In memory of Terry Bower - 2011
“You looked like a bunch of w.....s.” said Biggsy, laughing over a beer in the back bar of the club late one afternoon a few Saturdays ago. Billy (Wabbler) Read, Terry (TC) Bower, Fordy, Martin (a recent Kiwi blow-in) and I had just retired to the bar after the traditional Saturday afternoon cruise Billy and I inaugurated some 15 or so years ago. Come hell or high water, if I’m in town and Billy is around, we follow, like backmarkers chasing the fleet in a Hobart race, the Saturday ritual of pies, beer(s) and then a wander around the creek on whatever boat we feel so inclined to shake out for the day.
On this particular July afternoon it was blowing around 50 knots with intermittent rain squalls kicking through and the mercury was pretty well frozen in the tube, so I guess Biggsy did have a bit of a point. But Golden Haze, or ‘Tubby’ as she is affectionately known, does have a shed and with much of my time spent in Port Hedland driving tugs, getting on the Derwent in any weather is still the best antidote I know of to the Pilbarra dust.
In the summertime when the boys are out boat racing, we’ll quite often spend the day chasing sons, daughters and various friends around the river on their race boats, occasionally gaining the ire of PRO’s and patrol boat crews as we cling like abalone to the pin end of start lines, counting down the seconds from the five minute signal and passing ‘expert’ commentary on which is the winning end of the line and who would be there when the gun goes.
The afternoons tend to constitute a lively discussion during which the rules of polite conversation are suspended and the flotsam and jetsam of what has been happening in Hobart while I’ve been away are interspersed with tales of bulldust, punctuated with the laughter of a bunch of geriatric kids. Comments and reminiscences of who has died recently (sadly, becoming a larger part of the conversation) will be folded in with how Pinocchio is mucking up the country or how Tubby will outperform Nick Fleming’s Amurest next summer after I move the rig forward and tie it down with a new bow sprit. (Besides which, I still have the secret weapon; a dry exhaust, if all else fails).
One of the evergreen tales which needs to grow no larger with the retelling was of the day TC and I were north bound on his 38 footer Teruma, heading for Sydney and the ’83 Hobart race. With a delightful 12 knot sou’westerly blowing, the sun reflecting off TC’s new spinnaker and me enjoying my daily constitutional off the pulpit, TC was to be found washing the morning’s dishes in a basin perched on the coach house just aft of the mast. Having in due course disposed of the paperwork over the side I sat perched on the pulpit and watched with growing amazement at the wind currents off the spinnaker took control of the said documentation complete with brown punctuation mark and ever so gently wafted it along the side of the boat, back up over the gunnel to finally wrap itself around TC’s forehead.
The ensuing laughter at TC’s recognition of what adorned his head, looking not unlike a mission brown Pat Cash headband, still echoes around the Derwent on our Saturday afternoon sojourns.
On this particular July afternoon it was blowing around 50 knots with intermittent rain squalls kicking through and the mercury was pretty well frozen in the tube, so I guess Biggsy did have a bit of a point. But Golden Haze, or ‘Tubby’ as she is affectionately known, does have a shed and with much of my time spent in Port Hedland driving tugs, getting on the Derwent in any weather is still the best antidote I know of to the Pilbarra dust.
In the summertime when the boys are out boat racing, we’ll quite often spend the day chasing sons, daughters and various friends around the river on their race boats, occasionally gaining the ire of PRO’s and patrol boat crews as we cling like abalone to the pin end of start lines, counting down the seconds from the five minute signal and passing ‘expert’ commentary on which is the winning end of the line and who would be there when the gun goes.
The afternoons tend to constitute a lively discussion during which the rules of polite conversation are suspended and the flotsam and jetsam of what has been happening in Hobart while I’ve been away are interspersed with tales of bulldust, punctuated with the laughter of a bunch of geriatric kids. Comments and reminiscences of who has died recently (sadly, becoming a larger part of the conversation) will be folded in with how Pinocchio is mucking up the country or how Tubby will outperform Nick Fleming’s Amurest next summer after I move the rig forward and tie it down with a new bow sprit. (Besides which, I still have the secret weapon; a dry exhaust, if all else fails).
One of the evergreen tales which needs to grow no larger with the retelling was of the day TC and I were north bound on his 38 footer Teruma, heading for Sydney and the ’83 Hobart race. With a delightful 12 knot sou’westerly blowing, the sun reflecting off TC’s new spinnaker and me enjoying my daily constitutional off the pulpit, TC was to be found washing the morning’s dishes in a basin perched on the coach house just aft of the mast. Having in due course disposed of the paperwork over the side I sat perched on the pulpit and watched with growing amazement at the wind currents off the spinnaker took control of the said documentation complete with brown punctuation mark and ever so gently wafted it along the side of the boat, back up over the gunnel to finally wrap itself around TC’s forehead.
The ensuing laughter at TC’s recognition of what adorned his head, looking not unlike a mission brown Pat Cash headband, still echoes around the Derwent on our Saturday afternoon sojourns.
