How did we get here?


I blame my wife Debi with a little help from Sandy.

It all started in 2008 when our daughter Clare was in France on an exchange trip and Deb, our son Michael and I decided to go on holidays to Coffin Bay.

Coffin Bay is a beautiful spot with protected bays and plenty of opportunities to explore further out to sea. Having been there many times I knew that it is best enjoyed with a boat so I looked into purchasing something uncomplicated that we could take to play with.

Geoff, an engineer I worked with at the time told me he had a Mirror dinghy with a trailer he was looking to sell complete with all gear and a trailer at a bargain price of $150.
Knowing nothing about Mirrors I did a quick search and it seemed to fit the bill and after an inspection the deal was done.

Geoff was brilliant in giving me an off-water lesson on rigging the boat, he also repaired the trailer by replacing and greasing the wheel bearings.
I had done a course through WEA years earlier on sailing and rigging a small boat but had had very little sailing experience other than as a passenger on my grandpa's homemade boat DoDo and a couple of times with my uncle Ian in Melbourne.

The next lesson learned was that you can get carried away in repairing a wooden boat. It needed some work but not too much but there's always the temptation to do the best. The reality was that it worked, it was cheap therefore just get on with it, get it on the water and have some fun. 

The desire from Deb and Michael to sail was well short of mine but it's a boat that can easily be managed by one. So with bikes stowed on top, we headed for Coffins via the Wallaroo to Lucky Bay ferry.


I sailed the boat around the bay a few times, a couple of times with the unenthused Michael and once with Deb who was unceremoniously tipped out as we left shore.


It was at this point where I think Sandy needs to take some blame. Coffin Bay is one of the best places on earth to do nothing. In 2009 to get internet access you had to go to the top of the hill for about one bar of poor technology.
What it means is that it's a great spot to relax with a good book and for Christmas that year, with the Mirror dingy theme, Deb bought me a copy of The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow. It's a great read by someone with an attitude of just do it. There's a great podcast with the author Sandy Mackinnon here.

After reading the book, the question I asked myself was, where could you do that sort of thing in Australia?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The voyage backward down the Murray

Image
I posted each day of my trip on Facebook. I worked out pretty quickly that it's not easy typing while sitting in a tent. Additionally, internet coverage was a bit hit and miss. The process I ended up adopting was to write up my post, transfer it to my phone via messenger, upload photos to Facebook and add the post as comments. Often this was done a few days at a time when I was at a caravan park using a table in the camp kitchen.   Day: 1 Date: Sunday 6/03/2022 Start: 36°05'06.8"S 147°00'03.9"E Finish: 36°05'15.7"S 146°53'21.9"E Distance: 29.3 Accumulated Distance: 29.3 Rowing Time: 3:33:37 Accommodation: Cabin Dinner: Pizza takeaway from Albury, the dough was a bit thick The day before, my brother drove me and the boat with wife for support from Norwood in SA to Howlong in NSW where we'd booked for four nights. As always, it took us a while to get going with a trip to the shops but eventually we made it to the boat ramp at the base...
Read more

The boat of choice

Image
So the desire to travel down the Murray is there, the next question, what to do it in? As I didn't own a boat anymore, it meant that the options were open. Sailing something like a Mirror dinghy would be too much of a compromise, rowing without a sliding seat would be a laborious exercise, y ou could fit a sliding seat unit into a Mirror but the position of the dagger board would mean you were up high and with a reasonably wide boat in rowing terms, leverage would be reduced. Sailing comes with the need to constantly tack and there's plenty of trees to catch a sail. Maybe possible in the South Australian section of the Murray but forget it further up. Not an option. A motor boat such as a tinnie would be a good option if you could ensure a reliable supply of fuel. Either petrol or electric are possible options. The immediate downside is boat weight, at night it will never be far from the water and porting a tinnie isn't an easy thing. It doesn't take much research to w...
Read more