All Piss and Wind (12 page)

T
HE
1970 A
MERICA'S
C
UP
series was the last to be sailed in wooden boats. After that memorable battle between
Gretel II
and
Intrepid
the next 12-metres were made upside-down in aluminium. Australia's challenge in 1970 is also often considered to be the last of our great larrikin campaigns. Today the America's Cup is raced in high-tech carbon-fibre monsters sailed by grim professionals. Thirty-five years ago the
Gretel II
crew were all amateurs, drawn from many walks of life. Skippered by helmsman Jim Hardy, they sailed hard and partied even harder.

Newspaper tycoon Sir Frank Packer headed the challenge, paid all the bills and expected his team to represent their country and the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron with all the dignity that befits yachtsmen whose club enjoyed the privileges of royal patronage. But Sir Frank was himself a bit of a buccaneer. He understood that boys away from home will be boys, and tolerated a fair degree of larking about. One of the most distinctively Australian sporting habits the lads brought with them to snooty Newport, Rhode Island was their delight in singing bawdy football songs. In a tradition well-known to most antipodean sporting teams, familiar old melodies had been
enlisted to carry new words inspired by the characters and anecdotes of their America's Cup campaign.

The musicology of those
Gretel II
songs reflects the knockabout Australian spirit of the whole enterprise. The yacht's main ‘deck apes' (grinders) – Chris Freer, a transplanted Pom, and John Freedman, a former Wallaby tight-head prop – were steeped in rugby's robust tradition of post-match sing-alongs. On a cold winter's night before the team left for Newport these two ‘rugger buggers' were enjoying a few grogs together in front of a roaring fire at Freedman's home on the shores of Sydney Harbour. Inspired by the adventure that lay ahead of them in America they set about writing down the doggerel verses that were already being sung
a cappella
by the crew. To these they added some new
Gretel II
words set to the melodies of old rugby favourites. Before the beer and inspiration ran out Freer and ‘Freedie' had created a complete set of lyrics.

Freedman's mate Peter Johnson, the legendary Wallaby hooker, chipped in with a collection of cheeky cartoon illustrations. Rhys Jordan, a member of the challenge support team, then co-opted the printing skills of his father Ben, who ran a typesetting business attached to Sir Frank Packer's
Daily Telegraph
empire. Freedman believes the whole disreputable job most probably went through as a ‘foreign order', unbeknown to Sir Frank in his huge office upstairs.

The new lyrics were quickly learned by repetition and
Gretel II
's unlikely all-male choir of yachties soon became notorious around the waterfront for bursting into these lewd songs at the most inappropriate moments. Copies of the songbook went to America with the crew, and one was even presented to Baron Bich after
Gretel II
had defeated his
France
in the elimination series. The most celebrated choral recital by the Australian crew during the 1970 challenge was at a cocktail party given for them at the exclusive Bailey's Beach Club. What their upper-crust Newport hosts made of these bawdy sailing songs was, regrettably, not recorded.

Thirty-five years later, I was lucky enough to unearth a copy of the
Gretel II
songbook, by now a rare and holy document of Australian yachting history. The outrageous words and illustrations evoke the spirit of that legendary America's Cup challenge with wonderful hand-made freshness and good humour. And so, without further ado (quoting directly from the cover):

By the same team that produced

PAINT YOUR DRAGON

and

PIDDLER ON THE ROOF

we proudly present

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY
TO THE CHALLENGE

featuring an international cast drawn from
New York, Paris and Balmain

The songbook establishes its, er, tone from the very first ditty, sung to the tune of ‘The Bells of St Mary's':

Shall we go on? When Martin Visser (notorious for his frequent visits to the crouch house) finally got the nod as back-up helmsman, the Aussie minstrels promptly serenaded his appointment to the melody of the old carol ‘O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree':

In the grand antipodean tradition of industrial-strength piss-taking, any personal weakness, embarrassment or eccentricity was fair game in the
Gretel II
choral repertoire.

No member of the team was spared in these songs, from the yacht's venerable designer Alan Payne to the keen young headsail trimmer John ‘Aero' Bertrand, fresh from his lofty academic thesis on the aerodynamics of sails (and long before his eventual triumph steering
Australia II
to victory 13 years later). Like ‘deck apes' the world over, the 12-metre's grinders also endured a good-natured shellacking. Everyone's travails were robustly chronicled in an extended lyric sung to the tune of ‘Men of Harlech'. Some representative verses:

Even technical problems were satirised in song. During training, Alan Payne felt the crew was putting too much strain on
Gretel II
's boom in their attempts to extract better windward performance. Fearful that his bespoke aluminium spar would break under these loads, he devised a crude warning system. Payne fixed special, cast-iron ‘go-fast' tangs at a key stress point on the boom. If anyone cranked the vang on too hard, these fail-safes would break with an explosive ‘bang'. A replacement tang then had to be immediately fitted by the crew. Inevitably, this rather bizarre solution inspired a vocal response, sung loudly to the chorus of ‘Rule Britannia':

The boom, of course, never broke. It's on the boat still. Out on the water the
Gretel II
team, including their support crew on the tender
Offsider
, did Australia proud in the challenge series of races. They may even have had the faster boat, and certainly pushed defending skipper Bill Ficker and
Intrepid
to the limit in an exciting series that was much closer than its final 4–1 scoreline.

