Chapter Six

BUILDING TIC TAC

 

In 1976, as a first officer on Boeing 707s, I completed my first flight to South Africa, with a stopover each way on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. At that particular time Qantas had cabin crew based there, and flew the sectors to Johannesburg and back twice a week, with five days off to enjoy the splendours of the island.

 

The chief steward on my first trip had been based there and was a close friend of a staff member of the Australian Trade Office. They arranged for a picnic at one of their favourite beaches, and I was lucky enough to be invited, with my first impression of the lagoon being 'so much for so little'. It was so pristine and beautiful it was as if no one had ever been there before us, and I was half expecting to see a dodo.

 

For those who have heard the saying 'as dead as a dodo', but have not known its origin, Mauritius was the only place these plump birds were found, and the early sailors and the animals that they had brought there hunted them for food until their extinction. The shells and sea life in the lagoon were as they must have been for hundreds of years, obviously due to the care taken by the locals. Although we were far from civilisation, our host went to extremes to pick up every last piece of litter we had dropped, taking it home with him for disposal.

 

At this particular time my small business of making circular slide rules was expanding, so much so that I had a new printing machine for each part, and during all my days at home there was a continuous ka-thump as the five air-operated machines automatically printed the plastic discs. I gave one of my simplified slide rules to the trade officer, and he put me in touch with a few schools so that I could ask their opinion.

 

It was my intention to send them from Sydney to Mauritius, but a chance meeting with the manager of the local plastics factory changed all that. He was a German plastics engineer, and from our first meeting we became the closest of friends. The government of Mauritius had started an export processing zone to entice overseas companies to bring their labour-intense manufacturing to the island, making use of the abundant cheap labour force. My relationship with the plastics expert existed not only during factory hours, but in the evenings as well, and he introduced me to his close friends who were managers of other German companies in the processing zone.

The plastics factory had a plastic printing machine, but they were having difficulties perfecting the process. The directors were very impressed when, three weeks after my first meeting with them, I returned with the correct printing plates and ink foil and set them up for production.

 

I was introduced to the manager of a cosmetics factory, and on being told of her problem of obtaining colourful labels I arranged the purchase of a label-making machine from Sydney. On every trip to Mauritius I met more and more manufacturers, and I was loaded up with samples from the factories that were anxious to find a market in Australia. My accountant introduced me to a Sydney promoter and slowly the imports began, with the factories giving me 10% commission in Mauritian rupees.

 

The first and most successful import was soft vinyl carnival masks, followed by soft plush toys and reproduction antique furniture. I had, through the correct channels, arranged for a 'commodity rate' for the air freight of these products, which helped to make them competitive on the Australian market. Apart from the casinos, I didn't really have a chance of converting my rupees to Australian dollars, and the idea of building a boat in Mauritius to use them seemed a great idea at the time, or was it another compulsion?

 

I looked at yacht plans from everywhere without finding the one I wanted, until a Qantas captain who was well into yachting introduced me to a Sydney designer. My desire was for a yacht that wouldn't move when my non-nautical wife stepped on board. To my delight, the Sydney designer had just finished working on such a vessel and I bought a copy of the plans. It was a comfortable fifty-two foot cruising ketch and I decided to build mine out of timber rather than aluminium. The designer was very approachable and gave me some good advice to get me started on my first venture of building a yacht.

 

Yacht building was not a thriving business in Mauritius, and my first contact with a boat builder was a pirogue builder over the road from the plastics factory. These small traditional timber fishing boats were not what I wanted, but it was a start in finding a builder for my fine yacht. He constructed his boats in an area amongst a small village, where the huts were made from old cardboard boxes and torn plastic sheeting. There was no running water or facilities and these Creoles lived in slum-like conditions. I had second thoughts about my venture until the non-English speaking boat builder summonsed a friend of his who was about to leave the large boat yard at the other end of the island. This craftsman could read and speak English fluently and was quite used to working from plans so, from these humble beginnings, the manufacture of the largest yacht to be built in Mauritius was about to begin.

 

On my next trips to Mauritius my suitcases were weighted down with new tools from Singapore, while the boat builder Paul was scouting the island for any old house ready to be demolished that could yield a large amount of good mahogany timber. The designer had suggested that this timber would be well seasoned and perfect, but unfortunately, at the time we were looking, none were available. However, Paul managed to find a source of some dried mahogany logs. The hull and the ribs of the yacht were to be built from laminated thin strips of mahogany, and the rough old logs were soon passing through the saw mill, being transformed into dainty planks of the rich red timber.

