Podcast Show Notes — Ocean Sailing Expeditions My title

Episode 11: Andy Lamont Show Notes

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Hi folks, welcome along to this week’s episode of the Ocean Sailing Podcast. We’re back on Impulse catching up with Andy Lamont so hey, thanks for coming back Andy. 

Andy Lamont: Oh, it’s a pleasure mate. It’s great to be back.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So I thought it would be great to check in with you, your first interview which was a couple of episodes, has been really, really popular and we’d had lots and lots of interest in your story and with all the images that you supplied. There has been lots of visits in the page and so I thought given a couple of months have gone by now and your trip’s now a whole lot closer than it was, that it would be good to check back with you on the progress you have made in terms of the further changes and upgrades and the extra bits and pieces with the boat. 

Then also, what else has been happening? I know you’ve done some stuff sponsorship wise, I know you’ve been doing some stuff world record wise that you’re looking at doing and some other ideas you’ve got around collecting sea samples. So tell us what you’ve been up to? 

Andy Lamont on board Impulse at the Southport Yacht Club

Andy Lamont: Well, I guess that the biggest news is that just after I spoke to you and we recorded the first episode, I found out about a guy called Bill Hatfield who was going for the world record in the 40 foot class doing a west bound circumnavigation and I thought that record had been broken a long time ago. I knew that Chay Blyth had done it back in the late 60’s. 

He did a west bound circumnavigation just after the Golden Globe Race and that was in a 59 foot boat called British Steel and I just assumed that that record had been broken a long, long time ago. When I found out that it hadn’t been broken, and Bill had been going for the record it was an incredible story. 

He got around Cape Horn and got hit by a big storm and it was apparently blowing like 60 knots plus for quite a few days. He put out a drag and run before the storm, which basically took him back into Cape Horn again. When the storm abided he was below Diego Ramirez Islands and he was starting to pull his drag back in. For some reason, he wasn’t clipped on and he got knocked flat by a big wave and a breaking wave, thrown out of his boat. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, into the water?

Andy Lamont: Into the water, this was below Cape Horn, and he was in the water and looking at his boat 10 or 15 meters away, picked up by another wave and sort of washed back onto his boat so he was a very lucky man. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Unbelievable. That’s not going to happen twice, is it?

Andy Lamont: His boat was a bit damaged and broken windows and a bit of damage to one of his shrouds and he decided that digression was a better part of him and headed back to the Falkland Islands and sold his boat, which that was around March. Around that time I was listening to his story just after I spoke to you. I went, “Well, that record is still there for the taking.”  

So I sort of told my wife and she said, “Absolutely not,” because it was going to take longer but eventually she acquiesced and so I said, “Look, we can go. We can go for this record if we go in October, which was the same time. It’s a good time to go because we get through the southern ocean in the summer time.” Going towards Cape of Good Hope, which was always going to be the worst part of the journey going east bound. So we’ll do that which will be good but then we’re just going to have a really good weather window to get around Cape Horn because that’s going to be around March. 

Andy Lamont's offical documents for his world record attempt

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right and then you’d be coming across the Pacific. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah and then once we get around Cape Horn, not that anything is ever going to be plain sailing but hopefully, it will be a pretty plain sailing. We’ll be able to get back home, so I guess that’s the biggest news and the biggest change, whereas before I was just going for my own personal achievement and something of an achievement of a dream that I always had and wanted to do. That’s now changed into, “Well I’m going for a world record attempt,” which brought with it a few extra issues because you have to register with the World Sailing Speed Records Council. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well and it’s quite costly too. I saw the bill and it’s in pound too, right? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, it was in pounds. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: What was the cost of that? 

Andy Lamont: Well that was 1,600 pounds. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: To register to make it legitimate.

Andy Lamont: Yeah, which seems like a lot of money. If you’re running a Mocha 60, it’s probably…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, or if you live in the UK right? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, exactly.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s just your local currency. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah but when I looked into it, they do provide a fair bit for that. So they have a local commissioner here in Australia who is going to basically look after all the technical aspects of the record. So he has to be paid and they send down a black box and the black box records the journey. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh right, so they actually measure that you don’t just go out there and sail around in circles in nine months. You actually go around the world. 

Andy Lamont: I mean ever since Donald Crowhurst has tried that, they’ve done it that way after that one. So yeah, no I can’t go to the Whitsundays anymore and just sort of hang around there. Yeah, so all of that, I mean obviously all that costs money so you don’t begrudge paying it but it was an unexpected cost. But you know I’m quite happy to do it because I think well, it definitely will be the first and the fastest westbound circumnavigation. I don’t think the record that’s the fastest will stand for very long because it is an S&S 34. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well it stood this long, right? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that’s right. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It hasn’t been established. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah and interesting. Westbound circumnavigations are interesting. The record for a westbound circumnavigation is held by a boat called Adrian and the guy’s name is Jean-Luc or something. I can’t pronounce the French name but he set that in an 85-foot mono hull, single-handed. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, that’s a big boat single handed. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, although a lot of them are. It’s the same as Dee Caffari the first woman to do it with a 75 footer because the bigger boats are much better going to… 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah and the French are very good in those single handed big and multi’s as well as the mono hulls. They’re very good at that. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah but that record, his record was set now it’s probably, I think, 2004 from memory but that’s the record for a still stand. It’s a record for crewed or un-crewed so yeah. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow and how many days was it? 

Andy Lamont: Ah, now you’ve put me on the spot. If you go to my website, www.andylamont.com.au it’s there. I think it was 135. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right. Oh yeah, so that’s a pretty good average. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, I think it was so don’t quote me on that. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay and so tell me about your website you’ve built. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah that was pretty amazing too because I hadn’t really done anything in the way of promoting this trip for sponsors or anything like that because I was pretty low key and then I thought about two weeks ago, I sat down and people keep asking me, “Can you send me this? Can you send me that?” And every time that someone asks me to send them a letter, I’ve got to sit down and write a letter. 

It takes me an hour and a half and then I forget everything or another one, so I thought I’ll just to see if I can build a website and I was just amazed because it’s just so easy now and so I sat down and just a few days, I had the barebones of the website there. I had all the photographs of when I was doing the boat up. So I just put those into a blog and when the blog is all done and the photographs were all there.

I was doing this website with my wife and I got really excited. I was doing it late at night and I keep waking up my wife and going, “Hey, look what I did! I put this photo here and I put a caption underneath it,” and as I was really excited to do that. So search the website. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So andylamont.com.au. 

Andy Lamont: That’s it, yeah, www.andylamont.com.au, I thought at least it would be pretty easy to remember. I thought I wouldn’t forget it. You can go in there, and then with the website, then came the funding to Go Fund Me campaign where someone said, “Look why don’t you do this Go Fund Me campaign?”

So that was really easy to set up. So I set that up and I already had enough and it really, really humbles me. I’m really appreciative of the people that had made some donations to that, which basically there’s enough donations in there already for me to buy me a Delmore Reach Me tracking device. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Great!

Andy Lamont: So those little things like five or 10 bucks or whatever, it doesn’t sound like a lot but it still adds up.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It all adds up, yeah because there’s so many cost there that just run away with you as you’re preparing to sail the trip. It’s great if you can fund the things that help you keep in touch with people, because they are interested in your story and in your journey and to be able to keep them updated of your location and how you’re tracking with stories and photos from the trip and along the way. If you can afford those extra communication devices and tools and stuff, that’s really, really cool. 

Andy Lamont: Yes, I’m really grateful for people for the interest. The money that they donate is really helpful but I guess even more than that, it’s the psychological boost that it gives you that… 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Like you’ve got a team? 

Andy Lamont: “Ah, wow there’s people interested in me doing this thing,” and it gives you a good boost.  I am really happy to see that happen. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah that’s great and then you had some sponsorship come along as well which is promising. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah Southport Yacht Club has been really generous and that’s been fantastic. Ray McMahon is the guy who has proven that here at the club and they’ve got quite a few meetings. In my opinion as well, I’ll just see what happens but they’ve been really, really generous in being able to give me a great sponsorship package, which means that a lot of the things I was worried about, like getting the boat out in the water and keeping it out for a month is a big cost because you’ve got to pay your marina fees and you also have to pay your hardstand fees, so having all of that taken care off is just such a load off. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Are they going to the anti-fails for you as well? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, they would. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well make sure you put about five coats on because you’re going to need it right? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so they give me a figure, which I can use on club fees, half stand fees, and anti-foul so that would be great. Hopefully we get that, there’s a new anti-foul product out that I might be able to use at that point in time. So hopefully that will happen. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, well that’s good. That’s good, okay and what about the work that you’ve have been doing on board here and as I look around, I can see your wheel’s gone and you’ve got a really, really nice looking utility out there. What else have you been doing? 

Andy Lamont: Well, I guess that is the next big job that had to be done. The cockpit floor is made from balsa sandwich and the trouble with the balsa is once it gets damp, it does rot and so we had to replace the side decks and the foredeck and the cockpit floor. I’ve already replaced one third of it and the plan was to replace the rest of it when we pulled out the wheels steering, the wheel and pedestal. 

So pulled out the wheel and pedestal, cut out all the floor and I had a bit of fun doing that and made a new floor out of just 20 mil marine ply, fibre glassed on top of that and coved it all in and got the new tiller. I was very lucky with the tiller. I don’t know if I have told you that story before, did I? I will tell you again, it’s a good story. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Is it from WA or something? 