This was also the challenge that established Australia's well
founded suspicion that the New York Yacht Club was prepared to do just about anything to retain the America's Cup. Cynical rule-bending by the home-town measurer had allowed illegal underwater modifications to
Intrepid
. Australian outrage was then compounded by the notorious start-line protest by Ficker that robbed
Gretel II
of her dramatic, come-from-behind win in the second race. (The NYYC protest committee unsurprisingly upheld the protest lodged by their own yacht.)

Officially, Sir Frank Packer's team tended to maintain a sporting silence on these matters. But stung by such a blatant injustice, Packer declared that ‘complaining to the New York Yacht Club is like complaining to your mother-in-law about your wife'. And at Christie's Bar and other favourite Newport watering holes the crew exacted their revenge in the following shanty, sung to the tune of ‘The British Grenadiers':

If that didn't get right up the noses of the New York Yacht Club snobs, then nothing would. More than a generation after these lampoon songs first rang out over the waters of Rhode Island Sound they retain a larrikin bite that marks them as characteristically Australian. Rough-hewn, politically incorrect, irreverent, lusty, scatological – and funny.

They also form an important part of the historical record.
Sir Frank Packer's two full-blooded tilts at the America's Cup in 1962 and 1970 were the bedrock of the success that finally came for Alan Bond and the
Australia II
team. Maybe the trustees of the National Maritime Museum should round up the surviving veterans of the 1970
Gretel II
campaign and record them singing these songs together just one more time. It would be a night to remember.

I
T'S DIFFICULT NOT TO
love a sailing club that was founded by a mob of weekend fishermen who liked to race their boats home after a pleasant Saturday spent pulling bream and snapper out of Sydney Harbour. Even better, the meeting that created the Sydney Amateur Sailing Club was held in a city pub (Tom Keary's, on the corner of William and Brougham Streets), and the next two General Meetings were also conducted in friendly shicker-shops – the Oxford in King Street, and the famous Aarons Exchange Hotel. It's hard to go wrong with origins like that.

‘The Amateurs' has officially been around since 1872, but the men whose colonial spirit formed it had already been sailing together (and against each other) for years. In the 1860s the best fishing spot in Sydney was a deep trench at the foot of a rock face near the northern end of today's Spit Bridge in Middle Harbour. That place was unofficially called ‘Blackwall' and the men who sailed their yachts up there from the main part of Port Jackson every
Saturday to dangle a line and sink a few ales were called ‘The Blackwall Boys'.

As is the way with sporting gents, the skippers soon took to racing their yachts home, and placing bets on the outcome. These were simple, straight-line contests from Blackwall to some nominated point in the harbour – Clark Island, Bradleys Head or Pinchgut (now Fort Denison). There was even a rough system of handicapping for the slower boats. Eventually, on 1 October 1872, some of the owners and crew decided to formalise their Saturday-arvo fun into an official organisation, the Sydney Amateur Sailing Club. It began with just four boats and twelve members. One hundred and thirty-four years later the register lists 210 boats and there are around 400 members. The club's oldest active sailor, Cliff ‘Southerly' Gale, has raced with the club for 60 years. Cliff's boat
Ranger
(handed down to him by his father) has the honour of holding sail number ‘A1'. He still competes every weekend and continues the SASC tradition of also using his yacht for a spot of fishing.

The first SASC club-house and boatshed was completed in 1883, built on a plot of land granted to the club at Bennelong Point, facing Circular Quay. But its spectacular site was resumed soon after by the NSW government who erected an ornate and profoundly ugly brick tram shed. That, in turn, was then demolished to make way for the Opera House that now commands the point. It wasn't until the late 1950s that the Committee of ‘The Amateurs' began negotiations for the purchase of the premises of the Cremorne Club Ltd and Clover Equipment Pty Ltd which adjoined on the western shore of Mosman Bay. The Cremorne Club was a gentlemen's social establishment (cards and billiards) that had fallen on hard times; Clover Equipment was a declining marine business with a precious harbour slipway permit. Amalgamating the two properties made an ideal premises for ‘The Amateurs', with the priceless advantage of good deep water right outside the back door, and plentiful mooring space in Mosman Bay.

