Chapter Twenty-Eight

Amid these great times, sailing in the scow around the spectacular Hauraki Gulf, we also had some scary ones and plenty of hard work. We had one or two very bad and dangerous trips. One that was particularly, dodgy deserves telling. We had made a long trip up to Parengarenga Harbour in Northland; it was about as far as we could safely go. In fact it was close to the most northerly point of New Zealand’s North Island. The purpose of our trip was to load glass sand for the new glass manufacturing plant that had been established with great publicity at Marsden Point, near Whangarei. There were great deposits of this valuable, high quality silica sand, which were needed in glass manufacture. I think it took us three days to get there; we only did six or seven knots, sometimes ten with the sail rigged. We went up almost empty, apart from a delivery for a farm near Wenderholm. The trip was uncomfortable. Scows weren’t good sea boats. The Parengarenga Harbour sand deposits had been identified as the largest and best resource available for the manufacture of glass. This new factory was lauded as a great saver of overseas funds for New Zealand and as a figurehead in the drive to make the country less dependent on imported products.

We beached in the shallows of the Kokota Sandspit and set to work with the grab loading this fine sand. It was a long hard job. It had taken about six hours the evening before, then another six from early that morning. It took us twelve, slogging, solid hours to fill the open hold to brimming. At the end of the loading, we were all too tired to batten down and sail straight off. A short discussion and it was agreed that we would hole up for a couple of hours and then leave. I had got Keith Morgan a temporary job for the trip while our cook was off. I had told Keith all about life on the scows and how pleasant it was plodding around the Islands of the Gulf. My descriptions must have captured his imagination and he just wanted to experience it. Although I think he fervently regretted that wish when we hit the storm. Just plodding around the Gulf was all he had expected. The glass sand that we had spent all day loading made you feel very itchy. I decided I would go for a swim to freshen up. I scrambled into the dingy hanging over the stern and asked Keith whether he was coming. He hesitated and looked down. I saw a shocked look spread over his face. I asked him what the matter was as I positioned myself to dive.

“Don’t,” he croaked, “don’t go in Len,” and he grabbed me firmly by my legs.
“Don’t fuck around, Keith,” I said, feeling irritable from the itching.
“Look, look!” he said.

I looked down and there under the dingy, basking and moving gently in its shadow was a huge Mako shark. Makos are probably responsible for as many attacks as the feared white pointers and I nearly dived straight on top of one. I dodged a bullet there and I was very obliged to Keith for his powers of observation.

We all wanted to get back to Auckland as soon as possible. I was heavily involved with Mary McGlynn so I was keen to head home and the others probably had similar reasons. It had been a long hard day and we could have stayed overnight in the harbour and set off early in the morning, after a good night’s rest. However we didn’t do that, we secured the grab and boom secured off any loose lines and stowed away the shovels and assorted tools. Harold, the engineer, kicked over the dependable diesel engine.

There is something comforting about the steady throb of a diesel engine at sea. Jock took the wheel to take us out of the harbour. Keith got the galley stove heated up and started preparing a steak, mash and onion meal. A group of Maori kids rowed alongside us, like an official escort, cheering and laughing. They all knew Jock, as their parents and probably their grandparents had before them. Jock and the Rahiri were known all up and down the coast, he was a real live legend. His fame amongst the coastal and seagoing folk was such that, thirty-odd years later I was sitting watching TV, when Jock and the Rahiri appeared before me. It was in a very fine NZTV documentary showing how life had been back then and dwelling on ‘the way we were,’ as I think the show was titled. It demonstrated the importance of the scows and the men who sailed in them to rural coastal and township developments. As we were leaving the harbour our happy escort turned back with cheery shouts and waves. Those children may well have been living in a tiny isolated community; they may have lacked material things; but they were happy and confident. They used to ride down to see us, two-up on each horse, no saddles needed. Then they would drag out the boat and fish most of the day. No one ever got round to telling them they were deprived.

I stood bracing myself against the side of the cramped wheelhouse having a cup of tea with Jock. We had had many chats. He’d had an interesting life and he’d been a sailor for as long as anyone could remember. I think he had come from the ‘Bluenose’ community in Matheson Bay. He always wore those old light canvas three-quarter-length trousers at sea. I never saw him in shoes while underway. He must have been seventy plus. He was tall and raw boned and he must have been a great specimen as a younger man. I often saw him shimmy up that foremast. He took his trick on the wheel more often than he needed too. He was cut from the same block as Allan, the Bosun on the Highland Monarch and my uncle Bill Faulkner. A breed who perhaps are no longer with us. Compliments from such men are hard to come by. I think one of the most valued to come my way was from Jock. It was reported back to me that he had been holding forth in his favourite hostelry, Anna Powell’s New Criterion in Albert Street. Apparently there was some critical discussion going on about the competence or otherwise of crews from the different nationalities. Poms were getting a raw deal from the mainly older Kiwi drinking school. Jock, the main man in the school, listened for a while and then said, “I don’t know about that. My new AB, young Len’s a Pom and he’s up to it and he can sail with me anytime.”

I probably shouldn’t have recorded this, but I was really proud when I heard it. He was the real thing.