Andy Lamont: Oh yes, that’s right. The fitting that goes onto the rudder post, a guy from WA went into the small works yard and picked it up for me out of a bin from when they used to make S&S 34’s and they had a whole lot left so luckily there was one in there and I wanted to make the tiller here out of mahogany and silver ash. Silver ash is an Australian hardwood, which is a very blonde timber and really contrasts with the deep mahogany. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it kind of matches the Gold Coast theme as well, blonde.

Andy Lamont: Yeah and I was doing some termite work because I’ve got a pest control company, for a guy out in the Ormeau area, which is an area out in sort of the sticks a little bit around here and I noticed that he had a few boats being build. He turned out to be quite a famous boat builder and I said, “Oh, have you got any mahogany and silver ash around which I can make a tiller from?” He said, “Yeah. How are you going to make it?” And I told him how I was going to make it and he said, “Oh that’s silly, I’ve got a jig here for making tillers, you can just use that.” 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh, what are the chances? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah and so anyway, so I did his termite work and I had all the drawings of how I was going to make the tiller. I rang him up about a week before I was going to come out and make the tiller and I said, “Tony, I am just going to come up and make this tiller at your workshop next week, is that all right?” And he went, “Oh no, I already made it.” 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Really, so he made you a tiller? How cool is that?

Andy Lamont: So he made it for me so I was really, really appreciative of that. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well I hope you got rid of all his termites then. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, well so do I. So yeah, so that’s great. So the tiller is there, which is great for single handed. Of course when we’re doing the crewed twilight races, the crew will be upset now because I am walking the line. I used to be behind the wheel and as anyone knows, an S&S 34. The cockpit is really about the same size as a bathtub really, isn’t it? 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s right. It’s not very big and once you are behind the wheel you’re stuck there right, in the whole race?

Andy Lamont: Yeah and the tiller takes up most of the room. So now all the crew are sort of telling me I’m in the way. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So you’re bashing people’s knees now if you suddenly decide to turn suddenly. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, falling on them, sitting on their laps and all that kind of stuff. Yeah but it’s fun so that’s good. So that was a big thing. That was a big thing for me. That was probably the last major structural job that we had to do was to remove the cockpit floor, remove the pedestal, take the wheel out and replace it with the tiller. The only other thing that’s really major that we’re going to do when we take it out of the heart is we’re going to lift the boat off the keel and check all the keel bolts and take the rudder out. There’s some kind of a bit of a leak in the rudder and so we’ll just dry it out and put a new one. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well the leak will only get big not smaller, right, If you don’t do anything? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so that’s right. It’s not a big job, we’ll just cut it out, cut out half the rudder and dig out all the foam and re-core it and put fibre glass around the outside of it. That will be pretty much all the structural jobs on the boat would have been done by then and then when the boat comes out in August, we’ll take the mast out as well and we’ll just going to go right over the mast with a fine toothed comb. Anything that needs fixing, we’ll fix and that’s pretty much it. 

Now the other great news, the other thing too is that I know last time we’re talking, I was talking about these Turtle-Pac buoyancy bags. So two weeks ago, I have made the decision to actually install the Turtle-Pac system in the boat. It’s not cheap but to me, it’s something that’s just worth the peace of mind that it gives me, my family, my wife and everyone else. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s a pretty major plan B. To refresh everybody’s memory, to be able to inflate a really robust inflatable bag inside the boat that means if it gets compromised to some degree it’s going to continue to partially float at least so you can continue to live aboard while you find a solution or catch fish, or catch rain water or what have you. As opposed to having to just have a life raft as your plan B. So it’s a pretty good plan B. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. So the system itself is six 1000 litre bags. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right, so they’re still compartmentalised as well. So if you damaged one, you still got five that are intact. Is that how that works? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s all just one big chamber? 

Andy Lamont: No, it’s not one big chamber. So there are six, basically cylindrical bags and they fold up quite small. So there will be one each in either of the quarter bunks, which folds up against the hull so they don’t hardly take up any room. There will be another one that folds up just in front of the chart table there. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So you can choose where you locate them within the boat as well. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah and there will be another one in the forepeak and two with the quarter burst used to be just folded against the hull and so they will be all controlled by two dive cylinders. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So you’ve got a back up cylinder as well. You’ve got two rather than just one as well. 

Andy Lamont: No there’s two we’ll take. So two will just fill all six. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You need all two to fill the six, all right. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah and so what happens is if I need to, yeah and this is one of the things that I’m planning on not to use. If I had to use it I’d just open both those cylinders and those bags will fill up in 45 seconds. But, they only fill up to four pounds pressure. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, so there’s no chance of popping them. 

Andy Lamont: No, they won’t pop or they will conform if there’s something on the floor or in the way. They will just go around it. But he did say that when you fill them up make sure that you stand out of the way because if you got your whole leg by one, it can pin you.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh right? Pin yourself inside a sinking boat. 

Andy Lamont: Pin yourself, yeah. So there is quite a fair bit of reserve in those 6,000 litres as well and the boat will float quite high. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, because the 6,000 litres of water so six tons. So how much weight can it support? Does it literally transfer that weight? 

Andy Lamont: No, it doesn’t. Your transfer is much more than that because this is what the… 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh because the boat has got partial floatation built into it anyway. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah and even, so for instance you just go also you’ve got the lead. I think it’s in the S&S 34, don’t quote me, but I think there is something like about two and a half thousand kilos of lead but that doesn’t worth two and a half thousand kilos in the water. It doesn’t displace two and a half thousand. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So if it all turns to custard, you just undo your keel bolts, let your keel bolts go. The keel then goes so your boat sits even higher on the water? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, no it that might be upside down in that case. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, good point. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so the 6,000 litres is much more than this six-ton boat. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s great. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Especially if you’ve got a hull that’s just above the water line or just below the water line literally up enough for it to stay out of the water potentially. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, exactly. So I really did a lot of soul searching about it and of course with every project like this, if something gets spent on one thing it doesn’t get spent on another thing and I thought, “Look, you know to me, that’s probably the best,” about five grand it costs. “That’s about the best five grand that you can spend,” because it just means that, failing fire, we’re pretty indestructible, which is a funny story because the inventor Laszlo (not a funny story), invented this but it was a bit of a tragedy. It was a bad story really, but he had it on his boats and he invented it because he was caught in a cyclone with the boat filling up with water and he was out of the Gold Coast and his boat caught on fire of course. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: They’re not going to help you then are they? 

Andy Lamont: They’re not going to help you then. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Then irony! You’ve got a solution for sinking and then you catch fire. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so you know? I’m taking the metho stove and that’s it so pretty much the chances of us having a fire of course… 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, which is good because that’s ugly if you do have a fire. 

Andy Lamont: Oh, you know there’s not much that you can do is it there? 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: No, that right and it happens very quickly. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah so that was really great. That was a real sort of point of importance for me anyway to get that. It was one of those things that I have been playing with, equivocating about for about a year and a half. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Has that helped your wife and your family get their heads around the risks a little bit more knowing that that’s part of your plan? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, absolutely. Because they know, they’re not silly. They know that while it’s not risky in the same sense as a lot of other activities are, there's still a certain element of risk. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, the isolation is the biggest risk, right? It’s not what goes wrong; it’s the fact that you’re so isolated that no one can help you. 

Andy Lamont: No one can help you. So it just this does give you that level of self-reliance that if something does happen, the boat is not going to sink. You’ve got days to solve it, not minutes and so that’s the… 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well and with what you’re planning on carrying. Whatever happens you might be able to repair it anyway by then if you’ve got enough time, right? 

Andy Lamont: You would be surprised if you couldn’t. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: A little bit of epoxy and a bit of wood and a few tools. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah that’s right. Eventually you would be able to go, “Okay, here’s the problem and how to fix it.” It won’t be a big issue because the problem is going to be water is getting into the boat and somehow stop it, you know? 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, absolutely that’s interesting. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah so I am excited about that. What else am I excited about? Yeah and the wind vane is finished so the vane’s not on there at the moment. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: The accessory that it goes on, is it ready to go?

Andy Lamont: Yeah and it’s all there but because my stern sits out into the marina channel a little bit, I’m very nervous about someone coming behind and wiping it out. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah even in twilight racing, right? When somebody crosses the stand, on port starboard.

