Bern Cuthbertson - A Salty Legend
reprinted from the Tasmanian Yachtsman Autumn 2014
That world renowned salty legend of the twentieth century, Bern Cuthbertson, passed on a few days before Christmas. He was a friend and mentor. I did some of my time “before the mast”, as they say in the classics, with Bern. During those miles I learnt seamanship, from the mundane like how to coil a line or tie a boat to the dock (and not the dock to the boat) to critical survival knowledge; reading the roaring forties weather and myriad other lessons in looking after a boat and the blokes on it. The overriding theme was a simple yet profound respect for the sea. I don’t want to write a requiem for Bern. There are other people and mediums better placed to do that. Simply put, his legacy will live on in the hundreds of people he opened up to the mysteries of going to sea. He’ll be sorely missed.
But thinking about the 90 odd years that Bern lived set my mind to the changes we’ve seen over the past century and the things that have stayed the same. My son Alex is currently doing his final semester at the Australian Maritime College and will end up with a Master Class One ticket, licensed to sail any vessel anywhere in the world. The Ocean Protector, an Australian vessel that operates everywhere from the Indian and Pacific Oceans to Antarctica was Al’s last ship prior to his latest stint at college. She is ECDIS and Dynamic Positioning equipped. This means there is no legal or logical requirement for paper charts and the vessel can be positioned and maneuvered within centimeters with joysticks, compliments of satellite technology.
Yet during his cadetship Alex was trained in what is now considered the ancient art of celestial navigation along with the rigor of taking watches during long weeks at sea and short periods of time off. One of the benefits of celestial navigation is that it gives a perspective of where you are in the world and how the whole system of navigating works. And doing the hard yards on a ship was not dissimilar to the pre-dawn starts I had with Bern on the sailing fishing vessel, Derwent Hunter, a 72 foot Blue Nosed Schooner, steaming out to the ‘30 mile patch’, 70 odd miles from Hobart and 30 miles due south of Tasman Island, chasing trevalla or Blue Eye as it later became known.
Baiting up would start an hour or so before dawn on a rolling deck with boxes of frozen bait being chopped up and snared on razor sharp double hooks, before the first set at sunrise. You had to understand the currents in 240 fathoms of water on the edge of the continental shelf and we had no land marks, chart plotters or transponders to locate the gear once it was down. You built a chart in your head using the southwesterly ground swell, compass, depth sounder and clunky radar that, on a good day, gave a signal off Mount Wellington. Always with one eye on the glass (barometer) because the weather bureau only ever managed to get it right some of the time. At the end of the trip we would sail home on the leading edge of a front, the old man and the apprentice both reveling in the joy of a big boat powering along under sail in a southern ocean swell.
In essence, it was the discipline, learning and following the hard rules of being at sea that meant surviving. Developing the ability to observe and react if something wasn’t quite right came in useful many times in later years. In 2006 Al and I sailed Helsal 4 home to Hobart from France via the Panama Canal. We sailed 13,000 miles and made 28 port entries in 10 different countries in 6 months. I lost count of the number of times that training in observation and reaction kept us safe. A change in the smell of the breeze and swell pattern confirmed a landfall was imminent. A drop in the glass and a change in the feel of the wind and the wave pattern and we’d reef down before a storm hit, the sense that a sheet or halyard wasn’t quite right and we avoided a foul up before it became an issue. We sailed H4 without any wind gear and learnt the boat by observing how she felt. The boat will talk to you. You just have to learn how to listen. It’s a skill that only good training and long hard miles can develop.
These days there is so much technology available that we run the risk of losing some of these skills because instead of listening we can get tied up in the white noise of a plethora of information at our fingertips. Back in the ‘old days’ it was an oft’ quoted saying that you could sail around Australia on a depth sounder and more than one voyage was made with the old Shell road map plonked on the chart table to save money on the Admiralty charts. While it was not my preferred option (my chart folio is a couple of inches thick) good seamanship and respect for the sea has kept many people alive where the latest technology has failed.
I vividly recall sailing Breakaway, a 38 foot aluminum sloop, back to Perth after the ’84 Hobart race, before the advent of GPS or Satnav. We hadn’t seen the sun for a few days out of Adelaide and had been rolling along in a fresh, rambunctious easterly when, just before a storm hit, we spied a glimpse of sun through the cloud in the late afternoon. We had two sextants on board and the two of us that could drive them dived down stairs for the gear and quickly snapped off half a dozen sun shots each. Comparing notes we agreed that the log had been under reading, putting us some 220 miles further west than our DR (dead reckoning). As luck (or Murphy) would have it, the steering cable snapped shortly after and with a serous nor’ westerly bearing down on us the rushed repair job on the steering resulted in the cables being wired up back to front. Put simply, to go to port you had to steer to starboard and vice versa.
As the blow settled in we decided that rather than trying to rewire the system in an uncomfortable sloppy sea it was safer to leave the steering as it was, at least until the front passed through. After a couple of predictably unintended and therefore quite humorous tacks while we figured it all out Breakaway subsequently wandered on down the track being steered in reverse. In due course Esperance turned up on the horizon within half an hour of our amended ETA, compliments of the glimpse of sun that previous afternoon and in the safety of port we rewired the steering. On pulling out of Esperance we found the hardest part of the whole exercise was retraining ourselves to steer the boat the way the designer had intended.
