As I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’ve always loved sailing. My father had various sailing dinghies when I was very small and even had a World War II life raft with a little aluminium mast and square sail which we played in at Blueskin Bay, north of Dunedin, where the family had a crib. (That’s far south talk for a bach and comes from the Scottish people who first came there in the 1840s.)
So I learnt to sail as a boy and then did some more at Te Anau as a teenager. Later with a family of my own, I decided that a keeler in the Marlborough Sounds, one of the world’s great temperate zone sheltered waterways, would be a good substitute for our bach in the Nelson Lakes.
So we bought a Cavalier 32, a solid 1970s design, which had been a revelation in its day and which was forgiving towards learner sailors, as we were. People had even sailed round the globe in them.
After a while I could sail it by myself and one weekend when Ally had taken the children to see her family in Canterbury, I decided it was time I went out by myself on Fulani.
I cast off and motored her out of the berth at the Waikawa Marina, the ageing Volvo diesel growling away. Once out in the bay, I used the autohelm to hold course while I got the mainsail up. Then the furling headsail, and we were away and sailing. The brilliance of that feeling will not be lost on those who sail. Wonderful, exhilarating, harvesting the winds to take you travelling in beautiful surroundings and to test your skills. I always relax and forget all about the everyday worries when there’s a sail up.
I tacked down to the Bay of Many Coves, dropped sail and motored into the little bay where the yacht club mooring was. It wasn’t there — it must have broken or more likely a clumsy power boat skipper had run over it. But there was another mooring nearby, a white buoy with Searay Charters on one side. There was no one around so I picked up the buoy, then fastened the line to Fulani’s bow, and congratulated myself. I went below, boiled the kettle and read my book, hoping no charter boat would turn up. But about 5.30, near dusk, a putt-putting got me poking my head through the companionway and there was a slightly larger yacht, a Lotus 10.6, approaching. Oh hell.
‘Hello’, I called, ‘I’m on your mooring, I’ll get off.’ A friendly face at the helm was smiling.
‘Don’t worry, we can raft up and share it.’
I knew that face, another vet. And sure enough, Alex McDougall, the head vet of the Meat Division of the Ministry of Agriculture, and in an elevated position in veterinary ranks, was with his wife in the boat, which they owned and leased back to the charter company. They were convivial and welcoming, and the upshot was that we shared a meal and a couple of bottles of red. During the pleasant evening I said we had a scallop dredge on board and we could go for a drag in the bay tomorrow, which we did.
I’d never used it before, but my brother Denis had left it with me only recently, with 300 feet of braided line. So next morning Alex and I experimented with two or three drags across the Bay of Many Coves, caught 30 or 40 keeping sized scallops, and went back to his boat for lunch.
‘I’m meeting James Heremaia tonight,’ said Alan. ‘He’s got a share in this boat and we’re off to the Pelorus Sound for a week’s cruising.’
James Heremaia at the time was an even more senior public servant, the Chief Veterinary Officer no less, more or less the gaffer.
‘Then you’ll need a scallop dredge. Take mine and you can drop it back on my boat when you come back.’
The offer was accepted and I left the dredge with Alex. The next day at work, I mentioned to Pete Anderson about meeting Alex, the scallop dredge, James Heremaia, etc.
Pete looked at me strangely. ‘The scallop season is closed,’ he said. ‘It closed at the end of February.’
So two of the most senior officials in the then New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries were off somewhere in the Pelorus Sound, fishing for scallops out of season.
I thought about it briefly.
‘No one will notice them,’ I thought. ‘It’s pretty unpopulated round there.’
I considered, momentarily, calling them on the VHF radio on Channel 65, but it was a bit new to me and I couldn’t remember the boat’s name to call. It’ll be all right.
Ten days later I was at work and the phone rang. ‘Alex McDougall.’
‘Oh, gidday, Alex, how’s things?’ I said nervously.
‘You might have bloody told me it was out of season,’ he growled. ‘We got nicked.’
A diligent resident had seen them dragging for scallops and had rung the Ministry of Ag and Fish. When they returned to Picton to the charter company berth, two uniformed MAF officers were waiting on the wharf.
The questioning was detailed, the answers given (as far as I could ascertain) were along the lines of ‘experimental fishing for oysters’ and it would be less than naïve to believe that an exchange of business cards took place. I am reliably informed that no prosecution was entered into. How the wheels of bureaucracy can turn in different directions. But it would have been a difficult moment for the two erstwhile gents.
Some months later, the replica of James Cook’s Endeavour came to New Zealand. We met her at the entrance to the Sounds, by now in my newer yacht, Ten Speed. It was a marvellous occasion, heavy and sentimental with the drama of the historic moment, as the wonderful replica, in full sail, came into the bay to which Cook had returned five times on his three great voyages. The bush on the hills was little changed in 200 years and the Maori waka full of bare-topped paddlers alongside the copy of the great ship had me gulping back tears of emotion. As one of my friends would say, the bladder was getting close to the eyeballs.
Later, as we motored towards Picton in a huge flotilla of boats of all kinds, accompanying the brilliant replica, I realised there was a Lotus 10.6 with a familiar red stripe on the hull, right beside Ten Speed.
‘Hello, Alex,’ I called. ‘Had any scallops lately?’
He tapped his mate on the shoulder and pointed accusingly towards me.
‘That’s him there,’ I could plainly see him mouthing to his senior colleague standing beside him in the cockpit, glass in steady hand.
I think they were smiling, but not very much.
Names in this story have been changed.