Andy Lamont: So it’s all there but I’ve just got it basically all the flimsy bits are, well they’re not flimsy but the fit’s a bit… 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: They’re not designed to be collision proof. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, not with a 40 foot cruiser or something like that. So yeah, they’re all off it but it’s there. So that’s great. It’s ready to go and that’s another big thing, another big expense but that ability then to carry on the journey without power is just of paramount importance to it. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s a big tick of the box there in term of not forcing you to end your trip early. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, exactly. So that’s good. I’ve been looking more into the Jordan Series Drogue. I’m going to put some chain plates when the boat’s out of the water down by the stern so that I will be able to attach a harness onto those chain plates. So basically if I do put out a drogue, they will just pull straight off the chain plates rather than off a winch or some kind of other thing, which is just bolted onto the deck. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s good because when you’re reading about the engineering kind of rules and the loading that goes onto your boat. You try to slow it to 1 to 2 knots in it and 70 knots of breeze, and a sea that’s trying to drive along at 12 knots, the loading is quite amazing that you’ve got to work at those points where you attach it. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so I was doing that research and I thought and they’re saying don’t attach it. I was going to basically say, “Well I’ve got this nice winches,” but the load on the winch is no good. It’s the wrong way and all that so I will run them off some chain plates of about 300 mil’s long or 250 mil’s long with about six bolts along the side of the hull just before the transom and they’re just poking out in the transom a bit and they will distribute the load into the hull. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah but that good and like all things, you hope you don’t have to use it but if you do, it’s good to know that they won’t rub the back off your boat. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, or tear a winch out or something like that. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well because technically if you’re in the line of fire as it got torn out, it will go with a bang. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah it would, yeah exactly and also then, it is actually pulling from it directly off the stern. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay and in terms of your list of all of the must haves and nice to haves, how are you getting along with deciding what’s really a must have and what you are going to be able to do and what you probably can’t do. Where are the trade offs or compromises sort of coming in now? 

Andy Lamont: Well Musto has come on as a sponsor, which was fantastic because Musto is the gear I wanted. It’s basically every piece of sailing equipment I’ve got is Musto. So the only company I approached for sailing here and luckily they were quite good about it and so they’ve come along. So all the, you know, I am getting basically all the HPX gear, the dry suit and all the mid layer stuff and everything from Musto basically. So that’s a lot of the must have stuff that as you know is really…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s a big chunk of cost but value for money; it’s priceless, right? But you can’t not have it, but it’s not… 

Andy Lamont: Yeah you can’t not have it. Yeah and so I’m just really grateful to Musto that they’re willing to support me on that and like truly if they said, “Look, we’ll give you a 10% discount,” I would been happy with that of course, but they are really generous and so that was great. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s good. It’s good the support.

Andy Lamont: I shouldn’t say that, they might… 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s too late now it’s in the bank, right? The bank is dry. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. So I am really happy with Musto and that’s great. So that’s one big ticket that is out of the way. I am talking with someone else about supplying radar and a radar screen so hopefully they will come through. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s good.

Andy Lamont: Yeah. But we’re just talking at the moment and some of the other big must have tickets, so pretty much pulling the mast down and doing the mast is something I’ve arranged for anyway. A satellite phone is, that’s one thing that hasn’t been bought yet, HF radio is a sort of thing that, again, really expensive. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah especially with the limitations it has. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah but then it does things that only an HF radio can do. So it’s not really a must have for me personally but then a lot of people I speak say, “Oh no, an HF radio is a must have because you can broadcast.” A satellite phone is great but you can’t broadcast with a satellite phone.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah of course.

Andy Lamont: so it would be really good to get an HF radio. Some of the other things, one of the musts was to just lift the boat off the keel and check the keel bolts and Southport Yacht Club obviously will come to the party with the hard stand and the travel lift, which means that it’s going to be nice and easy to just lift the boat up and check the keel box. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Which is great, Another big chunk of cost that you don’t have to incur. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah exactly. So most of my must haves now are, like they’re getting close to being covered. There’s a lot of things in the list that they sort of, they are must have but the boat is a good boat and if I had to go tomorrow, I’ve got it basically but will probably want a HF radio and a satellite phone but apart from that it’s a good little boat. So we’re pretty ready in that sense. I’ve got some Go Pros to take some footage so hopefully there will be some interesting footage of it. Yeah, we’ll see how that goes. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Have you thought about finding a media sponsor who would pay data for you so that you can access data for uploading content and videos and updating your blog so that they could benefit from the published story updates, but you benefit from not having to pay for the big thing, they put on the back of your boat and the cost of the data itself?

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so yeah I’ve looked at just basically having a satellite hub and the data is still pretty expensive. So yeah I haven’t really looked. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Because Jessica Watson had that data sponsor, which is what allowed her to do the blog updates and the video uploads. She had a media sponsor because of course, they can get her to write stories every so often and you know of news limited only to the Gold Coast Bulletin and you kind of wonder if that would be a possibility, right? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, well I got to speak to Jess the other day through you actually, which was great and then I sent her another e-mail and so that might be something that I’ll talk to her about. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah because you could get steered into the right direction. I don’t want to cost it out now but I’m sure it runs into the tens of thousands for data still. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, I mean the funning thing is voice is cheap. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, well it is that’s right. As soon as you start uploading gigabytes of bloody video, or hundreds of megabytes, that’s where it chews through it, right? And probably photos to some degree as well. But you probably could publish content quite cheaply. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that’s probably one of the next things I’ll look at is if I can get someone, a supplier of data. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, well now that it’s a world record attempt. 

Andy Lamont: Yes, that’s right. It’s gathering it’s own momentum. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s right and then you can put that kind of stake in the ground, that might make that a little bit different. 

Andy Lamont: Well that’s right. I mean it wasn’t my original intention but I’m quite excited about it now because there are people that have sailed around the world and you can’t take anything away from them because what they’ve done is amazing by itself but to go down as the first person to do the official world record around the world west bound circumnavigation, there is only ever one first.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s right. That exactly right so you should leverage it for all you can. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah so, we’ll we will try. We are doing it right now. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s right. Exactly right. So if anybody knows of anybody or has an interest in sponsorship, then don’t hesitate to contact Andy directly. And your contact details will be at your website, at Andylamont.com.au. 

Andy Lamont: That’s right. That’s it, Andylamont.com.au. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So don’t hesitate to pass any suggestions onto Andy or anybody you might know that would be interested in sponsorship wise or support wise, contact Andy directly because he’d certainly love to hear from you. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that’s right and I really would because the thing has really changed in the last three months or two months from our little personal sort of goal for me and thinking, “Well I’m not going to be the first of anything or anything,” so I didn’t think there’d that much interest to be in the first west bound. So it hasn’t changed it a lot. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s great and now so you got the chance to have a little bit of a chat to Jessica Watson a couple of weeks ago? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, she is great. It was really interesting to talk to her. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: What sort of takeaways did you have out of that in terms of some of the questions? Some of the technical questions you had that around your preparations. 

Andy Lamont: Well I guess probably one of the things that I immediately got out of that was that while I was thinking about getting one brand of wind generator, which was the most expensive and then talking to her realising that even she had that and that didn’t even last the whole distance anyway. So a couple of days later, I went to the boat shop here and I picked up two really good wind generators, but for the same price as one over the other ones.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh, so you’ve got a plan A and a plan B. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah so knowing that look, if one makes it half way around the world and dies, then that’s to be expected and I’ve got the other one and even if you get the most expensive one, you’re not going to expect to make it all the way with that. So yeah, that saved me to get two of those. That’s three and a half grand each, that’s seven grand and I’ve got two of the other brand which I could say is Rutland, so I got a Rutland 1200 and Rutland 914 and they did me a deal to get two together so that was three grand so that saved me like four grand. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, right. So would you run two at the same time? 

Andy Lamont: No, I’ll run one and then I’ll just keep one boxed up and if something happens to the Rutland 1200, I have another pole. So I’m getting Phil George from Fleming Marine who made Jessica’s targa and mast for the wind generators and I’m getting him to make those for me as well because he’s actually got an S&S 34 down there that he’s doing up at the moment. 

So he can actually build the whole thing on his boat and then just post it up to me or send it up to me and that’ll have two masts so they’ll both be wired up but one will be just in a box and if the first one ends up dying for some reason, I will just leave it up there if I have to and put the next one of the spare mast. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: On the opposite side or something? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah right. That’s good and are you going to take your extra blades as well? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, I’ll take extra blades. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Because they can snap. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah so there’re only plastic boats, they’re not carbon blades these ones so the blade is not a big expense. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, what do you pay for a set of blades, do you know? 

Andy Lamont: I don’t know, I do know the guy told, “Oh yeah, you’ve got to get your blades.”

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, because the reason I ask is because I’ve got an Aerogen 6 I think it is and I chipped some blades and I found the Australian distributor and it was going to be like $630 for six plastic blades and then so I thought, “They’re only plastic.” So I Googled it and I found this UK website, they were selling them for 118 pounds for a set and so I could land them in Australia where the currency conversion and with freight for I don’t know? $240 or something. 

Which is still going to be less than half so just the reason that I ask is it’s amazing the loading that goes into some of the spare parts if they’re offshore, northern hemisphere type products. Don’t be afraid to use Google. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, I know. That’s right but Rutland is a nice well-known brand. They’ve got plenty of parts in there. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well, that’s good. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so that’s right. So we’ll take spare blades for that, takes spare vanes for the self-steering gear, all of that is taken care of. But yeah, so that is one thing that was really good to get from Jessica. It saved me $4,000. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh that’s great.

Andy Lamont: In a five minute conversation and she said she’s welcome to talk to me, or willing to talk to me about some other things as well, food and things like that which we will be setting up soon. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh that’s great and all that advice from somebody who has done it already, just it probably simplifies a whole bunch of stuff too that sometimes you overcomplicate in your planning that for whatever reason they don’t use or didn’t need. 

Andy Lamont: It’s amazing how sometimes you can just talk to someone. For instance with wind vanes, I’ve been thinking about wind vanes for more than 18 months but I had that conversation with her and just went, “Right. Okay, that’s what I’m going to do.” So it crystallised my thoughts so it was great. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah because there is lots of contradictory advice out there and everyone has different experiences but yeah, being able to get advice with somebody who’s done a similar trip with a similar boat that doesn’t get any more crystal clear than that.

