The first 48 hours –
It was with a great deal of both excitement and apprehension we approached the small jetty at Younghusband on the Murray River. We were here to pick up what was to become our new home, ‘Huck Finn’ our 22-foot, 1956 Bluebird class, bond wood river cruiser. She looked a bit daunting on that first approach, I knew little about her but she was ours and we were here to take possession. If I had known what was going to transpire over the first 48 hours we may have left her on that rickety little old pier.
But we didn’t, and I am now so glad we didn’t. Fred the previous owner was a good bloke with good intensions and he gave us a run through on ‘Huck’ and in particular the 1950’s Blaxland twin two stroke engine. It wasn’t till well into our journey up the Murray River we found out that pretty much everything we were being told was exactly ‘how not’ to run an old Blaxland Engine. I mean it when I said he was a good bloke with good intensions but later on as part of my own learning curve I found the proper way to run a Blaxland twin. But Fred turned out to be invaluable help on that first day.
So, the engine is running, ropes untied and our maiden voyage in our new boat ‘Huck’ about to begin. The voyage was planned to be a simple and pleasant 58km putt down river to ‘Long Island Marina’ where my 1961 EK Holden was already sitting waiting at our berth. Simple plan, execution not as simple.
In fact, a plan full stop, may have been a good idea.
The weather was warm and very windy, fairly typical of South Australian weather two days before Christmas. We were appropriately attired in shorts and thongs and that was it. We had nothing else with us. No food, no blankets, no safety gear, not even a bucket or a bottle of water. After all we were only taking a leisurely cruise downstream.
As we waved good bye to Fred I couldn’t help but notice his concern, I just thought he was sad to see his boat sailing away. The truth was he was concerned for our wellbeing and surprised how casual and unprepared we were. The only thing we nailed on that first day was our naivety. Straight away we came across the first hurdle that we hadn’t calculated, Pellaring Reach.
Pellaring Reach is a notorious stretch of water, flanked by majestic cliffs on the Port side heading downstream. When the wind conditions are right this stretch is demanding to say the least. Guess what? The conditions were exactly how you don’t want them. Even Captain Sturt and his party had to put ashore for three days at Pellaring Reach when they were exploring the river in 1830.
So, why should it be a problem for us and ‘Huck’?
A problem it was, we were hit by a howling head winds being funnelled up the reach. Our tranquil putt downstream started with around 4 ft waves breaking over the bow and an old engine that didn’t want to run, not that I knew how to run it anyway. I should have realised how dangerous the conditions were. Many years before hand on a family houseboat holiday the houseboat got blown backwards on that same Reach and in similar conditions.
For some reason, ignorance maybe, we kept on towards the riverside town of Mannum when aborting the mission would have been the correct response. The other vital statistic we didn’t take into account was the speed we would be travelling at. In fact, at no point did we know or ask what speed ‘Huck’ actually does. Our destination, Long Island Marina was 58 km’s downstream. The chance of doing it in one day was near on impossible in anything but a high-powered speed boat, of which we were not.
‘Hucks’ average speed was around six or seven km’s per hour on a good day and this was not a good day. On Pellaring Reach we averaged around 2km’s per hour and I started to think that we should have packed more than shorts and thongs. Amazingly after our first terrifying hours on ‘Huck’ we rounded a bend, conditions eased slightly and Mannum was visible in the distance. We had lost a lot of time and Long Island Marina now seemed like a week away.
The next hurdle!
The cable drawn vehicle ferries dotted along the river at most towns that don’t have a bridge. There are rules to navigating the waterways whilst passing ferries and the ferry always has right of way. You are supposed to signal your intensions to cross using horn blasts. The ferry operator then signals when it is safe to cross using green flashing lights. Failure to follow procedure can result in collision or getting caught up in the ferries cables. Simple Really.
Nothing was simple during the first 48 hrs, horn blasts, hmmm! No horn. No electricity to power the horns mounted on ‘Huck’s’ side and the horn wasn’t connected anyway. Next problem, Mannum doesn’t have one ferry to navigate, it has two, side by side. With the Blaxland engine blurting and trying to stop dead and leave us at the mercy of the elements, the wind howling and current flowing this was potentially a dangerous situation.
