a few years older than me.  He expressed verbal amusement at the rough and ready appearance of the boat I was preparing to launch and he warned me about the acute slope of the ramp.  Peter took one look at the bald tires on the car I was planning to use and he was quick to announce that I wouldn’t be able to do it.  It just so happened his Land rover was parked nearby and in the true spirit of Christmas he offered to lower my rig into the water.

A couple of blokes who were fishing came over to help as Peter and I attempted to manually nudge the hull off the rollers on the submerged boat trailer.  With their help the job was made easier but the tide was not quite up enough to lift it clear.  A whole bunch of kids who were swimming around us joined in the wrestle and with a collective sigh of relief the drum supported hull floated free in the shallows.  I thanked all of the holidaymakers for their kind help and wished them a merry Christmas.  Skidding and sliding at full stick up the ramp Peter eventually got my boat trailer out of the water and we chained it up to a post.  When I returned to the boat Husky was looking on curiously from under the bow rail as I trudged off waist deep in the water. The bowline was gripped tightly on my shoulder and I was on the lookout for any stationary stingray that might happen to be sitting close bye.  It was in those first moments of departure I sensed the gravity of change and I had a private chuckle as our water bound adventure had begun.  The inlet I was planning to moor the yacht in was about two hundred meters past the ramp and to get there I had to walk it through an obstacle course of beach goers.  I encountered countless swimmers, kayaks, sailboards, jet skis and a host of assorted inflatable objects.  Once free of the frolicking crowd and approaching the mouth of the inlet I lowered the bowline from my shoulder and turned around to see how far I’d come.  It’s a bloody good job I did because a waterways patrol boat had just passed a nearby island and was it heading directly towards the ramp.  I was out of their line of view for the time being and to keep it that way I pulled the yacht in between two large mangroves.  I threw a baited handline and played catch the stick with Husky until the patrol boat motored off towards Lemon tree passage. 

By the time they had finally gone the tide had started to recede so I decided to stay where I was rather than attempting an entry into the inlet.  Hus was delighting in his new surroundings and watching him play was a living affirmation that I was making progress.  Back at Hollywood he was cooped up in the boatyard most of the time and now he had a lot more territory to bounce around in. The sun went down over the bay as I fired up my portable butane cooker to fry some freshly caught whiting.  The lights of Lemon Tree passage were flickering across the water and they provided a view equal to any seen from the balconies of the rich folk on the hill.  As I chopped up a fresh mull of home grown buds I reflected on the events following my stormy departure from Hollywood and I concluded that my efforts had been a success.  I had managed to launch the boat and conceal it in the mangroves, narrowly avoiding the attention of the authorities and I was ready to enter the inlet on the new day.

Up with the first hint of dawn and an incoming tide I pulled the boat out of it’s hiding spot and commenced to negotiate the thin channels leading into the inlet.  It was bloody tough going because I had to wade through deep mud in the center of the channels and scramble over a number of oyster covered rocks.   At the peak of the rising tide I was relieved to find I had just enough clearance to make it through the final opening into the creek. As the surface scum began to turn back towards the sea I dropped anchor on the only flat and grassy bend among the mangroves. At days end I got a fire going at the waters edge and Husky barked at a growling koala high in the gum trees.  Beyond the mangroves and paperbarks there was a column of tall palm trees whose discarded fronds provided ideal fuel for the fire.  The mooring I had dropped anchor at was to become my new address for the next eight months or so and in that time the only people I encountered were the odd kayak enthusiast or recreational angler.  I was well out of view of the Water Police and the Council Rangers which meant the only way I could get busted was if someone made an official complaint to the authorities.  My days were mostly spent fishing and laying crab pots from the mouth of the estuary to the upper reaches and indulging Husky in the joys of our water wonderland.  He went into a new mode of aliveness in his new surroundings and the inner hunter emerged as a result.  Back at Hollywood the best he ever got to do was bark at the odd possum up a tree and now he had everything from wallabies and kangaroos to giant goannas to sniff out and pursue. The mosquito and sandfly season was in full swing and it was not at all enjoyable to be on the outer deck when they were swarming so I set about enclosing the whole deck area with shadecloth.  The beams that supported the drums on my pontoons were covered over with lengths of marine ply which greatly extended my living space and allowed for the creation of an outside kitchen.  Shadecloth was nailed to the outer edge of the wooden boards and then stretched up over the boom to be nailed into place on the other pontoon.  There was not a lot of headroom inside the newly insect proofed outer deck but the fact I was no longer being eaten alive made it a worthwhile exercise.  With the move from the boatyard I had become disconnected from the luxury of the electricity grid which meant that my creative projects came to a grinding standstill.

