The sea life, that’s (maybe) for me
When Eugene Bingham bought a larger boat he thought everything would be smooth sailing – well, think again.
Buying a boat, they say, will be the second happiest day of your life. The happiest is the day you sell it. I’d always heard that and thought: ‘‘Yeah, whatever – how hard can it be?’’ The wind in your hair, the salt on your lips, what’s not to love about life on the sea, right?
Particularly when you live in the so-called City of Sails.
I’m here to tell you: please, people, listen to those cynics. But don’t necessarily abandon ship.
My family and I live near the sea. It’s hard not to in Auckland, with its narrow isthmus and council insistence that you use heavy-duty, rust-proof fixings to guard against the corrosive salty air.
And so, for years, we’d watch locals trundling their boats down to the water’s edge and getting out to enjoy fun and fishing.
I’d never been a boatie. It wasn’t a thing when I was growing up. I think Dad would have loved to own a boat, but I suspect he was scarred by the time he borrowed one once when we went camping up north.
It was a wooden row boat which he tied to the roof of the car. I remember coming around the corner of a windy road and seeing the boat flash past the windscreen, launching itself over the bonnet and onto the road.
The dinghy lay splintered and shattered on the road, and Dad was left with a permanent fixation with tying things down to a ridiculous degree, something I inherited.
Any fishing thereafter was done from the wharf. No boats backed up our driveway.
But my wife, Suzanne, had grown up with a boat in the family. And she’s internationally renowned for her reporting on sailing, particularly the America’s Cup. So how could we not get a boat, right?
And so we splurged out, buying a 10ft sailing dinghy off Trade Me, bright yellow, and allegedly unsinkable.
Granted, it couldn’t fit the four of us in it at once. And, granted, we had to row to get anywhere.
But we felt as masterful as Peter Burling and Blair Tuke on board the powerful foiling monohull you’ll see charging about the Waitemata¯ Harbour this summer.
There’s a photo Suzanne took from the shore, of me and the two boys, hats on our heads, lifejackets around our chests, anchored in the channel near home, fishing lines dangling in the water, waiting in hope for snapper mooching by.
It’s an idyllic scene a friend in the neighbourhood turned into a painting. I can’t look at it and not think of summer. They were happy days.
And then we upgraded the yellow dinghy. It wasn’t much more, a 16ft boat with an outboard. But compared to the dinghy it might as well have been a cruise liner.
Trouble was, old Captain Stubing here was out of his depth.
I mean, we tried. Suzanne and I both took a Coastguard day-skipper’s course (we don’t talk about who topped the class at home, ahem … let’s just say maybe Captain Stubing did know a thing or two…)
But, alas, what looked easy in the classroom was tricky on the water. Even on land, actually.
Early on, I discovered our little car couldn’t tow the bow without feeling like its front wheels were lifting off the ground. Steering being a helpful part of driving, it was necessary to replace the car with a heavier model. All the bigger to tow with.
There’s a theme with steering, come to think of it. Once, at the marina, backed into the water and ready to motor out into the harbour, I discovered the boat’s steering was locked up, thanks to a seized cable. I yanked and twisted and pulled and grunted. Until the cable snapped. Back on the trailer went the boat.
There was a similar amount of strength employed the day our anchor got stuck on the bottom of the ocean, near the Harbour Bridge.
Lord knows what was holding on to it down there in the depths. But, try as I may, I couldn’t make it budge.
Faced with the choice of spending the rest of our lives anchored up near the bridge waving hello to the passing traffic, or cutting loose the anchor, I pulled out a knife and waved goodbye to a perfectly good anchor, chain and rope.
Another time, we set off on a perfect summer’s day when Suzanne noticed water glugging in the back (the stern, right?). Oh, yeah, I thought, this bung in my pocket is supposed to be in the boat.
Add to that list of mishaps the time spent charging up uncooperative batteries, or tracking down a replacement for the front windshield that unexpectedly snapped one day, and I’d hazard a guess I’ve spent more time on maintenance and repairs than on the water itself.
And yet. And yet.
When we eat sandwiches in a bay where the birds and fish are the only permanent residents ... When we jump off the front (bow, right?) into the cool, deep water ... When we sit onboard and watch, from a respectful distance, the spoonbills which have taken up residence in a tree fallen down a bank ... When I see the smiles on my family’s faces … And when I think of the adventures we can show our wee grandson as he grows up ...
I have no aspirations to lose my landlubber status – I’m not about to sail off into the sunset.
But I’m not ready to experience the happiest day of my boating life just yet.