 

At this time I was a senior first officer on the Boeing 707 and most of my flights were chosen for a destination that had products I needed for building the yacht. Electronics from Los Angeles and Tokyo, teak fittings from Bangkok, sails from Hong Kong, and last but not least, Greek fishermen's hats for my crew from Athens.

I had searched Australia for the desired glue, which had to be transportable by air to Mauritius, and I made arrangements to collect the 20 litre drums of it while on my stopover in Perth, using my staff cargo entitlement to freight them. A site had been cleared amongst the shanty village and I had secured the blessing of the locals, as now they would have some rent money to share and a project to watch develop.

The first challenge was to produce all the ribs, and these were made from sixteen layers of 5 centimetre-wide mahogany. We had built a large flat timber frame that looked like a grid; each rib was plotted from the plans and blocks were fastened to the frame. I now had five craftsmen working for me. They would construct each rib with precision, bending the strips around the positioned blocks and working against the clock to finish each one before the two part glue began to harden. The ribs were made one side at a time, and when the glue had hardened they were joined by a large gusset where the keel beam was to be inserted. They looked like great whale ribs, lying amongst the trees until it was time to mount them upside down on the construction frame.

 

During this process I had been backwards and forwards to Sydney several times. I would show the designer movie film of the construction, and he would give me his advice for the next stage. The locals affectionately called me Mr. Bryan, but the Franco-Mauritians labelled me that 'bloody Australian'. It must have been an embarrassment at the time that the largest yacht was built by a foreigner using peasant staff in virtually what was a slum area. Quite often I would see a chauffeur-driven car stopping at the site. What a contrast it was - the rich passenger gazing enviously at the construction in progress, right on the doorstep of the poverty that his eyes didn't see!

 

On the day all the ribs had been mounted on the construction frame my excitement kept me from sleeping after my all-night flight from Perth, and I headed off straight away to the boat yard - a thirty-mile trip to the other side of the island - to see the progress of my beauty. I was dumbfounded when I looked at all the ribs perched up high on the frame, as it looked short and squat and not at all like I had envisaged.

 

Out came the plans and the tape measure as I tried to put my mind at rest, and it wasn't very long before I discovered the error. The plans had called for a three foot six inch space between the ribs, and it had been printed on the plan as 3' 6''; however, the plan had been folded so many times that the foot mark after the three had disappeared and the measurement now looked like 36''. There were seventeen ribs and each one had been set out six inches too short, making the yacht eight feet and six inches shorter than it should have been. It wasn't a great drama. The ribs were correctly positioned and I stood back, now happy that my yacht resembled what I had originally pictured. I was travelling to Mauritius about once a month, and gradually, on each visit, my beauty looked more and more like a dream yacht as the planks were glued on. It had three layers of four-inch-wide planks, with each layer being diagonally opposite the one underneath.

 

At this stage they were really using up the glue and, not to jeopardise my job, I would complete a staff cargo rebate form and have the glue documented as cargo on the same flight as me. On one particular trip I had rung the aircrew personnel officer and requested that he put an authorisation form in my mail slot before my departure that evening. It wasn't there when I left, so I wrote a note for it to be sent to me in Perth, where I would be in a couple of days and where the glue would also be waiting.

The form didn't arrive in Perth, but the captain gave me his permission to carry the glue on board with the crew baggage. When we were about ready to start the engines for our departure to Mauritius, the ground engineer called up over the intercom and said that a drum with the first officer's tag on it was leaking into the hold. Without hesitation, I told him to remove it and said I would sort it out on my return to Sydney. I didn't think any more of it, except that more glue was desperately needed for the yacht.

 

On my return to Sydney, I rang the Qantas cargo manager in Perth to enquire of the whereabouts of the leaking drum. I needn't have used the phone, as I could have heard his abuse by direct sound waves. He had assumed the contents of the drum were hazardous and had submitted a report in the usual triplicate condemning my actions to the chief pilot. With my heart racing, I rang the chief pilot, who said that I had 'got caught with my hand in the cookie jar', and that I had been suspended until the matter was resolved.

 

I rang the manufacturer Ciba Geigy, and the chief chemist invited me over for a discussion, writing a report to Qantas stating that the glue was not toxic and less flammable than scotch or gin. At that particular time on the Tasman services, all the duty-free alcohol was placed in large cardboard containers and stowed in the hold. The amount of flammable liquid carried in this exercise contravened the regulations, but who was I to say anything?