The two buildings were finally acquired in 1962 and the club has been there ever since. Somehow the original weatherboard structures survive, and the whole place exudes a resolutely conservative feeling. A row of old-fashioned mooring piles allows yachties who know how to handle their boats to tie up ‘stern to' in the traditional manner. There's a broad, solid deck that projects over the water, with a sturdy pontoon jutting into the bay. A simple, hand-cranked mast crane is available to members wishing to lift the rig out of their boats.

Inside, observant visitors will note the six small reinforced squares of flooring that once supported the massive legs of a billiard table, and the pair of curious octagonal tables in the main area that were formerly used for high-stakes games of gin rummy and whist. There's no boardroom or sailing office, but members can use a large, well-equipped kitchen. The walls are covered with atmospheric black-and-white photographs of old club yachts and scores of hand-lettered timber honour boards listing every Patron, Commodore and Divisional winner since 1872. Just the names of those yachts evoke the unhurried, elegant flavour of sailing generations ago:
Monsoon
,
Mischief
,
Snowdrop
,
Hotspur
,
Eventide
,
Varuna
,
Thurloo
,
Mirrabooka
. The twenty-first century is yet to seriously impinge on No. 1 Green Street, Cremorne.

‘The Amateurs' is also the only sailing club that can claim the dubious honour of having me as a member. It suits my needs and general approach to the sport of yachting perfectly. Indeed, I find it difficult to imagine sailing on Sydney Harbour without being a part of the SASC. It has a wonderful history, unpretentious and friendly members, strong affection for classic yachts, and a healthy, well-run racing program. But most endearing to me is the underlying philosophy of the club: it's run by sailors, for sailors, and has no ambitions to be anything else. It seeks no sponsorships, houses no poker machines or dining room, and doesn't even have a full liquor licence. (That's not to say you can't get a drink there after racing –
heaven forfend! – but the specific legality by which the directors are empowered to retail the requisite amounts of rum and beer to members at appropriate times remains something of a mystery.)

Members can work on their boats at the club – a rare privilege these days – and enjoy free access to a workshop and the full range of power tools necessary for basic yacht maintenance. Those without the aptitude or time to do the work themselves can retain the services of the on-site shipwright and apprentice who operate as SASC employees. The entire club exists for the direct benefit of boat-owners and their crews, but members are expected to be resourceful. It's the kind of place that's happy to sell rump steaks and sausages after the Friday twilight race, but you have to BBQ them yourself. When the deck timbers needed replacing the members completed the whole job themselves during a two-day working bee.

The SASC has always set itself gently apart from the snootier ‘Royal' clubs and squadrons around Sydney Harbour, and the overt commercialism of the Cruising Yacht Club. The underlying spirit of ‘The Amateurs' is determinedly Corinthian, and has been from the outset. The
Club Rules
, as published in 1884, put the matter beyond doubt:

Clearly, some long-forgotten lawyer on the committee had a hand in drafting that punctilious masterpiece of exclusion and it wasn't long before the bias against people ‘in trade' evaporated.

In fact, if there's a Sydney yachting club that truly caters for the
ordinary bloke, then the SASC is it. Membership is discreetly kept to around 400, and the race entry fees and annual subscriptions remain modest. In 1881 race entry fees increased from threepence to sixpence ‘a foot', a telling indication not just of inflation but that the Honorary Treasurer was quite happy to exploit one of the oldest axioms in yachting: the bigger the boat, the deeper the owner's pockets. The early club registers were dominated by the smaller open boats that raced with such exuberance on Sydney Harbour more than a century ago. It's still, by inclination, a club for wholesome yachts in the 30–40 foot range – partly because the slipway struggles to accommodate anything larger, but mainly as an expression of the members' collective loyalty to traditional principles of seaworthiness, eye-pleasing design and being able to look after the boat yourself.

 

A standard summer race day at ‘The Amateurs' offers a light sketch of the club's character. By 0900 a steady procession of sailors are already making their way down the steep steps to the clubhouse. They tote sails, kitbags, freshly varnished hatch covers and all the other clutter of practical yachting. Essential supplies – the obligatory ‘slab' of beer and bag of ice – are lovingly set down in the shade. In the shed someone is frantically rebuilding a spinnaker pole they mangled in last weekend's big blow. The volunteers who crew the starting boat sit at their favourite corner table, quietly discussing over a cup of tea which course they might set for the day's racing.