But back to the present day and the 2013 Hobart race. it’s only when you get a little involved that you realize how much work the volunteers do to make the Sydney Hobart race happen and more importantly, when the proverbial s..t hits the fan, just how professional those guys are. Anyway, after fourteen odd Hobart races under my belt I’m more than happy to put a little bit back in and went quietly when I was snared by that club stalwart and doyen of the RYCT’s on water assets, Mick ‘Shocking’ Hocking with a request to drive the club’s rubber ducky. Mick asked if Vic and I could do a stint helping put the boys away in Elizabeth Street marina at the end of the race. He had cornered me at a weak moment (probably after a couple of Boag’s in the back bar) and Vic and I signed up for an afternoon ducking and weaving through the fleet in an attempt to get 100 boats into a space designed for half that number. It reminded me of the old adage about a rugby scrum. You know; four blokes trying to push three blokes’ heads up two blokes’ bums.
I’d talked with Robbie Fisher, who had chartered Helsal 3 to a Sydney doctor for the race and along with Glen ‘Groper’ Roper was therefore similarly ‘on the beach’ this Boxing day and so, happy to be another ring-in for volunteer duties. On their watch they’d put about half a dozen boats away in the six hour roster. No big deal I thought, only to subsequently be lumbered with six of the 70 foot clipper fleet and another fifteen odd finishers all arriving in our six hour duty period. Complicating the afternoon was the Clipper boats being berthed at right angles to Elizabeth Street Pier, stern to Mediterranean style, in a fresh cross breeze. Berthing them required some significant tug handling skills in the rubber ducky to avoid the boats’ heads blowing off and taking out the nose poles of other clippers already in the dock. I felt like I was back at work driving tugs in Port Hedland and even suggested to Mick that penalty rates should apply. He just paid me out with a smile and wandered off, comfortable I guess that a beer at the volunteers’ get together at the end of the season would suffice.
The clipper boats, an inspiration of Sir Robin Knox-Johnston after he completed his solo round the world voyage in the 1960’s, were another testament to the radical changes we have seen. A dozen boats crewed by volunteers, flicking around the world with a level of sophistication and state of the art technology that was unimaginable 50 years ago. But, I’m sure Robin’s message to these crews remains the same as Bern’s was to me. Seamanship is not about technology, it’s about the team around you and learning to understand the ocean in all its moods, using all of the tools available to keep yourself safe and not just relying on the tools to do the job for you. If you want to know what’s going on don’t forget to look over the side, not just at the gear in the chart room.
‘Tubby’ is taking another sojourn on the Barrier Reef this winter to get us out of the Tasmanian cold and as a shakedown for a bigger wander in 2015 so we’ll be writing from warmer climes for the next issue.
Cheers,
Bourkey
But thinking about the 90 odd years that Bern lived set my mind to the changes we’ve seen over the past century and the things that have stayed the same. My son Alex is currently doing his final semester at the Australian Maritime College and will end up with a Master Class One ticket, licensed to sail any vessel anywhere in the world. The Ocean Protector, an Australian vessel that operates everywhere from the Indian and Pacific Oceans to Antarctica was Al’s last ship prior to his latest stint at college. She is ECDIS and Dynamic Positioning equipped. This means there is no legal or logical requirement for paper charts and the vessel can be positioned and maneuvered within centimeters with joysticks, compliments of satellite technology.
Yet during his cadetship Alex was trained in what is now considered the ancient art of celestial navigation along with the rigor of taking watches during long weeks at sea and short periods of time off. One of the benefits of celestial navigation is that it gives a perspective of where you are in the world and how the whole system of navigating works. And doing the hard yards on a ship was not dissimilar to the pre-dawn starts I had with Bern on the sailing fishing vessel, Derwent Hunter, a 72 foot Blue Nosed Schooner, steaming out to the ‘30 mile patch’, 70 odd miles from Hobart and 30 miles due south of Tasman Island, chasing trevalla or Blue Eye as it later became known.
Baiting up would start an hour or so before dawn on a rolling deck with boxes of frozen bait being chopped up and snared on razor sharp double hooks, before the first set at sunrise. You had to understand the currents in 240 fathoms of water on the edge of the continental shelf and we had no land marks, chart plotters or transponders to locate the gear once it was down. You built a chart in your head using the southwesterly ground swell, compass, depth sounder and clunky radar that, on a good day, gave a signal off Mount Wellington. Always with one eye on the glass (barometer) because the weather bureau only ever managed to get it right some of the time. At the end of the trip we would sail home on the leading edge of a front, the old man and the apprentice both reveling in the joy of a big boat powering along under sail in a southern ocean swell.