 

To prove a point that the cargo manager must have gotten out of bed on the wrong side that particular morning, I purchased another 20 kilogram drum of the glue and took it to Qantas cargo in Sydney, where it was processed and accepted for carriage at the normal freight rate and without any conditions.

 

Eventually I was reinstated, and the Director of Flight Operations made in his letter, not the point of what I had done, but what I had been accused of doing, and punished me by noting on my file that my cargo rebate was to be suspended for two years. Not really a punishment to me, as I was now sending freight to and from Mauritius by the tonne.

 

About this time I was once again trying to give up smoking, and my diversion from the cravings this time was the small sweet called Tic Tac. While out with the crew one evening I ran out of my supply, and when trying to buy some more no one seemed to know what I was talking about. When telling a hostess of my dilemma she informed me that her father worked for the Australian distributors of the factory just out of Sydney, to which I promptly asked her to have him check out the Mauritian market. Several days later, after our return to Sydney, she rang me and said that her father's company wasn't interested in exporting the Tic Tacs, but that I was welcome to do so if I wanted to.

 

It was like a red rag to a bull! On my next trip I was loaded with display stands of Tic Tacs, looking to find a distributor. My first call was to my friend at the trade office, and he informed me that they would have to be imported through an existing Mauritian business, suggesting I use one that his partner owned. We set up a joint venture, and very soon Tic Tacs were being airfreighted to Mauritius by the half tonne, and were distributed to the hundreds of tiny shops by 'reps' on motor scooters.

I was now collecting quite an income from these small sweets, and decided to call my yacht Tic Tac so that I could use it in commercials and thus obtain the tax benefits.

On every trip to Mauritius I always had a keen following of crew members wanting to come and look at the construction of Tic Tac. As so much equipment was needed for it now everything was sent by ship, except for important items. My original quote from the shipping line had been $4,000.00 to bring the bare hull back to Sydney, and that was the basis on which I started the construction; however, the shipping line changed the rate to $20,000.00, which made the exercise prohibitive.

 

It was now a matter of completing the construction to a full ocean voyage standard, complete with engine, rigging and sails. What had I gotten myself into? My garage at home soon had the complete makings for outfitting a home. Three gas water heaters, a full sized gas cooker, sinks and basins, and lights, with the list going on and on. The largest single unit was the brand new 80 h.p. Ford diesel engine, which sounded like an aircraft engine when I tested it without the exhaust system. I had taken flights all over the world to secure the items I needed and it all seemed to come together like clockwork.

 

All these items were shipped to Mauritius with a pallet of Australian cask wine. Cask wine was not available there, except for that brought in by passengers and crew. When the shipment arrived in Mauritius I learned the ways of the Mauritian customs office and found, to my dismay, that not one cask of wine made it from the customs bond - or should I say not through the proper channels. Mauritians had the knack of suddenly forgetting how to speak English when they had something to hide, and the reason for the disappearance of the wine was that it had been damaged in transit. I was exporting several items to Mauritius but, one by one, someone else was bringing the items in the back door. The Tic Tacs were a prime example of this, as when my so-called partner couldn't pay a gambling debt with a bookmaker he assigned the franchise to the bookmaker until the debt was paid.

 

I was not told of this at the time, and the bookmaker, who was also connected with a grocery import business, soon saw the potential in Tic Tacs. He hoodwinked me and ordered a container load from the parent factory in Italy. On learning of my sudden loss of income I approached the Australian manufacturers, but all I got was a statement saying that the matter was out of their control; however, they did offer me the franchise for several islands in the Pacific. Once bitten twice shy, so I declined their offer but, as I was superstitious about changing a vessel's name, I kept the name Tic Tac for my yacht.

With my income in Mauritius now reduced, it became a burden to pay the wages - little that they were - but eventually the time was drawing near to have Tic Tac launched. It would have been better, in hindsight, to leave her where she was, as she would have made luxury apartments for the people surrounding the building site. No Mauritian company would take on the task of transporting her to the wharf, giving me all sorts of excuses.

 

Eventually one company consented to the bare hire of their transporter, but left it up to me to take all the responsibility of the transfer to the harbour. I was told that it was the largest boat to hit the roads, and once again it was the Creole people who came to my aid with the required skills and labour force for the journey. I couldn't get any assistance from the power and telephone companies for travelling under their low wires, and the trip was managed with several eager young men propping up the offending wires and walking along the deck as the boat moved under them, all the while enjoying the thrill of their dangerous task and the cheers of the awestruck crowd along the route.

