need to swim down first, to get yourself free. I wrote what I felt – the risk is that if the boat stops suddenly and you are injured. If you hit the mast, well, at least you can breathe. If you finish up under the boat, well, that’s it. We all had those bloody awful heavy helmets with cameras on years ago – now people can wear tough light- weight helmets when and if they choose. Most of our safety rules have evolved
around drowning. We carry spare air on every boat – we were probably the first class to do that – and we carry a knife on the back of the boat as part of the rules, plus every crew carries a personal knife. The trapeze harness always has to be the outermost garment, not under a rash vest, so you can shed that quickly. Everybody also carries a small personal
hi-vis orange flag, and there is another one stowed on the boat; the rules are that if you see one of those flags, no matter how far in front you are you sail there as quickly as you can. Fortunately we’ve had no drownings
here at the club. They lost one bloke in Brisbane, one in the States, a couple in Europe in the 49ers. The key really is to get the boat up fast. So the general idea is that if you see one of those orange flags flutter- ing somewhere you get there, capsize your boat and help right the boat that has a problem. The rescue boat is coming in fast too; really we sail pretty close together and so the response time is pretty good. I missed a JJ Giltinan as I dislocated my
shoulder in a selection race in 1985 and then sort of got out of the class after ’86.
48 SEAHORSE
Work was busy and the class was too much, to be honest. There was always something not fixed and the other crews were getting to be full-time on the boats – working all week on their bits and bobs. I would send my boat to get something
done and they would fix it, but send it back de-rigged, they hadn’t got round to that part. So it got to the stage where it wasn’t that enjoyable. We then sailed VSs for seven years and family emerged – Herman could watch me rig the VS and off we happily went club sailing.
And back in Then a few years later my dad died, and I was sorting all sorts of things out and thought that I could still handle an 18- footer so maybe give it a go? Julian Beth- waite got me to sail his three-handed boat one weekend, where we did well, and by the mid-1990s the boats were becoming more standard… in theory. Now you were supposed to be able to order a boat and get one quite easily – that never quite worked, you still ended up having to do every- thing… But I got back into it and pretty soon we weren’t far off the money. They were better boats, too, with two
rigs, pretty much one-design but you could still fiddle with your sails. I did that for a couple of years and then built my motor- boat JBW, then thought I would relax a bit again and watch Herman take it on… At that stage my daughter also got inter-
ested in horses – and that’s the best way to lose money, eh, Blue! My wife is away with horses on the weekend and I am on
my own on the JBW or with some mates, so I thought stuff it, I would have another try at the skiffs and hang out with ‘the boys’. I had a new boat built of Nomex by McConaghy and it was good. I had Jack Young and Euan McNicol with me and they were good lads – terrific really. I had been Yandoo for three years and
then AMP Centrepoint came in as sponsors and the club wanted to look after them and put their name on a boat, so I agreed and we won the JJ Giltinan in 2000 and finished third the year after that. Sailing these boats today is pretty easy, I
reckon. After the first race I am still pretty match ready for the next one. OK, I am a bit puffed, but to be honest I am not par- ticularly fit. Like most small boat sailors I am reasonably agile but I do have my routine. At the end of every shower I stretch both hands up high – reaching for the ceiling for 10 seconds, and then elbows out and twist slowly to rotate as far back as I can, then the other side and that’s it! For me it’s about keeping the spine supple. But so far it seems to work!!
Historics? Rob Tearne, who won a lot of races with Dave Porter in the 1970s, got the whole thing going in the late ’80s. First he built Aberdare the replica and then he rang me and asked if I would pitch in too. I said yes, but time was my killer… so if he could make it happen I would help fund it. With my dad and uncle both sailing in
the skiff Australia, and winning an Aus- tralian title in 1947, that would give me a
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