He laughed when I reminded him, so I think it’s a genuine memory.  But — what misplaced confidence on my part, and what a strange ambition. So where did the idea spring from?

§

Well, I’ve found a diary now, and I can say with certainty that it was Ken who first suggested it, on January 4th 1966, and that we discussed it on and off throughout that summer. But it was another five years before we finally committed, three and a half years after that other momentous day Ken had played a part in, when four of us went to the Embers to hear an English sailor-turned-folk singer called Nick Villard, me on a blind date with a girl called Heather Sharpe.

We’d got married in the meantime, and we had a little boy, Stephen. Ken and Dianne had married too. And somehow, in a way none of us can remember, here we were, in 1971, talking again about circumnavigating the globe together in a small boat. 

I’ve written a bit already about the counterculture of the late 60s and early 70s. There was the Summer of Love, when we were all Going to San Francisco. There was Free Love, although we joked that we were born a couple of years too early for that. And there was the music — Woodstock, with Richie Havens up on the stage in its early hours with his frenetic guitar, a sweaty black guy in a caftan with slightly too few teeth, singing “Free-dom! Free-dom!”, and thumping on the floor in his sandals to keep time. Imagine hearing Joe Cocker for the first time, making a near autistic howl out of a Beatles song.

Those old guys — mainly guys, the ones who aren’t dead — might  be making millions now from their back catalogues and their ageing fans, but back then their music was wonderful, and truly revolutionary.

And there were communes and unusual family groupings, appropriate technologies and sustainable living, world travellers and ashram devotees. Anything to avoid Working for the Man.

§

Of those us who decided on the Big Overseas Experience the more sensible travelled by ship or plane. But there was another, more adventurous way to see the world — to build a boat and sail the globe in it. We chose the sailing option. The hardest option, in other words, especially for people like us who lacked trade skills.

And, as we were to discover the hard way, the skills to build and outfit a cruising yacht yourself, and sail it around the world, are myriad.

There were people with the experience necessary to build a timber or plywood boat — the hull, that is — and others to build in steel, aluminium or fibreglass. There were plumbers and mechanics and electricians and engineers too. Any of those trades gave you a start — although just a start — on the skills front.

We four didn’t even have that. We were two teachers and two nurses! But there was help at hand in the form of a new “appropriate technology”, ferrocement boat building, which would enable us to build a boat hull largely with our own unskilled labour — thus avoiding a few of the skills, the myriad skills, that we would need.

Ken had mentioned the idea of building a “concrete hull” back in ‘66, and by the 70s the idea of “ferro” was firmly in the zeitgeist.

My parents were good friends with a third, Ev Sayers. His wife Jo was Mum’s best friend, and they lived on the same street for a few years.

Ev was a concrete plasterer by trade who also designed and built ferrocement boats, not to mention a domed ferro house they moved into further down Whangarei harbour. Maybe that’s where the ferro idea came from — Ken thinks so — but I doubt it. Certainly Ev thought we’d be doing the wrong thing, and as an experienced, intensely practical man he had every right to an opinion.

§

§

Ken and Dianne were living in Tawa, outside Wellington. One long weekend in 1971, almost certainly Easter, we decided to drive down to see them.

We had an old VW Beetle at the time, and we drove the 400 miles or so to Wellington overnight. That was an act of mutual trust. We promised each other that we’d keep to the speed limit throughout our watch so the other could sleep easy. Stephen slept in the bassinet on the back seat. I can recall the air-cooled engine clattering behind him and, with little oncoming traffic, our headlights piercing the dark. First the old Mangaweka Bridge, then a sudden sidestep to cross the railway line somewhere in the Manawatu, then driving back under the rail line — through an underpass near Marton. They all stand out as clearly as old movie clips.

It was fun catching up with our friends again. We drove across the Rimutakas to an East Coast beach somewhere in the Wairarapa and drew a full scale plan of our round-the-world cruising yacht in the sand, complete with cabins and bunks for the four of us and our kids. Heather and Dianne would both be pregnant again soon enough.

On the way back to Tawa we found a field full of Autumn mushrooms, picked all we wanted, and fed on them when we got home. Stephen got violently sick and hasn’t eaten mushrooms since.

The fateful decision was made and we drove back to Auckland.

§

The rest of the year and the following Summer are a blur. Several things happened — or more accurately must have happened.

Who first suggested Brian Donovan? I can’t remember. But somehow we’d introduced ourselves to him — one of those “ferro” gurus — an artist, dreamer and boat designer, one of the most big-hearted and creative men I’ve ever met, and that’s saying something. When I say “dreamer”, he was a man who could make someone’s dream manifest, and — if that person had the remarkable set of qualities required — they could build it and sail it round the world, or live on it, or work it, or wander round the islands of the Pacific.

§

At some point I’ll rhapsodise about the qualities of boat designers — marine architects — that make the best of them such remarkable people, but not right now.

Brian was living with his son and his family in Takarunga Road, Devonport — yet another suburb gentrified beyond belief. His design office was set up out back of the house in a converted car case. These “car cases” were what knocked-down cars were shipped in to New Zealand for re-assembly in this country, down in Thames. This was back in the days when our elders and betters thought that was a good idea. The structural ply in the discarded boxes was cheap and sought after. All you had to do was de-nail it and get it back home.

Brian said that of course we could have our dream.

Looking at the sketch plan he drew for us 50 years later is like recalling a romantic memory. It is a romantic memory. He drew us a 45’ (13.7m) brigantine. A brigantine! Not only could we have our dream but it would be beautiful. Even his penmanship was beautiful. I can still call to mind the shapely hull. It was beamy and shallow draft and configured so we could take her up the Rhone River in France, and through the Inland Waterways of the Eastern USA. And she wasn’t just beautiful, but practical. Brian would design it with down-to-earth, old time fittings and details that we could build ourselves out of affordable materials, like galvanised steel instead of stainless. Appropriate to us and to our boat.

Surrounding Brian was this cohort of other dreamers to encourage each other, all with their own Donovan design — some as esoteric as ours, others more conventional. The best of them built their dreams and sailed them around the world, and I have endless respect for them.

The first challenge was to extract the lines drawing from Brian — the plans that defined the shape of the hull —  so that we could start construction. Brian loved working on new designs but was less prompt with the detailed work. Having now done plenty of it myself, working for both him and Jerry Breekveldt, I sympathise — the seemingly endless hours, pre-computer, at the drawing board and on the calculations. And of course Brian in his car case was a one-man shop.

With both Jerry and Brian the magic part for me was always the sketch plan — thinking through all the practical details ahead of time. Everything necessary to suit her purpose. Would everything fit into and on to the hull shape he’d imagined, from the deck gear to the engine to the bunks? Was she stable enough to stay right side up in all conditions? With enough displacement to float to her marks? And all this work and thought put into a proposal, not even a firm commitment yet. Jerry worked mainly with reliable clients. Brian often worked on spec.

But in good time our lines drawing duly arrived, and we could start — once we’d sorted out a few practicalities, that is.