 

It was the day before Christmas Eve and everyone was getting into the holiday spirit, but what was about to ensue was to become a nightmare for me. The keel that the designer planned for my yacht was a long box section with several partitions that were to be filled with scrap steel and concrete, with the large keel bolts welded to them. The only shipyard on the island quoted to build it for me, and just before they filled it they advised me that they could only get the total weight to four tonnes. A quick check with the designer took away my worry, as he said that it would be okay to have internal ballast, and in actual fact the original plan for the aluminium version had been designed with such ballast.

 

At the wharf a crane was waiting to lift Tic Tac onto the keel, which unfortunately had not been delivered from the shipyard a few hundred metres away. Off I raced to find out where it was, but was soon pleasantly surprised as I saw it being towed by a tractor. The delivery route took us over a weighbridge and, so that I had an idea of how much ballast I was going to require, we made a quick stop. Two point two tonnes! That couldn't possibly be correct. It took some convincing from the weighbridge operator that the scales were accurate, and that was that. No amount of fiddling the books would make it any heaver. What was I going to do? Suddenly the

people I wanted to talk to from the shipyard couldn't speak English or had run for cover. I thought that the best thing to do was to leave the boat on the wharf until the keel could be modified, but I was told that was impossible as the harbour was closing for a month for the Christmas holidays.

 

I had taken three months long service leave to organise the launching and certainly couldn't stay an extra month. Tic Tac was lowered onto the keel and the nuts were put on and tightened. The great moment arrived and, just like a reluctant child who wouldn't sit down in a bath, it seemed as if she didn't want to get her bottom wet either!

 

Tic Tac had been purposely kept light so that the crane could lift it, but with the shortfall of weight in the keel it floated at least 35 centimetres too high. I hadn't launched a streamlined yacht, but a duck! She was manoeuvred to another wharf, where the engine and other heavy equipment were loaded - but still she floated like a duck. We were towed to a sheltered bay at the north of the island and gradually I installed all the equipment, most importantly the engine. Once it was running my friends had the pleasure of some great picnics, and the enthusiasm gathered as slowly two tonnes of scrap reinforcing steel was set into concrete in the bottom of the hull.

 

My long service leave had nearly run out so, through the Qantas office, I sent a telex message requesting permission to take another month's leave. Unfortunately, the message was mistyped, making it seem that I had requested three months leave, which caused much annoyance in the personnel section as they tried to work out how I could take such a large amount of leave. A family friend who worked in the flight planning section saw my signal, and without considering the consequences told my wife that I had asked for three more months leave, before I told her that I was going to take an extra month if it was approved. When I received the permission for the three months leave with special conditions the mistake was realised, and the original request was granted.

 

The shipbuilding yard took some of the blame for the weight of the keel and arrangements were made to have Tic Tac pulled out of the water onto their slipway, where the keel could be deepened and the extension filled with lead. I drove all over Mauritius looking for scrap lead until I finally found two tonnes. My workers and I stayed up all night melting the scrap into lumps that could be put into the main furnace for the pour into the added section of keel. When the task was completed and Tic Tac slipped out of the cradle, at last the lines of the paintwork were in the right place relative to the water.

 

We were all very tired and eager to motor back to the mooring, and while I made a quick toilet break I handed the wheel to an eager sailor. Tic Tac was now lower in the water and the keel was deeper, and the shortcut path he took through an area of coral outcrops became a minefield. Crunch! Pulling up my shorts on the way, I raced on deck to survey the damage, imagining by the abrupt stop that we must surely have done some major damage and could be sinking. Fortunately it was only the keel that had hit, and as the water was crystal clear we tried to retrace our path out of the outcrop, unfortunately at times having to break our way through.

 

It was now time for the exciting job of measuring up for the masts and rigging. Using a plan from the mast supplier in Sydney, the measurements were all triple- checked. While the masts and rigging were being manufactured in Sydney the sails were being made in Hong Kong, and I personally attended the loading of the forty and sixty foot masts onto the freighter - not that I could have done anything, but I just wanted to reassure myself that they had left Australia in one straight piece.

 

I duly planned a trip that arrived in Mauritius to collect the equipment for the most focal point of Tic Tac, and within a few days the masts were up and it was time for her first sail in the pristine waters. What a great day that was, with so many friends helping to get her under way! She had a very large deck space and there was always room for extra people. One sailor friend who was passing through Mauritius commented that the deck was so large you could play tennis on it.