Andy Lamont: Yeah exactly so that was good. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well that’s good and I’m glad that you could hook up and that she’s happy to provide ongoing feedback and advice because it all helps especially if it’s money that you don’t have to spend that you would have spent just in case and then you find out that you just don’t need to spend it at all. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, exactly and that’s a lot of money you know and it is. It’s $4,000 I saved there that really basically I went $4,000 saved on that, $5,000 for the buoyancy bags, done. That’s how it all worked so yeah. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well that’s good. Well that’s right even if the advice doesn’t raise sponsorship, if it cuts your costs down, it’s the same outcome right? Because a dollar you don’t have to speed, is a dollar you don’t have to raise somewhere. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah exactly, that’s so true. Yeah, that’s good.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And have you settle on sail configuration or sail plans? 

Andy Lamont: Yes. I haven’t actually ordered a code zero yet and that’s not a must have, that’s a “would love to have”. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s a “I’ll get home sooner” type item. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah and that’s one of the things Jessica said. She said that if she were doing it again, she would have used the code zero more. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well, you are more likely to fend your world record for longer too if you used the code zero right? You could just get it a few days earlier. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that’s right. I haven’t ordered it yet but it is just sort of one of those things that I’d love to have. I’d love to have that more than an HF radio.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well maybe you might be able to find a sail sponsor. That would be good. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that would be good too and Neil Pryde was really good to me, he helped me out with the sails that I’ve got now but of course, the Australian dollar’s tanked since then.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s right and substantially. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so it’s sort of getting sails out of Hong Kong is not as good as it used to be. So Mike Sabin from Gold Coast Sails may be a nice little 100% jib. So I am looking now and we’ll see. Like I said, I’d much rather have a code zero than an HF radio but I think I have to buy the HF radio before the code zero. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, right. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so anyway that’s about it and what else has been happening? I’m just about drawing a blank here now. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And so you’re still settled on October? That’s all fairing out? You’ve got a specific date yet? 

Andy Lamont: October the 2nd. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: October 2nd, great. 

Andy Lamont: Which hopefully, my daughter, Sophie, is due on the 14th of September. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, well she won’t run more than two weeks overdue. 

Andy Lamont: But they said she can run two weeks early or two weeks overdue.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: But at two weeks, she’ll be induce, right? So two and a half weeks you should be good to go right? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, exactly. So that’s right. I would say, “Look, you know, 15th of October, come on let’s do it.” So yeah, that will be great. So as soon as, you know, I can’t leave before the baby is born but you’re right, they will induce it if it’s more than two weeks overdue, I think. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah. 

Andy Lamont: So the second of October, which will be a Sunday, I’ll head out of here on a Sunday about 1 o’clock. I got a little widget on my website. I think there’s 115 days to go. That will be on a Sunday so that’d be good. I can’t wait really. It’s getting really close now. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well, it’s like less than three months now, right? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. Well it’s 115 days. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You’ll be pleased to know that you haven’t chosen a weekend where there’s offshore sailing so we’ll be able to see you off because we won’t be out there offshore. And it’s actually the revised Queen’s birthday weekend this year. 

Andy Lamont: Oh is it? 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Perfect for people visiting you because there’s an extra day off. 

Andy Lamont: Oh okay, well that’s fantastic. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Because, you know, they moved it from June to October. 

Andy Lamont: Right. Just in Queensland, or? 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Just in Queensland, just to do something crazy they just moved the Queen’s birthday back to confuse everybody for three months back. I always jot it down and I’ve got the sailing calendar in there for the next 12 months. So that day is clear. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, it’s good. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh, it’s good. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah so that will be good. So hopefully we will have good breezes then around October, have a nice northerly and we’ll just head down and have a nice summer time breezes all through Bass Strait. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, well that’s right. It’s a much warmer time of the year right? The way you are planning it it’s actually a nice time of the year to go through there. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. It’s much nicer at the start and really hopefully, the only part that’s really sort of playing on my nerves a bit is finding a window to get around Cape Horn because the big difference of west bound compared to east bound is that you can get to Cape Horn on the east bound circumnavigation and say it’s really bad. Well, you could just throw that Jordan Series Drogue out the back and just blow through really. Like I mean it wouldn’t be pleasant but eventually…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You will get swept around there with the current kind of thing. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, you will get swept around there with the current and the wind and everything like that whereas if you have to turn around and float a drogue, which is what happened to Bill, you just go back into it. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Backwards really fast and then you’ve got to start all over again. 

Andy Lamont: Then you start all over again because sometimes systems come through one, two, three, four straight after each other; you might go back in and actually get hit by another system. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So you could realistically have to have two or three or four goes at it in the worst case scenario, which is pretty daunting. 

Andy Lamont: Yes, so the thing is really is to pick a weather window and just go for it. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And then gun it with that code zero. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It might come in handy. 

Andy Lamont: It might, and even if it does get like even if it does get a bit dirty, you just keep trying to punch through because…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah because the alternative is going to mean you’ve just got to punch through all over again which there’s nothing worse.

Andy Lamont: Yeah so this is a good little boat to do it in, so it goes to wind well and it’s nice and soft and a light sail. That’s what I am saying anyway. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well that’s good Andy. And I see you’ve still got those lovely bolts coming through your cabin top there. You haven’t quite figured out all the final uses for those before your…

Andy Lamont: Yeah. No, I’m pretty sanguine about those; we’ll cut them off. It’ll take me like five minutes with the grinder but I haven’t made the netting yet. So when I get the netting made then I’ll know what the attachment points are for them. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah then it will become logical. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, I mean I could just leave every third one which would still probably be all right but I’ll just leave it for a little while longer. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well that’s where the world is going because I read some changes to Cat 1 Regulations for these alum boats. You’ve got to be able to roll the boat upside down and have nothing fall out, nothing come loose, no floor boards, no nothing. So I’m not sure if that’s the direction for Australian Cat 1, but that’s the regulations this year coming so you will be ahead of the curve if you have got netting that covers all the stuff. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It makes sense, right? 

Andy Lamont: You just don’t want anything…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Hitting you on the head and cutting your eye open. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. So that’s right. So that’s what we’re going to do before we go. It’s basically turning the boat upside down mentally. I mean what they do, turn them upside — they don’t do that.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: No. I don’t know, but I doubt it. But all your bed boards, all your floor boards like everything has to be able to stay intact and contained if you tilt the boat 180, which makes sense. It’s just if your boat’s not fitted that way, it’s quite a bit of work and costs in doing that but it makes sense. 

Andy Lamont: I know and I mean if you’ve got to pull up a floor board quickly, it is a bit of a pain if you… 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s where you need the right sort of latches right because you don’t want to have to screw them down because you won’t be able to gather a screwdriver, knee deep in water trying to the boards up. 

Andy Lamont: No, that’s right, yeah. I mean it won’t be hard. This boat has only got one floor board so it’s nice and easy to put that down.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That helps.

Andy Lamont: But that’s the whole, the exercise on what you're going to go through and have been going through and that’s why I haven’t cut those bolts is because I just want it to be basically everything bolted down and what’s not bolted down, contained. You do see pictures of boats that have been knocked down and stuff everywhere. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And injuries to people.

Andy Lamont: And injuries to people.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: A can of something hits you in the head it’s going to hurt.

Andy Lamont: Knock you out.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, or a floor board will break your ribs. So that makes a lot of sense. 

Andy Lamont: And like I know it’s going to happen. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s just a matter of if. 

Andy Lamont: It’s just I know and so I just want to make sure that if I get knocked down, there might be a little bit of water that come in but it’ll just a matter of like pumping it out and keeping on going. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well if you pad your ceiling it’d just be like a kid’s playground won’t it? You will just be rolling around inside and it will be soft. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, I know and I am thinking about doing it with that foam. It’s probably not a bad idea. That’s kind of like I’d like to have. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Then you’re bullet proof then really. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah and it will give a bit of insulation as well. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah which will help in winter if you don’t have to wear so much gear all the time. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, exactly. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Especially going to the toilet and stuff, to take that gear on and off all the time. So tell me how’s everything unfolding at home? How’s your wife feeling about the trip now that time’s marching on and she probably realises you are totally serious and committed? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, it’s kind of funny because we’re doing things now and they’re things in preparation for me not to actually get ready to leave but to actually leave, so it’s becoming a lot more real for all my family. So that’s a bit of a process we’re going through but in a lot of ways because we haven’t been spent more than two weeks apart in 25 years. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s quite staggering when you think about what lies ahead there. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so I’m sure like I said before, I’ll probably miss her more than she misses me but in lead up to it, she’s the one that’s more vocal about missing me and so we’ve got a good satellite. The satellite plans are great so I will be able to talk to her on the phone nearly every day. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: They’re pretty cost effective aren’t they? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah I think it’s 40 cents a minute.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well that’s good. Wow, that’s really good. 

Andy Lamont: You pay $100 plan and you get 40 cents a minute. 

OSP: Yeah, right with bulk. Because I pay a lower level plan just for the odd Cat 2 race which is I think we sit at 99 cents a minute but yeah, if you can go, especially if you’re going to buy a year’s worth or something. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, you go on $100 plan and it’s 40 cents a minute. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Cool. 

