By Joe Cooper
What was it like when you learned to sail? This is a question put to me by one of The Prout School Sailing team kids a few years ago.
I had to stop and think about the answer for a moment. There was nothing like “sailing camp” or instruction for kids in Australia, in the late 1950s through most of the 1960s. It was very much “stick ‘em in the boat and push ’em off the beach,” for the beach was usually where we rigged.
The boats were a motley collection of Aussie-designed dinghies, invariably home-built. There were some imports, the Sabot for instance, the boat Dad bought for us as a tender. A great little boat with a proper mast you could hoist the full-batten mainsail on, wire standing rigging, tensioned by a lashing on the forestay. Kick-up rudder and daggerboard. Notably no buoyancy tanks, so being mindful of the sea state and bailing on cue were early lessons.
The Sabot was sort of a training boat, though I had many great adventures in ours after I learned how to sail. Dad would occasionally take her out too. The range of boats we kids had to mess about in, many still going, included the Manly Junior, known of course in “Stralian” as the MJ, a two-man (well, two-boy; girls were extremely rare at this point) sailing dinghy. The MJs are a longer version of a Sabot, a hard chine design built, like most such dinghies at the time, in plywood, usually in a garage, with a pram bow but with more volume and a jib and kite.
The Vaucluse Junior, named for the suburb of its invention, was like an 11-foot SUP, again built in plywood with a hard chine, a tiny footwell roughly half the size of the one in the yet-to-be-designed Laser, a bowsprit, full-batten main with the boom hanging off the transom, a jib, and asymmetrical kite. Oh, and two sliding hiking planks like an International Canoe. These things would plane upwind if someone opened a garage door too fast, and were a firehose off the wind. Vendée Globe boats eat yer heart out.
There was an Australian Flying Junior, a 12-foot or so open dinghy. Often cold molded, they had a round bilge with a main, jib and kite. A faster MJ, these had two kids. hiking hard in anything but a light draft. These were all nominally one-design classes. Then there was the Cherub, a 12-foot development boat designed by Kiwi John Spencer.
After the Cherub, the field was wide open. The 12-foot skiffs were smaller but no less powerful versions of the “eyedeens.” The 16-foot skiffs were the same idea but with a few mods, and Javelins were bigger Cherubs by Spencer. The Vaucluse Senior was a normal boat with a trapeze and three crew. The NS 14 by Frank Bethwaite (Julian’s father) was the precursor to the Tasar. And so on. Optis were nowhere to be seen.
For the Solitaire sailors, after the Sabot was the Moth, another plywood, hard chine scow-bow (like Great Lakes scows) boat; a development class with full-batten mainsails as standard, as well as walking stick mainsail tops and/or huge roaches, open transom cockpits, and serious hard hiking.
Curiously, there was no instruction in how to sail these fabulous boats. No one tootling along (or more likely, hammering along flat-out trying to keep up with you in a RIB, “speed boat” or perhaps a runabout, as small skiffs with outboards were known in the day. Think RIB without the tubes. No one yelling at you to tack, gybe, trim, ease, no tiller to trouble aide-memoire. You simply had a mate with the right sort of boat, or scrounged a ride on say a VJ, and if you could hang on and not screw up, you’d get invited back. It was very on the job training.
Among the dinghies in which Joey Cooper learned to sail was a plywood Manly Junior. Resembling a cross between a Sabot and a Fireball, this Aussie one-design remains popular today.
Coaches? Never heard of ‘em. Actually though, Mike Fletcher, then proprietor of the Elvstrom Sails shop in Sydney, and my one-time employer, would come out in his runabout and watch what was going on and come over and talk to you after you got ashore, or righted the boat, if you were lucky. Fletch, as he is called, is one of the main coaches in the Aussie Olympic Sailing scene, still going at age about 150.
My instruction, learning to sail, was thus pretty haphazard. I had a slight advantage due to being able to sail with my father on his selection of small boats. Although I don’t ever recall any remarks from him on sail trim, luffing (this was largely before telltales on jibs, a Frank Bethwaite invention), easing sheets, bearing away, points of sail, or any of the other basic skills one needs to sail, or is instructed in today. They must have been there…I guess. I kind of felt like Anakin Skywalker when answering the sailor’s question. “I was just born being able to sail.” I am not sure what this sounds like: arrogant, flippant, dismissive or simply lucky. But as I listen to the interviews, and read up on all the characters in the Louis Vuitton Trophy eliminations presently underway, I was not “taught to sail” like any of the guys they interview, learning in Optis.
The one thing I can remember is developing the idea of Seamanship. One of the important ways I learned about seamanship, what it means and how to employ it, was by reading. As part of my time in the Sea Cadet Corp, since we were on navy bases and ships, I bought a couple of volumes of something called The Admiralty Manual of Seamanship. I still have these treasured and frankly interesting books.
