Heather and I were coming up to four years married when we started work on the boat, and doing what we’re still doing after fifty years and more — learning how to live together. Learning how to live, together.
We’re not the same, thank god. One way to describe the difference is to say that if you put something in front of me there’s a chance I’ll become obsessed by it — and back then we were living a case in point.
Put something in front of Heather and she’ll do it. Organise it. Make it happen.
I’m just a bit lazier than her, the sort that used to say that I had no interest in farming if it meant getting up early to milk the cows. I wanted to be a gentleman farmer.
In fact I quite enjoyed milking if I actually made it into the shed — it was the thought of doing so for the rest of my working life that I couldn’t face. I’d joke that I needed to change careers every seven years or so, and for a long time that wasn’t far from the truth.
Those characteristics, and the fact that neither of us seems to have thought for a moment about “career”, explains quite a lot about the lives we’ve lived. Curious, energetic, busy busy busy! A series of adventures.
It also explains why I was only mildly surprised by Heather’s reaction when I confessed that I couldn’t remember anything about her being pregnant with Adrienne except the car stories.
“Neither can I,” she’d said, “we were too busy.”
Well, she was helping Joy with handcraft classes once a week.
And there was that job she quit in disgust, sewing theatre caps at Caxtons. And then gardening until the pregnancy got too advanced.
And she was making our clothes and cutting our hair — although judging by the look of Stephen and me she didn’t put a lot of time into the latter.
I’m sure Heather did most of the housekeeping and cooking as well, I can’t remember, and by this time she was also getting seriously into handcrafts. She’d been doing crochet since she was in hospital, and leather since that first bag for her Mum. It became a more serious, money-making concern a year or two later.
What else? There was the extramural course she did at Massey University. I think that was in 1973, because Adrienne was walking by then. We’d just moved into our car case home at Span Farm, and Heather had to go to Massey for a couple of weeks as part of the course.
There used to be quite a few kids at Span Farm, especially during the day at weekends. We’d built a cot for Adri at one end of the kids’ “bedroom”, with Stephen’s bed at the other. I seem to remember putting Adri down for a nap after Heather left, and taking one myself on Stephen’s bed, and Stephen showing the curious kids around. “That’s my Dad!”
Oh, and she did a yacht master’s course, becoming the second person in the family to have some theoretical mastery in a field — her in navigation, me in boat design — but no practical ability. It reminds me of the old story of learning to drive by reading a book. More of that to come!
And of course she was helping on the boat. And looking after the kids. Yes, Heather kept herself busy.
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Our little girl Adrienne was born in March 1972 — after a reasonably trouble free pregnancy, thank goodness. As best we can remember.
Adrienne can’t remember anything of our life at Span Farm, but we were very snug. We moved down there so we could rent the house at Ambler Avenue and bring in a little more cash. The boat was sucking up all our money.
We’d built three car case cabins, all opening out under the big boat shed, which meant they were normally sheltered from the rain. I’m guessing — and again, no photos! — that they were a bit less than 2m wide by 3.5-4m long — or a bit more than 6’ by 12’. I dunno — based on the size of the car case ply.
Two of them we built beneath the stern of the boat, one on each side of the shed. On the starboard side was the kitchen and dining room, with a little electric stove and kettle, a bit of bench space and shelves underneath; an opening flap behind the stove. There were built-in seats, opposite the door and across the other end, with a little table in front of them and Brian’s sketch plan pinned above. I can’t remember whether we had a built-in sink or not.
Stephen and Adrienne’s bedroom was at right angles, across the end of the shed. Both had two-piece plywood barn doors, so you could leave the top open for light and ventilation, and still keep the kids in. Or out. Like play pens on a building site.
Our bedroom was on the port side. To the left of the door as you went in was a desk, a chair and a chest of drawers, to the right our built-in double bed. Lights above the desk and bed. Very snug.
Our case was actually two storey, with Ken and Dianne’s bedroom above ours. You had to climb up the boat scaffolding to get to theirs. They only slept there at weekends.
Yes, very snug. Like that feeling you get camping — when it starts to rain, but you’re warm, and well fed, and dry — pleased and self-satisfied, comfortable in your tent, under the protective fly…
We laid duckboards down so we could walk around under the shed without tramping dirt indoors. Electric light and water came from our building site. The yard had a shared shower and toilet block. A visit there was the last thing before the kids’ bedtime.
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There were other people living in the yard, and our neighbours down the road and across the estuary considered us a disreputable lot, maybe immoral or loose living — although if that was the case we missed out. There was even a story in the Western Leader.
In reality it was more of a village atmosphere, with all sorts of people. Loners, friends, brothers, families. Mum, Dad and the kids. Only some lived on site, and ours may have been the only children who lived there regularly. We had no worries about them, no concern that they were separate from us at night. If they cried we could hear them.
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Most of the boats under construction were Donovan and Hartley designs. Both the smallest (an unlikely 19′ sloop that successfully crossed the Tasman) and the largest were Donovan designs.
The yard spawned remarkable success stories but dashed some dreams cruelly, and one group that came to look us over made me uncomfortable. This was a quartet that included Paul Ewing, the son of Mum’s closest childhood friend. That’s her in Dorothy’s wedding photo.