Andy Lamont: It seems if you can get voice that cheap it just seems amazing that data is so expensive but that might just change it. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, I think that’s just the lack of supply, it means prices can stay high, unlimited supply is a whole lot better. It will change right? It’s just a matter of time because that’s right, because once that changes, you could just live at sea, work at sea, couldn’t you? If your business is online and then you can do it online. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, you could. Anyways, so they’re going along. Each time it’s getting closer everyone is getting used to it. Doing that website was kind of a big “aha” wake up moment for all the family. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s like you’ve told the world now and they can all see it. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, exactly. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well if you are pregnant, you’d be the last trimester, right? The last three months but your baby is not arriving, it’s leaving? 

Andy Lamont: But I’ve got a big bump. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s right, the bump in your wall is getting smaller. 

Andy Lamont: That’s right, yeah so that’s good. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well that’s great. It was good to catch up, good to check on how things are tracking along. It sounds like you’re well advanced now in the final three months. 

Andy Lamont: Yep, that’s it and so as the boat comes down in August, it will be out of the water for a month and then it’ll be back in the water and basically we’ll be off after that. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Which is great. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And today we’re down at the Southport Yacht Club and we’re onboard Impulse and we’re officially nine days into winter. It’s 28 degrees outside so for our American listeners, that’s 80 something degrees Fahrenheit, which is kind of crazy thinking it’s winter and then we’re about to go twilight sailing. 

Andy Lamont: In a sea breeze. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: In a sea breeze, yeah. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah which is a summer time breeze for over here. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s bizarre but it’s good. 

Andy Lamont: So that should be good. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s great. Well thanks Andy for getting together again for a catch up and we’ll try check in with you again maybe in six weeks’ time as you get to about six weeks out and see how you’re tracking with this along the home straight for departure. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that would be great. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And I’ll make sure in the show notes that we put the links to your website as well and any updated photos I’ll put as well, any updates and bits and pieces but you gave me heaps last time. So, we went to the original ones too for those that haven’t looked at them yet. In the show notes folks from the episode with Andy in episode two and three, there’s lots and lots of photos of impulse and all the work that he has done to date. So don’t hesitate to check out those show notes as well as the ones with this episode. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, fantastic and anyone that wants to contact me and give me some advice or tell me an idiot, you’re welcome. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Any advice, any feedback, any support, any suggestions of people or companies that might want to support Andy go to Andylamont.com.au and he will appreciate any bit of help, advice, or contact at all. 

Andy Lamont: Great. All right, well thanks a lot David. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, thanks Andy. Let’s go racing. 

Andy Lamont: Let’s go sailing. 

Interviewer: David Hows

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Episode 10: Jessica Watson Show Notes

Thank you to the Queensland Cruising Yacht Club for hosting us for the interview.

Find out more about Jessica's new venture at Deckee.com

Deckee.com is proving to be a hit for yachties looking for advice on products, services and marinas

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Hi Folks, welcome onto the Ocean Sailing Podcast. This week we are at the Queensland Cruising Yacht Club and we are talking to Jessica Watson. So welcome along Jess.

Jessica Watson: Hello and thanks for having me.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Jess, happy birthday for yesterday. I understand it was your birthday and ironically, as part of researching questions for today, it's just gone past your six year anniversary since you completed your circumnavigation?

Jessica Watson: It has, which is a bit scary. Six years feels like a while, a lot has happened.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Has it gone fast or have you just packed a lot into the last six years?

Jessica Watson: It kind of feels like a couple of lifetimes ago which sounds ridiculous for a 23 year old to be saying that but it really does. I mean there’s so many things that have happened and it’s too much to keep up with, and it feels like another world.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well in six years, when you, given you were 17, almost 17 when you completed the trip, six years as a percentage of your life. You’ve had like another third of your life almost.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, well that’s a good way of putting it and that’s kind of how I feel.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and I read in your Wikipedia profile that your nationality’s described as an Australian New Zealander. I hadn’t heard of that nationality before. Is that how you see yourself?

Jessica Watson: No, that’s the problem Wikipedia, don’t believe everything you read on it. I mean it is true to some extent but I wouldn’t call myself a Kiwi, sorry grandparents. Sorry Grandad particularly, he’d be a bit upset about that but Mum and Dad come from New Zealand originally, all my family are over there but I do see myself as an Aussie through and through. Sorry to the Kiwis. Love the place, great sailors but I’m definitely an Aussie.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s a lot warmer here, right?

Jessica Watson: It is, yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, so today I wanted to talk to you and touch on a few points and ask you a few questions about your circumnavigation. I want to talk to you a bit about life after the trip, which has obviously been a big chunk of your life really and then we’ll talk a bit about your new project that you’re working right now, Deckee, and how that came about. Then we’re going to give Andy Lamont a bit of a surprise call and talk to him. He’s got some questions for you about his upcoming westward bound trip around the world in an S & S 34 called Impulse.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, I’m looking forward to that, I’d love to hear his questions and have a chat to him.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay. So I guess jumping back to your circumnavigation and just some questions around that. It appeared on reading your story along the way and afterwards in depth, that something that started out as an idea when you were a little bit younger, turned into quite a serious, well-planned, well thought out project that really gathered significant momentum in terms of the people and the sponsors and supporters that got behind it.

I guess my question for you is, were there moments as the departure date approached, where you suddenly had the flashes of panic, or you got cold feet, or you thought, “I don’t want to do this anymore but I’ve come too far, I’ve got too many people behind it?”

Jessica Watson: No, not at all. And I’m glad about that because that would have been a pretty scary position to be in. I think when I first started thinking about it I realised from doing that first bit of research, I was young. I was 13 by the time I had sort of made up my mind about it fully. So it was before then that I had been thinking about it for a while and I realised how much was involved and I always sort of knew from, even right form then that if I was going to do this, it had to be done properly.

It wasn’t going to be a matter of getting a cheap boat and throwing together a few bits of equipment, and a satellite phone and leaving. If I was going to do it, it had to be in the safest way possible and that meant a lot of money, and a lot of sponsorship and an incredible amount of support that did snowball.

First it was the local sail maker and rigger who were amazing and then it just snowballed into something bigger. I’m very happy that I didn’t have cold feet at the last minute because, as you said, there was a lot behind it at that point. I was just probably the exact opposite, I was just itching to go the whole time and that was actually probably the harder part was to actually slow down and go, “No, I need to do this last part of the preparation properly,” rather than just wanting to get out there so badly.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and so I guess then by the time you left, you were so well prepared and well-travelled, and you had done so many thousands of sailing hours. By that point you were just comfortable and ready to go?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, definitely. I mean, you can always do more, particularly solo in that boat. I would love to have done more of that but it wasn’t sort of possible with having to be 16 and have your boat license. It might have been an issue around sort of legally being able to skipper a boat by myself. It just came down to time and the seasons. But we did decide that I’d sail through the pacific first so that also gave me the first few months in a much better part of the world if any issues did come up with the boat, which we weren’t expecting.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You were headed in a warmer direction to start with rather than in a colder direction.

Jessica Watson: Yeah exactly and just less terrible bit of ocean to give the boat a good run in.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and I read a comment, I’m not sure if it was a quote of yours, but it was along the lines of, “My mom and dad are quite timid when it comes to sailing and they just wouldn’t go out on a rough day but it became my norm.” I just kind of wondered have you always had that kind of gutsy, give it a go kind of attitude?

Jessica Watson: No, not at all. I think maybe it came from mum and dad who, you know, enjoyed boating and a little bit of sailing but really aren’t sailors at all. I was very, very scared and timid when I first started sailing and as a young girl and it was only few years later that I decided I wanted to sail around the world. So I kind of did a back with, I realised that if I was going to sail around the world I’d actually have to toughen up a little bit and yeah, pretending helped to start with.

But I think my approach was quite typical of I think a lot of adventurers rather than maybe sort of your typical kind of adrenaline junkie kind of idea of adventurer. My approach was kind of going back and looking at what could go wrong and that’s kind of the path that fascinated me more than the sort of adrenaline huge waves. I’ve always been interested in that but it was more about what can we do to make this safer? Which seems a bit boring but that’s the part that really fascinated me.

Jessica and her Deckee.com business partners

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I guess reading about some of the extremes going around Cape Horn and across the Great Australian Bight, you had to endure 10 to 12 meter seas, which most people can’t appreciate that sort of three to four story building in terms of height and winds of up to 70 knots and several knock downs. How would you describe to someone who has never sailed in rough whether what it’s like as a 16 year old on your own to out on the ocean and in the dark and those kind of conditions, how would you describe that?

Jessica Watson: Not easy to describe. I suppose the first thing is, I sort of say that not to just totally down play what the conditions are like but we were expecting, I was expecting conditions like that and the boat was built for those conditions in the end and that gave me a lot of confidence.

If you put me out in those conditions in any old boat, I would be utterly terrified but because I knew I had absolutely every chance and we’d prepared to actually deal with these conditions that gave me a lot of confidence. It’s incredible. They’re beautiful, the huge waves. It’s just not something you see, it’s just absolutely awe inspiring, obviously a little bit of terror comes into that as well.