We were beating our way out to the open seas. Keith had done a great job on the steak, mash and thick onion gravy. Jock was hoping we could make it through, close to the Bay of Islands, then rest or shelter if we had to, before pushing on. He knew all the safe havens and bays up and down the coast. If we did that though, we would have to make any stop before nightfall. The alternative was to take a wider and longer course further out to sea, then chug on to Marsden Point over two or three days. That might not be too wise as the sand was a deadweight cargo and we were well down in the water. Also, because that would be a lot longer it would require more diesel. No sooner had we got clear of the Aupuni Peninsula and were heading south when the weather began to show signs of change. Jock gave me the wheel and a visual bearing to follow while he went below for a while. The weather really started to deteriorate; a storm was breaking out. A radio warning came out for all shipping in the area. The radio crackled out the warning, I think it was from the Station on Musick Point in Howick, Auckland. The lady, who ran the volunteer radio station in Houhora in Northland, came on with a further and personal warning for us. She knew we were out there; she knew Jock well and knew the rest of us from previous visits. On one trip she had kindly invited us all to Sunday dinner with her family. We were not well placed to battle a storm; and sand was probably the worst cargo to be carrying in a scow in bad weather.

Jock had to make a decision. He had considered turning and running back to Parengarenga. He decided against that as we were getting well down the coast by now. Also a full turn was not advisable in the large waves that were starting to surge faster and bigger. We didn’t want to be caught turning and beam on by those seas. The wind was shrieking and hammering into the wheelhouse. All four of us were huddled in there wearing our life jackets. Jock kept us in sight of the sandy, jagged shoreline. We battled the storm for at least two hours as we jockeyed to get into, or close to the entrance to the bay and then the mouth of the river to Houhora. He had made the wise decision to run for Houhora. He was familiar with the entrance and the river and we wouldn’t have to make any big turns until we were in a more sheltered position. He and I shared the wheel; he cleverly kept our head into the weather and then brought us back on course. His intimate knowledge from years of experience of the tides and rocks of that area allowed us to make it to safety.

The kind lady who operated the Houhora radio service stayed in contact with us, which could well have been a lifesaver had there been a disaster. We received a real banging around. It wouldn’t have been such a problem if we hadn’t been carrying sand. I had seen at sea before how the weather can be so treacherous and can change so quickly. But previously when I had been in those conditions, I was in ships of a minimum of eleven thousand tons, much better equipped to deal with the forces of nature, than a single screw, sixty-six foot and sixty-ton scow. We were safe. We holed up until the storm blew over. We gratefully hunkered down for the night; there were sighs of relief all round. The storm took three days to blow itself out. After that wait we gingerly nosed our way out and continued down the coast, eventually making Marsden Point. The strange thing was that when we had unloaded the sand, our orders were changed. We picked up some general cargo for Great Barrier Island and from there we had to return to Parengarenga for another load of the vaunted glass sand. To old Jock it was all in a day’s work. There were no protests from him, no claims that he deserved a rest after that testing time. The trip that was supposed to take just less than a week, eventually took nearly three. The fifty-year-old Rahiri played no small part in the successful outcome in the storm. Shortly after that hammering she went in for her annual survey, which she passed with flying colours; her timbers pretty much as solid as the day she was built. Between old Jock and the Rahiri they saved the day. And thanks to them I’m here today to write the story.

By now my friend Dinger had been caught and deported. He was caught through a strange set of circumstances. First he was approached by a policeman in the street who asked him to take part in an identity parade, which he dodged by pleading being late for work. He was working as an ‘offsider’, a term used to describe the driver’s assistant on a lorry in the transport business. The company he was working for was City Haulage. The company was a specialist in waterfront collections and deliveries. For Dinger the job was a good one; the money was good and he knew his way around ships and their handling gear. He was a valuable employee and the job wasn’t too taxing for him. As we all did, Dinger always had an eye out for old Birdie, which given Birdie’s particular skills, was a sensible idea. Poor old Dinger had gone into work on that day and had been assigned to a truck that was heading for the wharf to collect a consignment of goods for a company out in Henderson. Dinger knew he had to be alert, but all the wharves were busy, so he quite naturally thought that if he kept his head down and didn’t speak too loudly all should be well. Life can be cruel and play some awfully unfair tricks. Dinger and his driver had located and loaded their consignment. They were proceeding to leave the docks through the inspection gates when it started to rain. This caused a delay, as the gatekeepers who had to check the paperwork etc. wouldn’t come out in the rain. Dinger’s driver could see a queue forming so he stopped the truck to wait for his turn. Unbeknown to him he stopped right outside Birdie’s window. Well I have said it before and I’ll say it again, Birdie had an instinct for us. Apparently Birdie looked out of his window and poor old Dinger dropped into his lap.

He had no reason to suspect Dinger, who may not even have been on his list. We hadn’t jumped ship in New Zealand, so Dinger probably wasn’t in his pile of photos. Though there was some talk that he was liaising with Australian authorities. He walked to the lorry, asked Dinger to come with him and that was that, another nail in his tenure of that little wharf shed come office. Poor old Dinger couldn’t give his home address, as that would lead Birdie to me and another guy. He stayed ‘schtum’, did a little time in Mt. Eden jail and was promptly deported. The story doesn’t end there though; Dinger being a very resourceful, determined guy, jumped ship again when his deportation ship berthed in Sydney. Using the same undercover network, he returned to New Zealand, but this time settled in Wellington. Although he claimed he liked Wellington I think he just wanted to put some miles between himself and the redoubtable Birdie.