Laura

Sadly, my old mate Hooks succumbed to the ravages of time and ill health while I was away! There are quite a swag of tales to relate, but the Laura incident is the first to come to mind… Laura wasn’t the first. First there was Ilene, a small seaworthy, but underpowered fishing boat. She was no beauty, white of hull with pinkish trimmings. I used to tease him that the pink was primer paint, which is roughly the same colour, but he’d get hot under the collar and asserted that he ‘could show me the bloody tin’!

Hooks owned a slipway at Shag Point, it was part of the deal when be bought Ilene. She used to sit on a trolley ready for launching most Saturday and Sunday mornings, if the weather was right. And the weather had to be right because although she was very seaworthy, the inlet was narrow, not more than twice the beam-width of Ilene. Heading out was not too much of a problem but coming in could be! Incoming breakers could roll in faster than Ilene could go flat out. If she was caught on a wave, she could broach, maybe roll over or come in sideways against the rocks!

He used to have me take the wheel coming in, he had the theory that my eye was surer than his. I don’t know where he got that idea, because invariably he was a better shot than me! When we went spotlighting, he did the shooting while I held the light. Somehow he didn’t have the confidence Ilene was going to make it between those rocks. I had bugger all experience so I waited, even in a slight sea, and tried to time my entry between waves. Even though he knew the throttle was wide open he would always holler, ‘Give ‘er arseholes!’

I think he must have had a fright coming in on his own one day. He’d never admit to such a thing, well he wouldn’t would he? We were always testing each other, he was such a competitive bugger! Like who could spot deer or pigs first, or at the greatest distance. Most times I couldn’t see anything and I don’t think he did either, but neither of us admitted it! Anyway, I suspected the fright when he came to work one Monday morning and announced to me he had sold Ilene and his slipway and had bought a new boat! He had bought a second hand Landrover to tow the trailer as well. He also mentioned that he needed a hand with it.

Hook’s new boat was sitting on a trailer in his yard. A big aluminium boat with a Volvo stern drive. Exact technical details about boats don’t really interest me but she was about eight metres long and had a Mark III Zephyr car motor in her. Compared to Ilene, this one seemed pretty powerful to me. The motor had recently been overhauled and refitted, so he reckoned she should be ok. Hooks wanted help to paint her and for me to paint her name across the stern. He told me her name was Laura. I laughed and told him that the name was a movie star’s and for a boat it didn’t roll off the tongue, so we’d better change it! But he firmly vetoed the idea claiming it would be bad luck. Shades of the Ancient Mariner if you ask me! 

The top half we painted white to the aluminium ridge where the water was supposed to flow past and below it, we painted sky blue. It was some special marine paint he had bought which went on like molasses so was a painter’s joy - not! I made up a special stencil so I could make any letter or number, and used it to mark out ‘Laura’ across the stern.  He chose the red paint, not me! I needed sunglasses for the glare! Again it was awful paint to apply, which is probably why I noticed the circlip on the stern drive that holds the rubber protection cover for the driveshaft universal was missing. So we thought we should take it right off in case it had been missing for a long time. It surely had, because it was chock-full of sand!

It took a couple of weeks for the circlip to arrive, meantime we cleaned the sand from around the universal and it seemed to be ok, there were no grinding noises anyway. Once we put it together again Hooks wanted to test the motor and make sure the propeller went round like it should. We had to mess around rigging water drums for the cooling system and for the propeller to go into. He fired up the motor, the propeller went round with such vigour that we were doused, half-drowned! All the same he judged the test a success.

The day arrived for the big launch and Hooks backed Laura into the water. Wow, she floated! We putted well out into Moeraki harbour using the small axillary outboard motor on a calm, sunny morning because we didn’t want to cause bow-waves among the other craft moored there. A good distance out, Hooks turned the starter and after two or three winds, the big motor fired up! At full revs! I had trouble keeping my feet! We took off like a Pyongyang rocket, bow up and heading straight for Moeraki with its bay-full of moored craft! Above the roar of the motor, Hooks yelled that the wheel wasn’t responding! I could see we were headed straight for Dave what’s-’is-name’s boat! Hooks was frantically swinging on the wheel and fiddling with the throttle, all of which did diddly-squat! With no semblance of calm, I yanked off the motor’s cowling and ripped a handful of leads out of the distributor! The motor died and we slowed, but we still had plenty of weigh on, aimed directly for Dave’s boat! I gaped while Hooks scrambled to the bow and pushed us off the other boat with his foot!

Soberly, enthusiasm dampened, we used the small outboard to putt-putt back to the launching ramp! We reloaded Laura onto the trailer and resettled her back in Hooks’ yard. And there she sat, untouched for years, because he had lost his nerve, no longer having any interest in going to sea! He eventually sold sad Laura.