You know, there are and there were particularly few hours in the Atlantic that were pretty horrible because I’d had a really horrendous knockdown where you’re thrown into the trough of the next waves upside down and just not knowing how the boat could possibly be structurally sound after that and I was sort of sitting there going, “If we get another wave like that, surely we can’t survive.” And pleasant surprise, I realised that the boat was actually still okay and it was my mind more than anything just getting away from me.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: With that, I guess one of the bigger risks for you was probably injuring yourself in the process rather than injuring the boat and the risk of breaking ribs and bones and skull fractures. How did you sort of manage your own safety in those types of extreme conditions?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, that was something to be very aware of, you’re completely by yourself, days or even weeks away from help. So really it kind of came down to the way I sailed, there was just no risks taken, I’m very proud of the fact I never left the cockpit in over 30 knots of wind. I think it was once where I went forward, not even on the foredeck, and that’s pretty kind of crazy really to think that you can sail around, the whole way around the world without leaving the cockpit in over 30 knots of wind. 

So I had my storm jib up when the storm would approach and I’d just reef down from the cockpit and fill away the last bit of head sail. So, very conservative and that was my approach to the way I did anything. There were lot of days when I was sailing a lot slower than I could have but again, I just didn’t like being cold and wet but also potentially hurting myself. I had little lap belts for storms where I’d sort of sit down and belt myself in to not be thrown around. Inevitably the worst knockdown happened when I wasn’t buckled in.

I remember walking up the walls onto the roof and you get pretty bruised up in a storm like that but I didn’t have any severe injuries at all. We did coat the inside of the boat with foam, probably as much for insulation but also kind of going, “Maybe it’ll help?” The great thing about an S & S 34 is that it’s quite small in the cabin. You go to see in a modern racing boat or even a modern cruising boat and it’s quite terrifying moving around down below because it’s this beautiful wide interior. It has the potential to be thrown 10 feet across the…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s a long way you can travel before you hit something.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, exactly. So a nice small S & S 34 was a bit of a security there as well.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay. Now, I have to ask, I was texted this morning by my daughter Madison who is 16 and has been doing a bit of off shore sailing with us now, a bit of racing. She’s reading your book at the moment and she just texted me and she’s like, “Dad, I hope it’s not too late, but I have a couple of questions,” and we’ve already asked one but the other one was, she said, “Did you ever feel that you had under estimated the scale and the enormity of the journey and the trip compared to how it unfolded for you?”

Jessica Watson: I can probably honestly say no. In those hours and those moments when you’re actually seeing those waves, you know I spent so long imagining them and trying to work out what they would be like and it’s still, you just can’t really imagine. But overall, I’m really quite proud of the fact that I had a lot of fun out there and that sounds a bit ridiculous but before I left was so hard and even that whole incident where I hit that ship which, you know, you look back and it did happened for a reason. As unpleasant as it was, I think all of that really did sort of toughen me up and I got out of there and I actually was tough. I’m told I do downplay it, but I had fun and I’m proud of that, I enjoyed it as well as having those tough times

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So did you find that any sort of fears around some of the more extreme whether just sort of eventually fell away and you were more in awe of the wonder of the forces of nature and just the natural beauty of it. Even though you can have the roughest, most crazy weather out there. The most I’ve been in is maybe 45 knots and six meters. That got to a point quite quickly where you realise the boat’s going to be okay and it’s just the awe of what’s happening around you. Did you get to that stage or did you still feel this sort of unnerving sort of, “Are we going to be okay? Can it handle everything that’s ahead?”

Jessica Watson: Yeah, after that storm in the Atlantic, I had a big sense of, “Wow, the boat coped with that. It’s still okay. Oh my gosh, if it can survive that, it can survive anything.” And that was a wonderful thing to experience and have that knowledge that it’s a really, really tough boat. But then coming back towards Australia, I sort of got a period where there was storm after storm after storm, and getting a bit closer to land again that was pretty unnerving again. 

You start throwing land into the mix, things get pretty scary. Sea room is an incredible thing. Most people still have this idea they want to run for shore and be near shore and it’s to me, as a solo sailor, it’s just the last thing you want to be near when you’re in bad weather. So that was hard and that was a healthy reminder again of how you never want to forget that as much as it’s incredible, it’s important to remember.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s quite amazing when it’s just you on the ocean and you’re on your own little circle of the planet and there’s just clear water in every direction to the horizon, it’s just you and the ocean, there’s no traffic around, it’s a lot safer and it’s quite magnificent.

Jessica Watson: Obviously ships never gave me a lot of confidence having them around me and yeah, there’s something very special about an empty horizon in every direction and I don’t think many people understand that but it is an incredibly and, of course it’s lovely to share experiences with people and racing, but there’s also something very special about having it entirely to yourself.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Tell me about your sleeping patterns once you set out onto the voyage, you hear about solo sailors being up for 20 minutes and down for 20 minutes and that sounds quite arduous if you’re going to have to do that for 10 days. So what sort of patterns did you settle into once you got established on the journey?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, it got better throughout the voyage. It started out across the Pacific where you do have more islands and more shipping where I would be doing sort of 20 minute cat naps, 40 minutes and then the advice we sort of have got in all the research we did sort of pointed towards “you really need to get a 90 minute sleep cycle in every 24 hours.” And I was getting in a couple of them. It sounds incredibly harsh, I think people just hear that and go, “Oh my goodness, how do you do that?”

Jessica Watson learning to sail when she was younger

You get used to it, it’s the first few days that are often very tough. The first three days typically and it’s a shame that most people are only ever at sea for three days because it’s wonderful after that once you’ve found your legs and you’re in a new sleeping pattern and I would get a lot of my best sleep in the morning, after the sun had kind of risen and you’d be able to relax just that little bit more. Then when I got further south, there’s a lot less down there in the southern ocean so I would be sleeping for 90 minutes at a time and then waking up quickly checking things and going back to sleep, it’s a lot better.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: In terms of collision avoidance at sea, did you use radar, AIS? And what sort of range alarms did you set? 

Jessica Watson: AIS, it’s just fantastic. I mean the radar is great but it chews through a lot of power and even just the alarms I don’t think are really, you know, when you're out in the middle of the ocean, really it’s just big ships or ocean going vessels that you're dealing with. So they are on the AIS, which is fantastic and the alarms that you can setup were just fantastic. 

Obviously once I was well out to sea you’d just, well anytime actually. By myself when I’d ever be thinking about sleeping, you’d have it just the furthest setting and if anything comes on to the screen at all which could be a quite a number of miles away depending on the conditions for the radio, and that would wake me up with a very, very loud alarm. My alarm was incredibly loud. The AIS was something we changed, I had a couple of them after the collision and one of the reasons for the collision was the fact that the AIS hadn’t gone off as it should have.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah right. So the great thing about AIS is especially in bad weather when you can see a vessel 90 minutes away, not just a few minutes away, how amazing that is in terms of being safe and confident at night in the dark, in really adverse conditions. Especially being able to understand the closest point of approach and how long that’s going to take you before you’re at that point, instead of trying to guess in the dark which side of your boat the vessel is going to pass, whether you’re on a collision course. It’s amazing how deceptive lights in the dark is and being able to judge depth and those sorts of things.

Jessica Watson: Without a doubt. You don’t have to sit there on deck for the hour it takes to pass and better still, there are a couple occasions when a ship would look like it was going to be a little bit close and I would literally call them up on the radio and go, “Hey, it’s looking a little close, hint, hint, do you want to get out of my way? Give me a bit more room so I don’t have to go out in the cold and jive?” A couple of times I talked them into it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s pretty good.

Jessica Watson: I think they were just so shocked from hearing this little girl’s voice on the radio that they’re going, “What’s going on here?”

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, so let’s jump to the conclusion of your trip on May the 15th, 2010. You stepped ashore in front of 70,000 people. Did you do anything to prepare for that great down to earth speech that you gave in that moment or did you just sort of step ashore and just wing it?

Jessica Watson: No, I mean I knew. I think everyone had told me what I should expect and I’m glad about that because it might have been a bit too overwhelming if I had just stepped off and been hit with that. The most incredible thing was that the couple of days before because I was running, well not a bit early but everyone sort of wanted to set a date. Even all my New Zealand relatives and all the people that supported me wanted to be there. I was at that point, if I wanted to come in I would have just come straight in but I was very happy to sort of hang out and wait a couple of days, just slow ride down. 

And those couple of days were just the most amazing thing because I was able to sort of let it sink in and get my head together and then be ready for the day I got in. It was just overwhelming. I’m sure anyone who has been at sea knows that feeling of returning to a port and everything feels so close and you’ve had empty horizons and just seen, you know, I only saw land three or four times the entire time. It’s pretty boring and everything feels overwhelmingly close and intense. Every smell and every sight is just a lot more intense than it normally is.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: How challenging was it readjusting to life on the land, getting back into a schedule and having people all around you again?

Jessica Watson: Oh it was all just, I think I was riding a wave of adrenaline for a couple of years, I’m not exaggerating. It was incredible. I think a lot of people worried about how I might adjust but because there was just so many positive things happening, and I was a little bit strange and had a bad case of the sea legs. I think I used to never talk to people looking at their face and some silly little habits that I gained like that, just from being by yourself for so long.

But honestly, it was all so exciting and new because you’re doing these things you haven’t done, even the smallest things were a novelty. Just being able to go for a walk, which was still something I was enjoying months after.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: What doors have opened since May, 2010 as you entered the next chapter of your life that have really surprised you, that you didn’t see coming?