 

A yacht race! What yacht race? The predominantly white Franco-Mauritian yacht club was about to hold their annual race from Mauritius to the nearby island of Reunion. On most of my flights from Mauritius to Johannesburg you could see Reunion just after take-off, and on the return trip the descent into Mauritius began at Reunion, so from the flight deck of a Boeing 707 it looked as though Tic Tac could take the voyage in her stride.

 

I arranged leave for the race, but because of a full Qantas aircraft to Mauritius, I had to fly to Bombay and connect with an Air Mauritius flight to get to the island. Prior to my departure I bought a life raft from Qantas surplus stores and sent it on ahead. Little did I know that it was ten years old and couldn't be serviced again by a normal life raft company. Qantas wouldn't carry out servicing for outsiders, so it turned out to be an expensive throw-away raft. I had brought the new compass for Tic Tac in my carry-on baggage and I kept myself amused during the flight by familiarising myself with its markings.

 

My crew was a mixed bag of mostly non-sailing adventurers who had no idea what they were in for. Two were English foremen from a construction site and two were my Creole workers. A ring-in was an Australian sailor who was passing through Mauritius on his trimaran and, as I had never taken part in an ocean voyage before, I believed that his radio direction finder and his experience on the ocean would be an asset in the race. We all thought that the voyage was going to be like an extended day's outing, and the catering was arranged for such an event, with little thought of food to go with the beer.

The departure time was two o'clock, but when the gun sounded we were still tied up at our wharf finishing the last minute preparations such as mounting the compass. As we didn't run through a 'compass swing' to adjust the compass, it could have steered us anywhere. From that point on I realised that my entering a yacht race was the wrong thing to have rushed, and it was only good luck that saved us from a watery disaster. When it was a matter of leaving, 'ready or not', we found that someone had tied us up with such a knot that the rope had to be cut to release the yacht. We were now about an hour behind the other yachts and for the duration of our journey we never saw another one!

 

When you are on the water the ocean feels so lonely - although the visit of an inquisitive whale had us concerned for a while! As soon as we left the sheltered comfort of the shoreline the reality of our unpreparedness for the journey began to show. With the full sails straining on the rigging, the downwind side was excessively slack, but there were no tools large enough to adjust the rigging screws. Eventually, we found an engineer's vice and somehow managed to improve the situation.

 

All my crew were sick and unable to do their watch, except for the Australian sailor and, being a hardened sailor, he refused to do any more watches than was fair. With the darkness came the rain, and by this time I couldn't keep my eyes open - but there was nobody to steer. A crew member was extracted from the comfort of his bunk and he sat next to me, the only shelter available to us being a blanket. I would doze as he did his best to steer, but the flapping of the sails when he veered from the ideal course continually woke me, and each time I had to carry out a quick recovery of the situation.

 

By the time the sun had risen, most crew had their sea legs and I was given a chance to at last close my eyes without disruption. We thought that we were sailing fast, but there was no sign of even the slowest boats, so when the wind picked up and reached the stage where sailing was very uncomfortable there was a unanimous decision from the landlubbers to abandon the race and set a course direct to the finish line at the small river port of St. Pierre on the island of Reunion.

 

It was nearly midnight when we sneaked in through the narrow breakwater, and once again we were set a difficult task. Tic Tac's mast was sixty feet above the water, and at a similar height there was a crane boom that had been left hovering over the water. The port was so small that it took over an hour for us to get into such a position that this obstacle wouldn't cause any damage. There wasn't a scrap of surplus rope on Tic Tac, so it was with the bare minimum that this now twenty-six tonne yacht was tied up.

 

We were the first yacht to arrive, as the race course took the other yachts anticlockwise around the island first. From 3.00 am onwards the other yachts started to arrive, each one being given a short crescendo of French bravos, but on Tic Tac it was impossible to sleep for the continuous footsteps running over the deck. We had now become the wharf, and eventually twenty yachts were tied up alongside.

 

During the morning, crew members of the other yachts went on a sightseeing tour, leaving us to hold the fort, but little did they know that the whole of the Mauritian sailing fleet was being held by such flimsy rope! As the day progressed, so did the wind, reaching over thirty knots, and now it was a case of borrowing rope where we could to secure Tic Tac to the wharf.

 

When I paid for my entry into the race the fee had included dinner for all the crew at the local yacht club, but late in the day when the organisers of the race returned I was told that there were not enough tables for all the Tic Tac crew. There was, however, space for me if I wanted to represent the crew. I saw red, as I knew the reason behind this ploy. There were two Creole boys on my crew and the white Franco-Mauritian sailors were not going to have their closed-shop dinner infiltrated by the lower working class. The only Creoles to be at that dinner were the waiters and chefs.