After looking around the yard, Paul, Keith and their girlfriends promptly decided to build their own. They rented a site further down from us and commissioned a design from another marine architect, Alan Mummery. I knew we were doing something slightly crazy, and now felt uneasy that maybe we’d helped lead someone else astray.
Another fellow was building a catamaran out of plywood. We thought it was very dodgy, held together with glue, galvanised clouts and wishful thinking. But dreams brought girls like bees to honey, and when he advertised for a sailing companion several turned up. We made loud tut-tutting noises but it didn’t seem to dissuade them. Years later we read that he’d been lost at sea, whether or not in the same boat I don’t know.
On another neighbouring site, a family was building a Donovan design, with a lot of materials that were said to have fallen off the back of a truck. They seemed fairly open about it, in an oblique sort of way, but when the cops visited the yard one day they faded into the background. I don’t know who financed their project, or the hair transplants that Dad was sporting — little plugs of hair sprouting like seedlings in a garden, and rumoured to be unpaid for, the subject of a dispute. But they were friendly, practical and successful in a buccaneering way, and they ended up living aboard and doing a fair amount of ocean sailing.
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We lived like that at Span Farm for about a year. After work we’d eat dinner, clean up, walk the kids up to the shower block, read them a story in their pyjamas, kiss them goodnight, and retire to our bedroom, either to work at the desk on lesson plans or marking, or to read in bed. And sleep well in our little cocoon.
In the morning we’d open the bedroom door directly into the boat shed, with the massive stern of the boat directly over our heads, get breakfast, sort out the kids, and I’d be off to school.
Our weekends were given over to the boat. Ken and Dianne would move down to their little bedroom above ours with their own little baby, Anna.
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By the time we moved down to Span Farm to live it was mid-year 1972.
The timber frames were set up, faired and braced, and we’d started applying the reinforcing. First the inner layers of mesh, then the transverse and longitudinal reinforcing, and finally the outer mesh layers. All pulled tight round the wooden frames with wire strainers or block and tackle to follow the lines that Brian had drawn.
It was indeed magic to see those lines take shape, and to see how shapely they were, and it’s a pity I have to illustrate with photos of our second boat, although it was as beautiful in its own way.
There was still a lot more work to do, but once finished, this reinforcing “armature” would be “plastered” in two stages, first from the outside, secondly from the inside.
Unlike the months of work that went into the armature, plastering the outside was one long day’s work done professionally by a tradie gang who’d built a deserved reputation on past hulls.
People talked about “concrete boats”, but that was a misnomer. Normal concrete is made of Portland cement mixed with water and a coarse aggregate of gravel and sand. What went into ferrocement boats was more like the plaster used to cover brick or block walls — no gravel, salt-free sand, a higher proportion of Portland cement and far more reinforcing. Very high quality.
It was critical that the armature be kept as thin as possible — typically less than an inch thick (25mm) in boats like ours — and covered with the minimum amount of cement-based plaster. Otherwise the boat would float “below its marks”, meaning less freeboard, and sluggish performance.
And that in turn meant a great deal of tedious work tying and twitching, which occupied a good deal of our weekends for the rest of the year.
Tying involved making huge numbers of soft, vee-shaped wire “ties”, threading them through the layers of mesh where the reinforcing rods crossed each other, and back through on the other side, then twisting the wire tight to pull the rods together, nipping the ends off close and hammering them below to mesh surface.
Twitching meant using a little tool, made of No. 8 wire, with a sharpened right angle point on one end, to twist the wires of any bulging netting together, and pull it tight back into alignment.
Weeks of work, all in the service of a tight, thin armature and a light, shapely hull.
The final step was to fair the hull with a sledge hammer to remove any flats or bulges, like a panel beater working on a car. Then it was ready for the big day.
After the plastering was finished the hull had to be kept wet for days. This was essential to allow the plaster to increase in strength. Otherwise it would become cracked and crumbly. Punctured hose was rigged around the deck or bulwark edge to cover the entire hull with a constant film of water, and we stood watch to ensure there were no dry patches. The inside of the hull had to be kept damp too.
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Meanwhile we continued to live in our little car case cabins, although it wasn’t as bad as that might sound. It was summer, the water ran down the hull and drained away, rather than dripping. The duckboards kept our feet dry.
But our dream was coming to an end. Heather and I felt that things came to a head when we began discussing the colour we’d paint the hull — the hull that the four of us had just built. Imagine, with years of work still ahead of us, falling out over that, with Brian’s elegantly coloured sketch plan tacked to the ply wall while we argued. But there were irreconcilable differences developing and we decided to part ways.
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Mum’s friend Ev Sayers had been proved right.
Ian, he’d said, you could build two smaller boats for less money and effort than the one you’re talking about — and when you eventually fall out, which you will, you can sail off in different directions none the worse for it.
Ken and Dianne took over the project at Span Farm, and moved the hull to Kelston when they bought a house there. As of writing this is the only photo we have of it. We didn’t speak for a couple of years, but the mutual resentment faded and the experience was never discussed when we socialised. We’ve been close friends ever since.
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Heather and I returned to Ambler Avenue to build a smaller boat. Or so we thought. Life’s ability to haul us round by the nose had other ideas.