Jessica Watson: Look, there are so many things. One of the wonderful things was being able to go and actually do a bit of traveling afterwards. I’d sailed around the world but I hadn’t seen a lot of it. So whether that was sort of booked tours in all sorts of parts of the world and boat shows in Brazil and Europe and actually being able to do a bit of sailing in the Mini’s over in France. I really loved that.

I was sort of thinking whether I’d go down that competitive path for a while, and the Youth Sydney Hobart project we did is something I’m really proud of. That was a big project, it took a while, a lot of effort and energy went into that and really proud of the result. It taught me a huge amount sailing wise but much more than that as well.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: In terms of people management, leadership, and some of the skills like that?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, and we had the opportunity to work with some really amazing mentors and partners. Deloitte was one of our sponsors and they put us through some of their sort of leadership and team, very corporate style training and team work programs. That was really amazing to apply that to basically a bunch of teenagers on a yacht for sailing.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I read about your role with the United Nations and your trip to Jordan and Lebanon where you met with Syrian refugees. Do you want to tell me about that?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, I mean obviously, the wonderful thing is that I’ve had the opportunity to support a lot of different organisations in the last few years and this is one that sort of has become a bit more of a long term role rather than a sort of once off. I have been over to Laos and to see the sort of school feeding programs over there and then, recently last year to Jordan and Lebanon. 

I mean they’re just an incredible organisation on a global scale and things like particularly with Laos. It was issues that are in our back yard and hunger and I think I’m just, you meet the families and the kids and they’re very inspiring. But I’m normally more inspired by the workers and what goes into, you know it’s not as simple as just dumping some food. So quite extraordinary and I’m just so lucky to have had those experiences. It’s again, changed me and taught me so much.

Ella's Pink Lady, an image that became famous across every household in Australia

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well it must be a pretty amazing perspective you have of the world now that you’ve had the opportunity to see it from so many different angles?

Jessica Watson: Yeah. Yeah definitely, very lucky to have had that and the funny thing is you think I sort of expected to walk away very upset from the refugee camps. But I actually walked away so inspired because I met some people who were making the best out of these situations. You come back here and my big sort of feeling was that we need to make the most of what we’ve got here and not waste it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s interesting, there’s a documentary called The Happiness Project, which is about where the happiest nations are in the world and interestingly, some of the African nations rank the highest because to gap between the expectations and how they actually live is nil.

Jessica Watson: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: As opposed to many of the western nations where there’s lots of unhappiness because the gap between where they are today and their high ideals is vast. So it’s interesting when you talk about people being happy with their lot and being happy with exactly where they are despite how little we may perceive they may have.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, probably part of the reason I had a lot of fun sailing around the world as well because I had this expectation that it was going to be miserable a lot of the time. Got out there and realised it was actually quite enjoyable the majority of the time.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, so how much public speaking do you still do today? I guess there was a lot immediately after your trip, but do you still do much public speaking today?

Jessica Watson: A bit. A lot less than it was for a couple of years there but I still do a fair bit, and I have come to really enjoy it. I went through a period where I was just so sick of talking about sailing around the world but I’m really happy that I’ve found a sort of way of enjoying that again and bringing some of my other experiences into that which is something that I feel like is a good story and I enjoy talking about now.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and where are you currently living?

Jessica Watson: Mostly down in Melbourne but I’m still up here in Queensland a fair bit with parents and family and I do seem to end up in Sydney a fair bit too. So East Coast Australia I think is a safe.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and I read that you don’t really feel the urge to become a professional sailor and cruising’s more your thing. Did you ever feel the urge or the weight of public expectation when you returned from your circumnavigation with the questions sort of public about, “What’s next for Jessica?” Or, “What’s your next challenge?” And some sort of obligation to need to find new challenges to take on?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, there’s the one thing that people say and it seems to be literally the second thing they say to me is, “What’s next? What are you going to do to better that?” And I really struggle with that because everything I’ve done since, and finishing my degree and studying different things now, have bettered that to me. But people do seem to want me to go and do something more dramatic and media worthy than what I’ve done and I’m never going to do that for that reason.

Yeah, and it’s quite funny that some people seem to think that there’s some sort of ownership over me and what I should do that they have some sort of say in what they think I should be doing. It was something I was quite seriously considering whether I would want to pursue racing sailing and maybe race around the world by myself or something. But I kind of have come to realise, it took me a couple of years, that I just don’t have a competitive bone in my body, so it wouldn’t have worked too well for me.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Sometimes when something become a job, it’s not as much fun anymore as well.

Jessica Watson: That’s something that I’ve become more and more aware of and that’s really important to me. I love sailing and I love every part of it and I want it to be something that’s a big part of my life for the rest of my life rather than something I do as a job.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and how did you feel about Ella’s Pink Lady being preserved forever in the Queensland Maritime Museum?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, that’s a perfect place for her. I mean by the time we’d finished setting her up for the voyage, she was sort of set up for one thing only and wasn’t going to help me with any of the racing I wanted to do. So that’s the best place for her. Bunch of school kids get to go visit and I go visit every now and again.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s pretty cool and nice to think she’s not just going to deteriorate on a mooring somewhere and eventually get degraded like many other boats that don’t get the attention they deserve.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, exactly, it’s just wonderful. I didn’t have the time in those first few years to look after her and who knows what happens in the future, and this way she’s looked after forever.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Let’s talk about Deckee and your investment in that. It’s a technology based solution around the marine industry and it’s had some investment to date of some $90,000 and the Deckee website talks about being a service provider to a marine industry of more than a million boat owners that spend some $2 billion dollars a year on services in store and products. 

You have aspirations as a business for going overseas at some point and the business has been part of the Slingshot Accelerator Program and picked up a whole bunch of awards including tourism awards, start up awards, and digital creativity awards. So tell me about your role and how did you get involved?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, I heard about it, gosh it would have been late last year, maybe even more like middle of last, it would have been more like middle of last year and Mike had been through the accelerated program. Mike’s the founder and I heard about what they were doing and I suppose I just immediately saw there was a need for it. As a boatie, you’re traveling up the coast and you want to know where you should be finding the best marine businesses and locations. 

And we have all these fantastic cruising guides, which are wonderful but, huge big books in’ 2016? There should be a place for that on the Internet and I kind of eventually got involved because I realise that that’s something I want to be a part of and to give the boating community, particularly the sort of cruising sailing community, a place and an amazing resource online.

So yeah, my role is sort of communications manager but there’s only the three of us so it does mean a bit of everything for now, which is really wonderful. I absolutely love it because it’s working with amazing boaties all over the place and really exciting. We’ve got some great things happening with a rebuild of the site, pretty much done now so looking forward to rolling that out and getting some feedback on that as well.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, certainly great having everything online and on demand that you think of tips these days instead of having to carry everything on board and when you pull into a new destination or a new area, you may not have the information you need. So having that online and on demand is fantastic.

Jessica Watson rounding Cape Horn

Jessica Watson: Yeah, and obviously the other big thing about Deckee, so essentially part of it is that it’s a trip adviser for boating. So to have that information there from other people, not just the one author, you’ve got comments and reviews from a whole range of boaties who might have been there just the week before. So that’s where it will become really, really useful if everyone jumps on board as I’m sure they will be as they hear this and actually help the rest of the community out by sharing their opinion as well.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Just to clarify, it’s Deckee.com.

Jessica Watson: That’s right, yep. Yeah, put it in Google or .com, it’s not that hard.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and how old is the business now?

Jessica Watson: Well it would be, it’s just over a year now. Learned a lot in that first year, slowly and steadily growing and really hoping for some exciting things around this new website.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and what’s your ultimate vision for the business and your plans beyond Australia?

Jessica Watson: Ultimately yeah, to provide a really helpful resource for the boating and sailing community. Australia first but certainly if it’s something that works here and it’s useful here, there’s a need for it around the world as well. So we’ll see where we go.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and how many businesses do you have listed on there currently?

Jessica Watson: We’ve got close to 4,000, which I think out of six or 7,000 businesses, is significant. There’s still a way to go there so obviously we’re asking marine businesses to get in touch and definitely list their details and there’s the opportunity to be listed as a directory there but then also some of the ways it will be built in with locations and encourage your customers to actually leave the feedback there. There’s all this amazing feedback and people do want to say great things and this is the platform for it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Great, and what sort of feedback have you had so far from the customers and the businesses that are benefiting from the platform?

Jessica Watson: We’re certainly seeing that people are saying that there’s a need for it, there are only so many options from the businesses perspective where you can be advertising your product and where is it actually relevant to be advertising, getting the word out about your business. 

Certainly that customer feedback is quite new. We’re seeing in every other industry that that’s becoming a really, really important marketing tool and it’s just, there hasn’t been a platform for that for the marine community yet. From a user feedback, obviously the more people on there, the more useful it gets. Hearing some positive things so far but we just know that the more people using it, the better it gets and that’s the important thing to get to that point. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: What are the biggest things that are driving the growth of the site at the moment?