 

All the white crew on Tic Tac had accepted the two boys on an equal footing, and the decision was unanimous that I boycott the dinner. We would have our own dinner party, or that was the plan. Exhausted by the sea air and the stress of the day, I fell into my bunk in the aft cabin and went out like a light. Not so for the others, who kept watch aided by large quantities of ale.

 

My sleep was interrupted by a few choice words and a thud above my head. On investigating, I found one of my English crew members lying bloodied on the deck. He had evidently changed his mind about the yacht club dinner and was now paying the price for being a deserter, reminded of the values by one of his countrymen. He was offered a safe haven on another yacht and, very embarrassed, I had to apologise to everyone the next morning.

 

Realising that the crossing between the two islands was not the cup of tea that I expected, we made an early departure to be well established on the return voyage before the strong winds came up. We ventured out through the narrow walls protecting the tiny harbour and hoisted the sails for maximum speed. It was as though we had 'been there and done that' and all of us wanted to get home.

 

As the wind picked up and we heeled over more suddenly, a potential disaster started to unfold. The force of the wind onto the sails was putting an extreme load on the windward rigging, so much so that the downwind side became so slack that the lower spreader was pulled out of its socket on the mast. I hadn't bolted it to the socket as, having no one to advise me on this crucial part of the rigging, I had assumed that the tension of the rigging would keep it in place.

 

Imagining the future, I wondered how I would ever get a new mast sent to Reunion; let alone how I would ever be able to afford it. That would have been necessary if the person at the helm had achieved their attempt to steer the yacht into the wind before my steel grasp took over. With the spreader out of its position, there would have been an excess of cable on that side when the yacht levelled, and the mast, with no support on one side, would most probably have snapped and fallen into the sea. I knew that as long as we didn't change the sailing position everything would be okay, and one of the Creole boys bravely saved the day by climbing up the mast using the sail slides as footholds. As soon as he had positioned the spreader back in the socket and had a firm grip on it, the yacht was rounded up into the wind, and with the sail now limp there was enough tension on the rigging to keep the spreader in place.

 

It was an embarrassed captain who steered Tic Tac through the narrow channel back at St Pierre. Because of the strong cross-wind I had to crab my way through, with the bow and stern nearly touching either side. There must have been some giggles as the reason for our return spread among the experienced yachtsmen. We couldn't get to the wharf and had to anchor, which was now going to compound our repairs. We needed electricity to drill the holes through the spreaders and also through the stainless steel brackets - I had now learnt the hard way the important part they played in the rigging.

 

We were able to borrow a small hand drill that had spent too much time in bilge water, but eventually we managed to get it to work and the task began to drill the bolt holes in the two lower and two upper spreaders. Everyone took turns at the tiring drilling, which also took its toll on everyone's knuckles. The lower spreaders weren't too bad, but sitting on the small bosun's chair high above the water, drilling the holes in the upper spreaders with the mast moving like an upside down pendulum was not for the faint-hearted!

 

Time fixes everything, and just before dusk we were on our way again, now with just a gentle breeze blowing as we slipped out of the port on a heading direct for Mauritius. I was now going to have my first experience sailing through a storm, as the black clouds on the horizon headed directly for us. After rigging the yacht with the storm sails, the crew headed for the drier comfort of the cabin, leaving me once again to sort out any problems. All through the night we went every which way, with my not having a clue where we were.

 

Although I was hoping to see the peak of the mountain on Mauritius lit up like a beacon when the sun rose, there was no mountain visible, and gradually every cloud on the horizon was scrutinised as to whether it was a solid object or not. We had all had enough of sailing and the engine was now the preferred source of power. The Australian with the direction finder tried to locate the only beacon, which was at the airport on Mauritius, but he couldn't tell if the beacon was in front of us or behind us. Could we have travelled so far during the night that we had slipped passed Mauritius?

At this stage we had no food left, more beer than diesel fuel, and were not at all sure if we were heading for Mauritius or Western Australia! Our mast climber was now perched at the top of the mast for a better chance of a sighting and, even though his triumphant cries were shouted in Creole, we all knew what had excited him. For me the feeling was relief that we hadn't made much progress the night before and had not sailed passed the small island.

 

The crew were very quick to disembark, some of them kissing the ground as they ran for cover to avoid the two-hour trip to the mooring. The voyage did have one benefit for them, as they ate out for days on the stories of their voyage on Tic Tac.