I continued to do circle work upstream of the ferries trying to keep the engine going and find a safe passage passed the ferries. At this point I noticed Fred waving his arms and giving me instructions that I didn’t understand from the riverbank. Fred was so concerned for our wellbeing he had followed our progress by road. Probably thought he had sold his pride and joy two a pair of green as grass silly bastards. Come to think of it, he may have had a point.
Stress levels were on the increase when we made our first good decision of the day.
Abort mission, a good and unanimous call from captain and crew. Still not sure who was captain and who was crew but it was unanimous. There was a caravan park nestled on the river just upstream of the ferries. It had sandy beaches and after the last few hours looked like an oasis that could not be passed. We decided to pull up and get a warm cabin for the night, complete with electricity and a shower. Good plan, very, very badly executed.
Believe it or not this is when things turned bad.
Huck has no reverse gear and you controlled her speed by putting her in and out of forward gear. This becomes even more tricky as you steered from a tiller at the back of the boat and the above-mentioned gear box is in the middle of the boat and out of reach. When you put her in gear, especially in the early days the engine wanted to stall and it was a bugger to restart.
Picture all the above action as we try and glide to our first overnight mooring. Just for added pressure we had gale force winds, two ferries and the previous owner flapping his arms so hard he nearly took flight. Easy really! We were already coming in far too hot when the whole vessel came to a screaming halt. The path we had chosen to take to reach our oasis was the wrong one and we planted our new home straight into a submerged steel post. This punctured a hole the size of a cricket ball in her hull and she began to take on water.
Miss Linda flew into action trying to find the breach, pulling up beds and floor boards. Using the boat hook off the cabin roof I managed to free ‘Huck’ from the rusty sword that had impaled her. The engine had stalled and she was taking on water FAST. Miss Linda then saved the ship, the only thing we had on the boat to plug the hole was a pair of socks. In fact, it was the only thing we had on the boat full stop. Miss Linda’s quick thinking to put the socks in a plastic bag and stuff in the hole slowed the intake of water.
By this stage the carpet on the cabin floor was under water, the socks had slowed the flow but not stopped it and ‘Huck’ had taken on lots of water. I was pulling the starter rope like a man possessed trying to fire the old girl up when, BINGO! She fired up. We were still at least 50m from the nice sandy beach and the engine’s fly wheel was spinning but flicking water everywhere.
We had one shot at getting her to shore.
The engine was partly submerged but running and the whole vessel was sitting low in the water. If you believe in miracles this was one. The entire day the engine would not run properly but when it was sink or swim, literally, the old Blaxland got us to safety. We drove the boat as far up the caravan park beach as we could and managed to expose the breach in the hull, WOW! Did that just happen, we had a moment of stunned silence.
It had just happened and it was at that point we learned our most valuable lesson. A lesson that would come into play several times over the next few years, respect the river and be prepared. Huck was safe and so were we but it could have been so different. Fred had given up on us just before our Titanic moment and had not actually witnessed our terrifying ordeal, probably a good thing for him.
Whilst taking our deep breath the stunned silence was broken by a rather angry caravan park manager who was yelling something about not being able to moor the boat on the beach. It didn’t take me too long to convince him this wasn’t just a pleasurable mooring spot we had picked, and in-fact we were a stricken vessel on the verge of sinking.
The angry little caravan bloke had a “Well fix it and f#!k off” attitude and at this point he realised that my day had been far worse than his, and that a quiet retreat was in his own best interest. I was happy to let him stick his park where the sun doesn’t shine but for now, I had bigger problems to solve.
The only person who may be able to help was Fred and so I made a call to him from the parks phone box, yes, a phone box. It turned out to be a good call, Fred sprang into action and new exactly what to do. “Has she taken on much water?” he asked. “Has she ever,” I replied thinking about the flywheel flicking up water. “Right, I will bring a pump then”.
It seemed like he almost turned up immediately and after his brief run in with the angry little caravan park man he arrived like the cavalry. At this point Fred could have gone one of two ways. One, give us an absolute bollocking about being young dumb arse, green as grass, naïve people who should never own an old wooden boat. Or two, swing into action to help the two stricken dumb arses. Luckily for us he chose the latter option.
We pumped the water out and covered the breach in the hull just enough to get us to the other side of the river and away from the angry little caravan park man, who still thought it was necessary to remind us regularly that we couldn’t moor there overnight. Fred calmly reminded him that a stricken vessel can legally moor wherever it bloody likes.
The Blaxland fired up and the short trip to the opposite shore was the most nerve racking 300 meters I ever did in ‘Huck’. The angry little caravan park man happily saw us off and he earned his single finger wave and “Thanks for all your help” comment. Fred was there on the other bank to greet us and said, “I think we could all do with a drink” and he threw me one of the best tasting beers I’d ever had.
I love how so often it seems that out of negatives comes positives.
In this case we learnt how to do an emergency patch on a wooden boat but more so we met a new friend. Fred was great, he helped and showed us how to put a patch on ‘Huck’ using a piece of plywood on the inside and outside of the hull, screwed together with putty in the middle. He also went home and got blankets for us and we sat around a fire having drinks and telling yarns.
So, this became our first night on ‘Huck’. Not the way we would have chosen to script it but it was now part of what was to become a rich history with our beautiful old boat. The next morning Fred came to see us off and you could tell he honestly meant it when wishing us luck. We glided past the two ferries without incident and we were once again on our way.
We still had a long way to reach Long Island Marina,
and especially if we were going to make it by nightfall. I fought with the Blaxland all day, it would suddenly just stop for no apparent reason. On these occasions it became a race between getting her restarted and where the current and wind would take you. Every snag or rock in the river now looked to me like an angry object that’s only purpose in life was to breech ‘Huck’s’ hull.
On one of these occasions when the engine stopped, I said to Miss Linda, “Throw the anchor out, I don’t want to drift into that submerged redgum”. She did just as I had asked. I never did ask her to tie the not-so-heavy end of the very long rope tightly to the boat and we drifted off into the above mentioned redgum. No damage but we now had a submerged anchor with a long rope floating across at least half of the river.
Needless to say, at this point a large houseboat rounded the upstream corner and was heading straight for said rope. “This could get nasty,” I thought, so I stripped off and jumped in. We had no way of warning the houseboat to change its path so I grabbed the rope with the intention of dragging the anchor and rope out of harm’s way. I am a very good swimmer but this little exercise took everything I had, but it was a success. Disaster avoided, for now.
This is pretty much how the day went, it certainly wasn’t smooth sailing. Finally, off in the distance was the dim glow of the lights of Long Island Marina. It was Christmas Eve and the sun was setting fast and those lights were the best Christmas lights we had ever seen. However, ‘Huck’ had one more hurdle for us, as we glided past Long Island toward the incredibly inviting marina entrance, she gave a now familiar cough and then silence. Yep, we stalled and drifted back onto the island, we were so close.
This time the Blaxland just would not go. I looked like I had run a marathon with useless after useless attempts at pulling the starter rope. It was now fully dark and our Christmas Eve was shaping up to be an average one, to say the least. I weighed up the options, I could swim over to the mainland but that was far too dangerous, especially at night. I noticed some lights coming from a houseboat and some dull noises.
There was a family having Christmas dinner on their houseboat. We had been stranded on a willow tree for over an hour now and I was already calling the willow tree our Christmas tree when I noticed someone leave the houseboat festivities to relieve themselves outside. This was our shot at rescue, naturally we had no torch or lights, no mobile phones so we did the next best thing, yelled out at the top of our lungs.
He heard us and looked confusingly off into the darkness and returned to the festivities inside. We were devastated until the sound of an outboard broke the silence and a small tinny emerged from the marina. Our 48-hour ordeal was over and ‘Huck’, Miss Linda and I were unceremoniously towed to the safety of the marina and ‘Huck’s’ own little pier.
My 1961 EK Holden sat there waiting and it now looked more like a stretch limo ready to take us from our ordeal and that’s exactly what it did. In comparison, the car overheating issues seemed minor on the trip back to Adelaide. Christmas Eve was traditionally a big night back at our old local the Belair Hotel and we were ready for a drink.
We had decided to keep the last 48 hours to ourselves for now and as far as our friends at the pub needed to know, we were late because the trip in our new boat took a little longer than we thought. Neither of us felt like sharing our horror stories that ultimately made us look as naïve as we actually were but I can tell you neither of us will ever forget the first 48 hours on ‘Huck’.
Read “The Dream Comes True” when Finchy first finds the boat “Huck Finn” Click here
