Where the Winds Blow...  

by Mark Steele - Auckland, New Zealand

Of sea dragons, spook sailed scows,
phantom windlers and a South Seas schooner!


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I’m setting the scene to commence this column, with a photograph of four sailing models utterly motionless on a misty Auckland pond, those who sail them waiting for a wind to rise from the south east. Time to just wait, time to ponder, time to fictionalize, time to imagine what eels, what whopper fish life, what dragons even, might be on the prowl below ? Time to recall albeit briefly, the crewman on watch on this boat I photographed in Wellington harbour, who had claimed he saw `a sea mansta’ so large that its head had peered over the rusty ship’s top deck one night in 1989 in the Pacific! “Eet say `ello an freyken me !” he told the Captain !

My friend David Large, artist, ship modeller and man of the sea in Eagle, Idaho is into dragons and believes that somewhere, perhaps down in the dark abyss of one of the oceans of the world a real dragon exists. It is no wonder that his website is called Sea Dragon Marine Art Studio. Perhaps others may support that belief of his, but can any of us rule it out with absolute certainty ? .As he says, `if men and children can’t have something like dragons to believe in, all of the mystery of life has gone.’ (I’ll have myself believing that now, for since I am from Guyana., formerly British Guiana, something out there in the murky waters of the Atlantic must have been seen by someone at some time to have inspired this postage stamp !

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Dragon of the depths
beyond the bar

Then there are people who have owned and sailed real sailing ships who testify to weird sightings and sounds aboard at sea, usually under the mantle of darkness, and are convinced that some vessels are indeed spirit-inhabited . One whom I read about got rid of an old sailing barge he had restored, because he was convinced it was haunted, selling it as fast as he could, resident ghosts and all.

My friend Paul Titchener in New Zealand (along with several old fishermen) have all seen what they believe was the old trading scow Herald (below left) lost at sea in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf, suddenly appear out of an early morning mist with not a sign of any crew, and sail across the bows of a yacht that Paul and another were aboard. Is it all fact or fiction or a mixture of both, and is it true or false that a demon eel has slithered up and over a small 12”model sailboat on one occasion, seemingly intent on sinking the model under a small bridge that spans the lake where the Ancient Mariners model yacht group sail in Auckland ? Fiction, I hear you yell, - aghh, but can you be sure of that ?

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What about the mysterious pond boat sailor and his little boat in the fog at Clapham pond in the UK as seen and snapped by Mike Kemp ? Never mind whether he made the model himself, the question is, whether the sailor was a free spirit windler from the other world back for a sail, or just an ageing but very much alive London pensioner ? We don’t know for sure do we ? I tell you one thing, I’d swear that the photograph of him that I have, has progressively got darker and darker, and the background fog much more foggy with the passing of the years.

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Back for a Sail

Some lighthouses are also said to be possessed by evil spirits, but I do know of one magnificent lighthouse, this one a model and not in any way `possessed’ in that sense, that is testimony to the skills of Auckland model ship builder and sailor, Murray White. This replica of Auckland’s Bean Rock sits in his garden beneath the trees and shrubbery, survives Auckland’s teeming rain and summer sun, and reminds him of the day when he and another were young men and climbed the structure just to say that they both had enjoyed a pee over it’s side from the very top ! Such are the joys of the days of our youth, when dragons and spooks never entered our minds, and fear hardly ever existed.

The unspooked little lighthouse

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I’ve got a special feeling for schooners, (I think one or two readers might have suspected that by now), and here I am fessing up’ to readers of Duckworks. I already have two model schooners and certainly don’t need another, but having said that, I think I have fallen in love with Ancient Mariner, Derek Nicholson’s South Seas schooner model, Tiare Taporo (`Flower of the lime’ in the language of Tahiti), the real boat built in Auckland, New Zealand by Charles Bailey Jnr and trialled in the Hauraki Gulf there in 1913 (see the first photograph below).

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Clifford Hawkins knew her well (and took the first two photos of the vessel below) as well as this photograph of her under sail (above left) which he hand-coloured. It was from his line drawings that Derek built what is indeed a superb model that from the time he launched it sailed very well. It is an absolutely delightful sight on the water that evokes great nostalgia of that period when sailing ships took cargo and before engines replaced sails. Derek’s model is built on temporary frames and scarped keel, stem and stern post was planked in kauri. Has a kauri deck and brass fittings made as near as possible to the original . He spent approximately 6,ooo hours over eight months on the 1300 mm long model which weighs three and three quarter kilograms.

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I share with you (below), a photograph that I managed to be in the right place, well positioned at a good level and at the right time to capture twenty-two one metre yachts at Quarry Lake on Auckland’s north shore some years back. Capturing so many model yachts sailing in the same direction and all (but one about to peel off) on the same tack doesn’t occur often believe me. I was ever so lucky !

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Mike Mayhew of Waverley Models in the West Country of Great Britain has produced a lovely little 35” overall model hull that he had long ago told me about.

Since the introduction in the year 2000, the Y2K hull has been in great demand with over 900 purchased, and boats of a variety of styles have been appearing. Fifty eight UK Pounds ex Britain gets you one of them, hull and drawings plus instruction book and full size templates, and I have found it quite amazing how many different styles of boats using these hulls have been built, fishing boats, private yachts, sloops, a schooner and wait for it… a colourful Chinese junk.

Using a GRP hull is not everyone's `ideal’ but it sure gets you on the water in a much shorter period of time than if you were to plank on frame a hull in wood.`Horses for courses’ I guess.

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I know this is not a sailing ship, and I don’t intend to change the column to include non-sailing boats in the future. I use the photo above of the one and the same Mike Mayhew and his paddle steamer Waverley purely to illustrate what a 13 foot long model looks like. This is Big, Huge, Humungas, Grande, even “Bigpela bot” in the pidgin English lingo of Papua New Guinea, and “lang-lang bote” if a native of the writer’s mythical `somewhere my brother’ island of Ghobadi Bhaba.

Home and moored

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A nice poem is always good for the soul, this one courtesy of Jeremy Eisler that I spied on Duckworks in the September letters bag.

Sailing

A sunset sail to greet the moon
The bow wave sings a silvered tune
A glass of wine, the evening breeze
And we incline to take our ease

Motionless yet still we move
No goals, no cares, nothing to prove
No trace remains to show we passed
‘Til time compels us home at last

Jeremy Eisler

By the way, according to Dilbert’s rules, we humans should not meddle in the affairs of dragons, because we are crunchy and taste good with ketchup (tomato sauce)!

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Previous Columns by Mark Steele:

Articles by Mark Steele:

SAILS

EPOXY

GEAR