As the title suggests, between those covers was all manner of information, some of it relative to learning to sail a small dinghy, some not so much. Yet all great stuff for an 8-year-old kid in love with boats, sailing and the sea to idle through. Including Rules of the Road, signal flags, knots, splicing (OK, three-strand), slings (I have used this info), different types of lines, hand signals for crane operation (used this, too). Intro to weather, Beaufort Sea state (used this), and so on. And something called A.B.C.D. Atomic Biological Chemical Defense (have NOT used this).
More directly helpful in my actual sailing instruction were the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome. “Children’s books” for kids of all ages, the Swallows and Amazons series recounts the adventures of primarily two with an occasional third family of siblings in and around the Lakes district and other maritime locations in the UK. Discussing the adventures and Kapers these eight pre-teens got up to would be a year’s worth of book reviews and not put a dent in the stories. But back to sailing and seamanship lessons.
In the first book, the title name in the series, Swallows and Amazons (1930), the four Walker children holidaying on the shores of the lake get permission from their (Navy Commander) father to use the small sailing dinghy (Swallow) in the farm’s boat shed and sail over to and camp on an island just offshore. The authority is given in a brief communication by cable: “Better drowned if duffers, if not duffers won’t drown.”
After a day of preparation overseen by John the Captain including comprehensive list making by the Mate, cook, and general cat herder, Susan, second oldest after John and supervisor to Able Seaman Titty and the ship’s boy, the mischievous Roger, they cast off aboard this lovely 12-foot clinker (lapstrake) sailing dinghy and cast of for what we discover is called Wildcat Island.
Sailing downwind, keep an eye in the burgee (a Swallow graphic made by Titty). Don’t let it fly so it is on the opposite side of the mainsail. This is likely to cause a gybe. Sailing upwind, watch the luff of the mainsail (they are lugsail rigged catboats) and when it shudders, you are too close to the wind. If the boat is heeling too much, ease the mainsheet, or luff up a bit.
Further along in this first volume, they meet the Amazons, Nancy and Peggy, sisters who live at the other end of the lake. Nancy, real name Ruth, is a class one Tomboy, calling herself Nancy because Amazon Pirates, as they style themselves, are Ruthless. At one point, the Amazons who claim the island (and the name) sign a peace treaty with the Swallows and show them the various parts of the island.
One of which is a secret well-hidden cove at one end. This cove is strewn with underwater rocks in the approaches and Nancy has rigged up leading marks to make entering easier, safer. Later, as a nighttime skirmish is underway to see who can take the others’ boat, and so assume the role of Commodore of the Fleet, John, seeing the potential importance of hiding their ship, proceeds to rig up some candles on the marks so later on, in the dead of night if need be, they can enter the cove safety and silently. They also rig up a halyard on a tall tree at one end of the island to which a lamp can be hoisted to mark the way home.
Later still the Swallows, after an unsuccessful raid on the Amazons’ port, are returning to Wildcat Island disconsolate, thinking they have lost the war. They had gained the river mouth, navigated up the shallow river sounding with an oar, past the Amazons who we discover were hiding in the rushes and who subsequently escaped to the open sea and are bound towards Wildcat Island themselves.
The Swallow and her intrepid crew need to sail back to the island. It is in pitch dark, no moon, no lights or compass, after midnight so there are no landmark lights on the shore. John is pretty worried. First off, there is the issue of getting back to the island. He is close to convincing himself this is surely duffer behavior, and is of course suitably nervous about damaging his borrowed ship and/or drowning his crew, Susan and Roger. But like all good sailors with a problem, he strikes upon an idea.
He knows where they departed from and that there is clear water right across the lake at the latitude of the mouth of the Amazon River. He decides to sail on one board for the count of 100, tack and sail the other way for a hundred, repeat. They eventually get close to the lake’s main village and the outlying islands offshore the waterfront. Wary of sailing about amongst the islands, Captain John elects to moor alongside a dock on one of the islands, thereby securing his ship and crew. Sail handling, navigating, seamanship, sail trim, leadership, decision-making; it is all there. And this is just the first story.
The second book, Swallowdale (1931), has another great example concerning reefing and not following your gut when going to sea. But the best account of seamanship is recorded in We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea (1937). Wherein the four Swallows, invited aboard a 30-footer by dint of helping the skipper of same get to his mooring after undershooting it, drag anchor. They anchored at low tide and did not factor in the rising flood. They get washed out to sea on the new ebb current in fog, and rather than guess their way back in the dark, go to sea. I regularly think of the phrase, “When in danger or in doubt, turn around and p*** off out.”
And this is how I learned to sail. ■
Australian born, Joe ‘Coop’ Cooper stayed in the U.S. after the 1980 America’s Cup where he was the boat captain and sailed as Grinder/Sewer-man on Australia. His whole career has focused on sailing, especially the short-handed aspects of it. He lives in Middletown, RI where he coaches, consults and writes on his blog, joecoopersailing.com, when not paying attention to his wife, dog and several, mainly small, boats.