In essence, it was the discipline, learning and following the hard rules of being at sea that meant surviving. Developing the ability to observe and react if something wasn’t quite right came in useful many times in later years. In 2006 Al and I sailed Helsal 4 home to Hobart from France via the Panama Canal. We sailed 13,000 miles and made 28 port entries in 10 different countries in 6 months. I lost count of the number of times that training in observation and reaction kept us safe. A change in the smell of the breeze and swell pattern confirmed a landfall was imminent. A drop in the glass and a change in the feel of the wind and the wave pattern and we’d reef down before a storm hit, the sense that a sheet or halyard wasn’t quite right and we avoided a foul up before it became an issue. We sailed H4 without any wind gear and learnt the boat by observing how she felt. The boat will talk to you. You just have to learn how to listen. It’s a skill that only good training and long hard miles can develop.
These days there is so much technology available that we run the risk of losing some of these skills because instead of listening we can get tied up in the white noise of a plethora of information at our fingertips. Back in the ‘old days’ it was an oft’ quoted saying that you could sail around Australia on a depth sounder and more than one voyage was made with the old Shell road map plonked on the chart table to save money on the Admiralty charts. While it was not my preferred option (my chart folio is a couple of inches thick) good seamanship and respect for the sea has kept many people alive where the latest technology has failed.
I vividly recall sailing Breakaway, a 38 foot aluminum sloop, back to Perth after the ’84 Hobart race, before the advent of GPS or Satnav. We hadn’t seen the sun for a few days out of Adelaide and had been rolling along in a fresh, rambunctious easterly when, just before a storm hit, we spied a glimpse of sun through the cloud in the late afternoon. We had two sextants on board and the two of us that could drive them dived down stairs for the gear and quickly snapped off half a dozen sun shots each. Comparing notes we agreed that the log had been under reading, putting us some 220 miles further west than our DR (dead reckoning). As luck (or Murphy) would have it, the steering cable snapped shortly after and with a serous nor’ westerly bearing down on us the rushed repair job on the steering resulted in the cables being wired up back to front. Put simply, to go to port you had to steer to starboard and vice versa.
As the blow settled in we decided that rather than trying to rewire the system in an uncomfortable sloppy sea it was safer to leave the steering as it was, at least until the front passed through. After a couple of predictably unintended and therefore quite humorous tacks while we figured it all out Breakaway subsequently wandered on down the track being steered in reverse. In due course Esperance turned up on the horizon within half an hour of our amended ETA, compliments of the glimpse of sun that previous afternoon and in the safety of port we rewired the steering. On pulling out of Esperance we found the hardest part of the whole exercise was retraining ourselves to steer the boat the way the designer had intended.
But back to the present day and the 2013 Hobart race. it’s only when you get a little involved that you realize how much work the volunteers do to make the Sydney Hobart race happen and more importantly, when the proverbial s..t hits the fan, just how professional those guys are. Anyway, after fourteen odd Hobart races under my belt I’m more than happy to put a little bit back in and went quietly when I was snared by that club stalwart and doyen of the RYCT’s on water assets, Mick ‘Shocking’ Hocking with a request to drive the club’s rubber ducky. Mick asked if Vic and I could do a stint helping put the boys away in Elizabeth Street marina at the end of the race. He had cornered me at a weak moment (probably after a couple of Boag’s in the back bar) and Vic and I signed up for an afternoon ducking and weaving through the fleet in an attempt to get 100 boats into a space designed for half that number. It reminded me of the old adage about a rugby scrum. You know; four blokes trying to push three blokes’ heads up two blokes’ bums.
I’d talked with Robbie Fisher, who had chartered Helsal 3 to a Sydney doctor for the race and along with Glen ‘Groper’ Roper was therefore similarly ‘on the beach’ this Boxing day and so, happy to be another ring-in for volunteer duties. On their watch they’d put about half a dozen boats away in the six hour roster. No big deal I thought, only to subsequently be lumbered with six of the 70 foot clipper fleet and another fifteen odd finishers all arriving in our six hour duty period. Complicating the afternoon was the Clipper boats being berthed at right angles to Elizabeth Street Pier, stern to Mediterranean style, in a fresh cross breeze. Berthing them required some significant tug handling skills in the rubber ducky to avoid the boats’ heads blowing off and taking out the nose poles of other clippers already in the dock. I felt like I was back at work driving tugs in Port Hedland and even suggested to Mick that penalty rates should apply. He just paid me out with a smile and wandered off, comfortable I guess that a beer at the volunteers’ get together at the end of the season would suffice.
The clipper boats, an inspiration of Sir Robin Knox-Johnston after he completed his solo round the world voyage in the 1960’s, were another testament to the radical changes we have seen. A dozen boats crewed by volunteers, flicking around the world with a level of sophistication and state of the art technology that was unimaginable 50 years ago. But, I’m sure Robin’s message to these crews remains the same as Bern’s was to me. Seamanship is not about technology, it’s about the team around you and learning to understand the ocean in all its moods, using all of the tools available to keep yourself safe and not just relying on the tools to do the job for you. If you want to know what’s going on don’t forget to look over the side, not just at the gear in the chart room.
‘Tubby’ is taking another sojourn on the Barrier Reef this winter to get us out of the Tasmanian cold and as a shakedown for a bigger wander in 2015 so we’ll be writing from warmer climes for the next issue.
Cheers,
Bourkey