We wander into the kitchen to make ourselves a cup of coffee and take it out into the sunshine for the standard yachtie's breakfast: a scratch, a smoke and a decent look round. Conversation invariably turns to the weather.

‘Looks like a fair bit of east in that.'

‘Yeah, but I reckon she'll swing more south later. Bureau's saying 10 to 15 knots.'

‘What's the tide doing?'

‘Still on the ebb, mate. Next high water's not till after four o'clock.'

And so on, until the cuppa is drained and it's time to hail the club tender for the short ride out to your boat. If an owner is obviously short of crew there's often a spontaneous dockside reallocation of labour to ensure that everyone has enough bodies to sail with safety and still be competitive.

Racing with ‘The Amateurs' is not the intense, gunnel-to-gunnel, ego-driven exercise we associate with the more prominent fleets. Everyone sails hard, but serious incidents are rare. I can't remember the last time a race was decided by the protest committee. Everyone is out on the water to enjoy themselves first, and compete second. Once we've all battled to the windward mark, set spinnakers and settled in for a comfortable run, the customary cry goes up: ‘How's the time? Must be past beer o'clock, surely!' and the requisite number of tinnies is soon handed up from the icebox. Sure we're racing, but a man's not a camel. That drink is always finished before we arrive at the bottom turning buoy, so everyone is free to apply themselves fully to the gybe, spinnaker drop or whatever other task the course demands.

After decades of refinement, the race committee has settled on a range of courses that all feature a finishing line close to Mosman Bay so that no boat needs waste much time getting back to their mooring. The enticing aroma of sausages already sizzling on the club barbecue wafts across the bay. The tender wends its way between the returning yachts to collect crew. Within half an hour everyone is back at the club earnestly attending to issues of mutual rehydration. A rumbo or two later the Commodore announces the divisional results and hands out the prizes – usually an SASC mug or wine glass for the place-getters and a bottle of claret for today's winner. The regulation banter and chiacking about ‘burglar's handicaps' and sandbagging for next week round out the afternoon. Before dark we all trudge back up the hill to drive home
before our blood alcohol levels become too tempting a target for the local constabulary. That's racing at ‘The Amateurs', and there can't be many more pleasurable ways for a sailor to spend their Saturday.

 

The club has endured so successfully because it harbours no great ambitions to expand its assets, services, events program or membership. Sustaining a comfortable clubhouse and the varied program of day racing across a wide range of boats is sufficient challenge. There's enough regular revenue from well-established sources to more than cover outgoings. The longest race on the annual program is to Lion Island and return, a trip that normally takes no more than eight hours. Commercial sponsorship of the club or any of its activities is, by mutual agreement, unwanted. It's also unnecessary because the directors never embark on projects that are beyond their means.

But to me the most precious quality of the club is its strong foundations of mateship. The SASC is small enough for most of the active sailors to know each other by their first names. There's a genuine spirit of mutual support in which members share their skills, experience and even equipment without prompting.

Donk giving a bit of trouble? Chuck the keys to Mick and he'll pop out to your boat sometime during the week and flush the injectors. Radio not working? Charles is a whiz with anything electronic – get the boat alongside an hour early next week and he'll sort it out. If you've broken a valuable old genoa car, just slip it into Bob's kitbag and he'll have it back next week all welded up and good as new. Mangled the pulpit? Unbolt the wreck from the foredeck and deliver it around to Mike's factory tomorrow. He's a magician with metal. When the black arts of marine plumbing set you an impossible riddle, Trevor can always sort it out – he spent half his life as a ship's engineer. If you've shredded your last spinnaker and aren't
exactly flush with funds right now, someone from a similar-sized boat will lend you one of theirs. Mandated safety gear is swapped from boat to boat to share the growing financial burden of racing offshore.

There's a touching, old-fashioned egalitarianism and tradition of mutual dependence about ‘The Amateurs' that's distinctively Australian. Many prominent Sydney yachtsmen who are members of much loftier clubs also join the SASC. I suspect they're the ones whose sailing soul demands they retain a spiritual connection with the wellsprings of the sport.

The one great disadvantage of a club being so informal, tolerant and welcoming is that its members tend to treat the premises as an extension of their own garages and sheds. Adjoining the shipwright's workshop there's a large area set aside where members can store their dinghies, work on benches, paint odd bits and pieces and generally attend to the endless little jobs that go with owning and maintaining a boat. But what the members bringeth down to the boatshed, they rarely taketh away. (It's a punishing haul lugging a dead 12-volt battery up those 70 steep steps to the closest road.) Club premises are the responsibility of the Vice-Commodore, and keeping the place reasonably tidy is that Flag Officer's most irksome chore. A sign posted on the shed door in the early 1960s encapsulated those frustrations with admirable style: