Rogues Yarn with 'Arry Driftwood - Slow boat around the world with Mudskipper

My walking stick misplaced, I walked up to Whitworth’s with my old legs a flutter ... a stumble and I ended in the gutter ... An attractive pig joined me where I lay ... just passing, Gino remarked, “One is known by the company one keeps.” And the pig got up and slowly walked away!
Such is life my friends. And another thing worthy of complaint is the rotten quality of the elastic in my pyjamas and knickers. Was it always so bad that a garment sound in every way … except that the sustaining lacca has died and gone to heaven, and then the garment slides down around yer knees. Geezus, I hate that. Can nothing be done? Should the CSIRO concentrate on this important lack of good lacca?
Another lack is good wicks for lamps and quality oil. A four litre plastic container of pretty, violet-coloured kero turned a shabby brown in the sun and discolours the wicks. Why is it so?
Heaps of commodities made in Taiwanish places; and they think if it simply looks like the original then it must be orright, at a fraction of the price. How about a genuine Rolex for twenty dollars? And the vaunted choice supposedly offered by the corporations, now but a dream as you take their BRAND or go without and the young’uns look blank as you ask for some­thing that used to be common and now is unknown to The Young.
Ironmongers and chandleries now aught but emporiums of what turns over and the devil take the hind­most … except for the few more humane who will “get it in for you” … if you pay for it in advance. The androids simply shrug their shoulders and turn away.
Ah hah, but there are some who grasp exactly what you are asking for, know of it and what it does and can put their hand on it, or tell you where to get it, and do so gladly and with a smile. Such people should be valued beyond gelt and rewarded well.
The cause is obvious as you wade through the crowds at ‘centres’ and see the nippers drooling through their dummies, some of ’em well out of nappies. I tell their mums for gawsake get rid of that awful dummy and let us see the kid smile. Or cry or gabble or tell dirty jokes, for that is what a nipper should be doing instead of sitting there pacified and mute.
Statistically, they say, a kid brought up on a dummy will have 30 percent lower IQ, and prolly ditto for the parents. In my day the childcare nurses would cut your throat if you gave your kid a dummy – and look how smart our generation is/was – I ain’t joking. Nasty dirty ugly things!
My outboard motor painfully removed from the dinghy and prone in the cockpit about to be disembowelled when the bleeding nuisance-rain pattered down again, so I thought a little more jabber from the waterfront might entertain.
Heading downwind yesterday in a determined nor’easter to visit the returned voyagers, Ruth and Peter, aboard the unique Mudskipper when the damned motor carked. Not so bad as it was downwind and I unshipped my oars and made it to the Mudskipper despite a painful post right hand carpal tunnel op. Except it ain’t an operation any more but a procedure. Ho, bloody hum!
Shipped? Unshipped? Hmmm. Well I did unship ’em from their usual pozzie and then shipped ’em into the rowlocks.
A pleasant yarn with the intrepid ones and, as the nor’easter has freshened even more and my paw is buggered, Peter kindly towed me upwind to old Drifty. Thank you again Peter.
Ruth and Peter left Oz to have a look over the horizon – which took them only 12 years! I have met a few plonkers who boasted of completing a round-world voyage in little more than 12 months. But why the stuff would you bother?
Humans are really strange beasties. I myself reckon a proper look around would take 10 or 13 yeas surely? And then, like Harry Pigeon, you could do it again.
Peter is slightly famous in the old Seacraft monthly for experimenting with models in the surf at Manly (or was it Bondi, Peter?). The object was to acquire empirical evidence on the stability of different hulls, and then to build from the known, which they did and result is the Mudskipper.
They completed Mudskipper’s hull onshore at Majors Bay and proved the flavour of the sausage in 12 years around the oceans of the World. So there!
She is a steel hull very strong on the bottom. I wish I could claim THAT. Riding my pushbike now is like sitting on bare bones!
The upper works are epoxy plywood to keep down weight. Three dagger boards and junk-rig make her a handy craft for two, and with tabernacles, masts can be unshipped for canal work, which they did in Europe with the help of a Yamaha diesel … and not many of them about.
Onya, Ruth and Peter! A proven sound comfortable ocean-crossing outcome. I put that ‘suit-speak’ in just to provoke. Outcome? And Going Forward too I hope, for your future.