 

While cleaning up the yacht at the mooring, I went to undo the life raft, but it seemed as though the same person who had tied us up prior to our initial departure had done another undoable knot. So much for that if we had wanted to use it in a hurry!

 

I hadn't been able to insure Tic Tac since she had been launched, and it was a worrying time for me during the cyclone season. It sometimes took two days to get through to the island on the telephone to check how she was faring with the winds, and in one particular storm one of the two strong anchor chains snapped. Not wanting to chance a second cyclone season, I arranged to have Tic Tac taken to Singapore on a barge that was being towed there empty. At that stage I didn't know what was going to happen, but I just wanted her out of Mauritius.

 

I made arrangements for an English construction company, Kier International, to lift her out of the water. Their crane was about to be disassembled and there was only one weekend left, so it was a mad rush to take everything out of the hull so that the weight would be at a minimum. Jackhammers were nearly needed to remove the concrete and steel internal ballast it had set so hard!

 

Kier International had built me a cradle from the boom of an old crane, and the moment came to see if the crane could lift Tic Tac out of the water. Professionally and gently, she was lowered into the cradle and the welders set about cutting the keel bolts to remove the keel. It was no good just undoing the nuts and letting it fall away, as the bolts had been set in resin. The bolts were cut and the keel was dragged away with a tractor, but the attention of Kier's English foreman was caught as he noticed an excessive amount of water flowing from it.

 

There was so much water that it had made a small rivulet in the sand. The foreman called the welders over and they cut a small hole in the first compartment. To everyone's astonishment the section was completely empty, so with much anticipation they went to the next section. It contained the scrap steel, but there was not a sign of any concrete except for the top few centimetres, which must have been put there to convince me on my inspection that the section was full and solid.

 

While inspecting that cavity, we noticed that the stainless steel keel bolts had only been tack welded, and at the first encounter with a heavy storm they would have let go their grip, with disastrous results. Each partition had a similar finding and I was advised to call down a marine surveyor to make an inspection. He immediately condemned the keel and called a photographer to take photos of this attempted sabotage. I was running out of time for my stay in Mauritius, and everything was going wrong.

 

When the truck with the engine and all the fittings arrived at the freight forwarders half of the items were missing, and as no one could speak English I called the police. They took me to the area where the yacht had been moored, but no one knew anything. Eventually we tracked down the driver of the truck, and when questioned by the police he surrendered the information we required. One of my trusted Creole boys had arranged for the truck to stop at his place and have several items offloaded.

 

When the culprit was found he denied the accusation, but the police escorted him to a shed at the rear of his house where the missing items were found. These weren't much use to me as the police said that they had to keep the items as evidence and couldn't release them. A friend in Mauritius said that he would arrange to have the keel taken away to his son's factory for safekeeping so, very tired, I returned to the hotel where I normally stayed.

'Mr. Bryan, you can't stay here,' boomed out the portly police inspector. 'All the boys are very cross with you for having their friend locked up, and a rock will surely hit you in the head.'

It was all getting out of hand and the police inspector drove me to another hotel where a friend of mine was staying. I gave him no chance to turn down my request for a bed and, very concerned for my safety, I spent the night on this paradise island in fear.

A month later I returned to start legal action against the shipbuilder, but when I enquired where the keel was no one knew. The friend who was meant to have collected it for safe storage hadn't, and I was now left with the task of trying to glean information from the locals as to its whereabouts. Two Creoles who would have been involved with moving such a heavy object had mysteriously died, and all my attempts to find the keel failed. The barrister told me that without the keel I had no chance of taking the matter to court, and with my tail between my legs I returned to Australia.

 

I was very annoyed a year or so later when, while displaying at a Mauritian trade exposition in Sydney, the said surveyor came over to me. Naturally, the topic of conversation was the keel and he told me that he had known where it was buried, but couldn't tell me as most of his surveying work came from the shipbuilding yard. He said that if he had told me at the time his livelihood would have been gone. He was now living in Sydney and would tell me where it was - but for a price. I had no desire to ever return to the island that had cheated me so much, so I declined his offer.

 

In my absence the engineering company that had the barge returning to Singapore collected Tic Tac, and off she went on another ocean voyage. She nearly sank in the Strait of Malacca, but this time it was the barge that was in trouble and taking on water.