 A solar panel capable of fully charging a flat battery was out of my price range so I invested in one of the portable GMC generators they were flogging for a hundred bucks at the hardware store. To avoid the toxic fumes of the generator I mounted it at the very tip of the bow and more often than not when it was running I had to re-moor the yacht according to which way the breeze was blowing.  The addition of a power generator to my list of tools enabled me to make a healthy start on the manuscripts for this book and it allowed for some serious headway with the albums.  Other than my bed the whole inside cabin area became a floating recording studio come writers retreat and every minute I worked brought pure joy knowing I had externalized my dream and I was living  it. Things were falling together perfectly and an example of this was the way I replaced my battered old plastic tender with a water tight aluminium dinghy.  I was fishing just past the mouth of the estuary when I spotted something rocking among the mangroves.   I rowed over to where I had seen a flash of silver and discovered a nine foot, pointy nosed tinny in the shallows.  There was no attachment of any kind to an anchor and the severed bowline was badly frayed. Positive I had come upon a drifter separated from a yacht somewhere I tied it up to a mangrove root to give the owner a fighting chance. I checked in on the boat every afternoon for three days running and there was no indication it had been touched in any way.  Satisfied I had given the previous owner the same amount of time to search it out that I would expect I rowed it into my inlet with the old plastic dinghy in tow. The new tinny was a critical component for the success of my adventure and the way I came by it could only be described as magic.

A fierce storm was brewing out to sea and I was battening down the hatches when I spied a rather large, young individual trudging through the mangroves hauling a backpack.  I spotted him before he was able to see myself or the boat and it was only when Husky started barking he knew we were there.  I jumped down from the gang plank to greet him as he arrived in my campsite. Patrick from San Francisco promptly introduced himself as he inquired where he might pitch his tent for the night.  I informed him about countless nests of large green ants in the area as I introduced myself then I offered him the use of my firewood shelter among the palms. No sooner had we got in the door of the large tarpaulin structure before the first rains and hailstones began to pelt down.  I hadn’t collected any wood for a few days so the available space was more than enough for him to pitch his one man tent in. What kindling remained I used to get a small fire going and we shared easy going conversation as he unpacked his tent.  He extracted a bottle of duty free whisky from a side pocket in his back pack and offered it up as I ignited the big fat joint I had just rolled.  Once he had erected his hi tech alpine tent we exchanged travelling tales into the night as the rains and the whisky subsided.  San Francisco has always been a source of fascination to me because of it’s counter culture history and Patrick gave a good account of where the place is at in the present day. 

As it turned out my unexpected guest was a discontented and disillusioned twenty three year old who had hit the road in search of adventure and meaning. Exactly the same by nature it would seem as those who made the nineteen sixties the cultural explosion they were.  Patrick was as blown away by our connection as I was myself. For me it was one of those rare opportunities to check in with a younger generation adventurer and he was bright enough to keep up with anything I came out with.  For him it was exactly the type of experience he had come looking for ‘Downunder’.  He said to have met some old guy living on a boat with his dog among the mangroves was the best he could have possibly wished for. This passing snippet of information confirmed that I was living exactly the kind of existence I was destined to live. 

Pat stayed around my camp for about six days and he was very easy to be around. He got right into the fishing and mudcrab hunting thing and as we sat waiting for a bite we must have divulged every last detail of our lives. After contact addresses and fond farewells were exchanged Patrick trudged back up the beach towards civilization.  I was told I had a place to stay if ever I made it ‘stateside’ and by the time he vanished around the last bend I was absorbed in a novice writers fantasy. In it I was passing though San Francisco on the latest leg of a university campus tour, promoting my  best selling book.  Hey just a minute.  This might be a forecast of things to come.

After six days of being in the constant company of Patrick something shifted in my perceptions of what this venturing yachtsman experience was all about.  My original objective was to exist in the wilds in solitude other than the company of my dog but Patrick reminded me there were a whole lot of interesting people in the world I might never get to meet.  My thoughts turned to what other encounters I might have if I moved the boat further into the bay and it didn’t take long before I was studying maps of the area. The spot that stood out as the most logical point to aim for was a large rocky cove known as Cromitary Bay, because it was close to the local shops and it fed into a number of inlets where I might conceal the yacht.  My strategy was to first explore the area in the new tinny with my bedroll stretched out on a ply centerboard across the seats. The pushbike could be strapped across the bow ready for use at the other end and with some luck the authorities wouldn’t spot me.