Space was booked on a cargo vessel for the final journey to Sydney, with Tic Tac taking up the space of three containers on the deck. I kept in contact with the ship, anxious to be waiting at the dock in Sydney for her arrival in Australia, but once again I was shattered. The captain informed me that the ship's destination and only port of call was going to be Melbourne. In panic mode again, I tried to find road transport from Melbourne to Sydney. At last I found a company that could manage the job, but the pitfall was that the only trailer they had big enough to carry Tic Tac was in Adelaide. The ship's captain agreed to leave Tic Tac on the deck for three days, but after that time he would have to unload it to be out of the way of other containers. It was a high-speed trip from Adelaide for the trailer, but it duly arrived on time.

 

Because the total width was sixteen feet, it required a police escort front and back for the daylight road voyage to a boat storage yard at Botany Bay. Anxious to be there for the unloading, I rang the transport company early in the morning for an expected arrival time, but was given the news that it had already arrived and had been unloaded. How could others take away the control of my most valuable possession?

 

The drive to the boat yard was at the maximum speed limit, and there she was - safe and sound on the ground again, snuggled in the cradle. Evidently the one crane that had been ordered to unload her couldn't manage, and another had to be called in for the job as well. In some ways I'm glad I wasn't there, as it's not a nice feeling seeing your yacht swinging in the air on the end of what you think is a very thin cable!

 

For the next few months it was a mater of refitting the inside, as anything that hadn't been bolted down before it was lifted out of the water in Mauritius had been stolen. So desperate was one thief to remove the hydraulic ram for the rudder that he chopped it out with an axe, and without the rest of the steering system the $300.00 ram was only worth the value of scrap.

 

The colour she had originally been painted was Inca red, which I'd had specially mixed in New Zealand, to the same specifications of a yacht I had viewed with envy while marina walking in Auckland one day. I now decided to paint her traditional white and bought the best two-part marine paint for the job. With a professional spray painter at the ready, I mixed the paint. When, only ten minutes into the job, the hired compressor broke down, we were left with a dilemma on what to do. Desperate attempts by phone to locate another compressor were fruitless, and as the mixed paint only had a short life before it hardened there was no choice except to put it on with a roller. When it had dried the hull looked as though it was covered in white orange peel. What a disappointment! I had worked hard to have the smooth timber hull surface ready to be a white mirror, and now any reflection was similar to that of a mirror in a fun arcade.

 

The equipment that had been saved in Mauritius had arrived back in Australia, and I learned the grim news that the life raft was ten years old and could only be serviced by Qantas. When Qantas declined to carry out the work, I let my boys inflate it in the swimming pool. They had hours of fun pretending to be shipwrecked, and they experimented with all the attachments, including some of the fluorescent sea marker dye. Their fun came to a watery end as the tired old rubber started to disintegrate, and now the life raft needed saving as small holes blew bubbles in the pretty water. So much for servicing.

 

My boys attended a leading Sydney private boys school that would have been in despair if they had known what one of my sons did before school one morning. He and a friend made a diversion via the Sydney Harbour Bridge and, starting by scaling a high safety fence, they clambered up the archway until they had nearly reached the roadway. I can imagine the look of delight on their faces when they threw a packet of the marker dye into the harbour. Like a droplet of oil on the surface of the water, the dye rapidly ventured outwards until there was an enormous semicircle of bright green water.

 

When, once again, a large crane was called in to lift the white orange peel hull into the water I stood back and watched with concern. Everything was going smoothly until the hull was just barely over the water, at which point the ground next to the sea wall began to give way and the crane started to topple. Blow the yacht, thought the crane driver, and he let Tic Tac freefall into the water. I had now had enough of yachts going in and out of the water, and everyone who was involved in this rapid launching gave a sigh of relief when we saw that the hull had not touched the wall while doing her bellyflop. Once again, it was a tow to the marina berth where the engine and rigging were fitted, and with great anticipation my sons and I went for our first sail.

 

The area we were berthed at had several sandbars on the journey to the open sea and, enjoying our sail so much, the time of the turn of the tide was forgotten. We paid the price on our late return, when the keel dug a furrow in the sand. We were now heeling over with the wind, even though there were no sails hoisted. Gradually, we were blown into shallower water and our lean became even greater. I was thinking that we might have to have an enforced night on our side, but a powerful speedboat came to our aid. With a rope from the top of the mast, the speedboat used all its horsepower, and slowly pulled us, on a forty-five degree lean, back to the deep channel. Rather than tempt fate in trying to get back to our marina, we settled for the closest wharf and used the high tide the following day to return.

 

Eventually I secured a berth at the Cruising Yacht Club marina in Rushcutters Bay, and several years passed by with some very enjoyable sailing, until my depression took over again.

 

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