Jessica Watson: Well we are seeing a lot of people kind of discovering it through people, friends telling them about it. We’re getting out and doing sort of being part of as many community events as possible and then also through sort of the stories and the blog style articles that we’re writing, putting out a couple, normally one or two a week. A lot of people are reading that, sharing that and hearing about Deckee that way as well, which is wonderful.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, I’ve been chasing somebody for some details for a survey for three weeks, for a survey that I need to get done for insurance and last night I thought, “Why don’t I just go onto Deckee, look up the Gold coast and see what’s there?” And sure enough I found a surveyor straight away in Palm Beach and got the contact details and straight onto it.

Jessica Watson: Wonderful.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Otherwise if you can just Google the stuff, often you go mental because it brings up such broad results that it doesn’t often find what you’re looking for.

Jessica Watson: Well, that’s exactly it. Is that look, this is probably jumping ahead of myself a little bit here as I’d love to say Deckee become a bit of a Google for the boating world. It’s a place that you actually trust and you know that it’s actually boaties are on there, so it’s information for boaties rather than having to contend with everything on Google. Yeah, and we’ve had good feedback and that was around the award wins too about the design of the site. So something we’re keeping in mind as we build the new one as well.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s a good looking site and I found it easy to use, and I think the review based concept is a really smart one.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, right direction but as I said, learning a lot as well which is really important because we want to be providing the most useful tool possible.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: What do you need more of right now to drive your growth? Is it business listings or customers, or essentially eyeballs and traffic to drive leads and contact to those businesses?

Jessica Watson: It’s hard to know what comes first, but really our focus is with the user and particularly a lot of our cruising sailors who are typically really generous people who want to share. Your average racing sailor might be a little more busy and heads down to the boat all weekend and doesn’t have a lot of spare time.

But cruising sailors are really generous and want to spread their opinions which is wonderful. So really engaging with them is number one concern and getting them on board in using the site, and hearing what they want to be using and what they want to see and then I think the businesses are seeing, once there’s a huge amount of people using the site and finding it useful that it’s something they want to be part of.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Are there any other similar websites in the world for the marine industry that are similar to Deckee, or is what you're doing here quite unique?

Jessica Watson: It is quite unique. There’s a few sort of similar concepts and in the States, we’re seeing, and globally a few sort of sites. Some pretty incredible marina booking platforms and things like that popping up, which is great to see that people are again sort of saying they want these resources online. But so far, yeah certainly it is quite unique but we’ll what happens I imagine in the next few years as well.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So Jess, is there anything else you want to tell me about Deckee or anything else you wanted to share about Deckee and plans and ides for that before we give Andy a call?

Jessica Watson: No, look, I really want to encourage people to get on there and use it. Also we really love feedback and honest feedback. You know, that’s what’s going to help us grow and improve. So keen to hear that and hear what people think as the new site’s launched as well. So please do get on board and share your opinions, good and bad and your favourite anchorage. What’s good about that and what people need to be aware of.

Jessica enjoying the sunshine while sailing on Queensland waters

Ocean Sailing Podcast: The more people share, the more people get to benefit from that sharing and those reviews and that information.

Jessica Watson: Just becomes more and more useful, yes.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, great resource from that point of view.

Jessica Watson: Definitely, yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, so Andy Lamont, we’re going to jump online and we’re going to call him through Skype to his mobile and we have a chat to Andy because I spoke to Andy maybe a couple of months ago, he’s got a trip coming up, big trip going west, going upwind for some crazy reason…

Jessica Watson: Yeah, that’s pretty crazy.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: …around the world, and he’s, it would be fair to say, he’s certainly a fan of yours. When I spoke to him I said, “If you had some questions for Jessica Watson, what would they be?” And he said, “I’d ask her about this, this, and that.” So got me thinking at the time, “Oh maybe I could organise for you to have a chat to him and maybe he could ask you those questions directly.”

Jessica Watson: Id’ love to. I always love somebody who has chosen the right boat for the voyage.

Andy Lamont: Hi, Andy speaking.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Hey Andy, it’s David here.

Andy Lamont: Hey Dave, how are you going mate?

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Good, thanks. Can you hear me okay?

Andy Lamont: Yeah, you're just a little bit faint, but I can hear you.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, I’ll try and speak up. So Andy, I’ve got somebody else here that is going to have a chat to you about your upcoming westward bound trip around the world and she’s listening in the background.

Jessica Watson: Hello.

OSP: In fact, we might have to sit a bit closer so she can hear you but I have Jessica Watson here Andy.

Andy Lamont: Oh Jessica? How are you going?

Jessica Watson: Yes, hi, good, how are you?

Andy Lamont: Good, thanks. 

Jessica Watson: Good to hear about your trip.

Andy Lamont: So is that you? Is that Jessica Watson, is it?

Jessica Watson: Yes, yes. Sorry.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: How many Jessica’s do you know?

Andy Lamont: I recognise your voice. Thanks for calling Jessica. Yeah.

Jessica Watson: No, no problem.

OSP: So Andy, we’re doing an episode for the podcast and Jessica and I have been having a chat for the last hour or so. When I had spoken to you a couple of months ago, you said if you could speak to Jessica, there are some questions you’d like to ask as part of your preparation. So now you have the opportunity.

Andy Lamont: Yeah. That’s right.

Jessica Watson: I love your choice in boat obviously.

Andy Lamont: Yeah. It was good to get an S & S 34 and just doing it up. Yeah, so where are you now Jessica? You’re in up north in…

Jessica Watson: In Brisbane, I’m down in Melbourne a lot these days but Brisbane today. You’re Gold Coast based, aren’t you?

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that’s right. So I head off in October and sail westward bound. But yeah, there were some things I wanted to ask you about. I’m sort of a blank at the moment.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I thought you would, so I’ve written down your questions for you Andy because I remember some of them.

Andy Lamont: Good on you, all right.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I knew I would be putting you on the spot. So one of the questions you said you would like to know more about is the sail configurations for each wind level and what Jessica found to be the best settings as the wind range went up.

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that would be interesting to know.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And at what point she changed from a genoa to a full genoa, and a genoa to a jib and reefed the main, and things like that.

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that would be good to know how you went with that.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, I suppose I kept it all pretty basic It was certainly no racing trim with a lot of it. Really it was just the main with, I had three reefs in it which was fantastic and the genoa, which would just fill away a bit of as it got windier and then the big thing I did was used the stay sail a bit which was good but probably not. I don’t think it made a huge amount of difference but then I’d keep the storm sail on the stay sail and just I had to leave that up for quite a while, it wasn’t doing any damage before or after a storm to have it up there ready.

And I don’t know. I suppose the big thing is just getting the main down earlier so it’s not overpowering when you’re sailing, I don’t know if you’ll have a wind vane, but you just can’t sail with too much sail area with the wind vane, you’ve got to be a bit more conservative.

Andy Lamont: Yes, I’m just fitting, I just spoke to Phil George just sent me up a wind vane actually.

Jessica Watson: Oh wonderful.

Jessica Watson inspecting the top of her mast on her circumnavigation

Andy Lamont: I just fitted that last week, yeah. That’s the thing, you’ve got to balance the boat to just keep it underpowered.

Jessica Watson: Yeah. I highly recommend a nice small third reef not that on an S & S 34 sail it could be that big anyway, a third reef.

Andy Lamont: Yep. Oh good, so that’s good to know. Well I’ve got a small third reef, but I’m probably going to do. Did you just have the one main sail for the whole trip?

Jessica Watson: I did, I had a spare, which wouldn’t have been a great sail but I didn’t need it. I was stitching it up a little bit. There was little bits of damage and things.

Andy Lamont: Yeah, okay. So that’s good. It lasted the whole trip for you?

Jessica Watson: It did, but it was suffering a bit towards the end so I’d definitely be taking a spare.

Andy Lamont: Yeah, well I’ve got a spare. I thought I might get another new one made, but I’ve got a spare sort of the whole thing that came with the boat. That was the idea I had of having another main, just so I could have one ready to pop up just in case.

Jessica Watson: Yeah. That would probably do the job.

Andy Lamont: Yeah, well that’s good to know. And what about things like did you have a wind generator the whole way?

Jessica Watson: The wind vane sorry?

Andy Lamont: No, the generator.

Jessica Watson: Wind generator?

Andy Lamont: Did you have any at all?

Jessica Watson: I did actually replace that quite towards the end of the trip. It was fantastic, I liked it and I had a spare whole unit, which I might have been able to problem solve with the first one. I don’t know, someone with a bit more technical knowledge and experience might have been as well but I had the spare there and I just replaced it which was just fantastic. But yeah, you really need your different options with the solar and even being able to run, I was running in and out gear a fair bit, which is not overly great for it either.

Andy Lamont: So you say solar was pretty much, not really that much help down south?

Jessica Watson: No, I still found it surprising how down south it was more that they, or one of them particularly got a bit smashed up during some knock downs and was a bit less effective after that.

Andy Lamont: Yeah. That’s good to know and so you took all your water didn’t you?

Jessica Watson: Yeah but I was catching a lot. My water maker was only like a little hand backup one so it was really only going to get me out of trouble in a sort of survival situation. But I was very surprised and impressed with how much I was able to collect particularly through the Pacific, which might not be as much help for you but the gutter…

Andy Lamont: Well I’m going up and under on down straight home. Because I’m going out the way. So there were gutters on your…

Jessica Watson: Dodger. They were very effective. Yeah, they were great and then obviously just you turn and run with it if once you’ve sort of washed the salt off and put the topper on the end of the boom, pull it up a bit and let it all run off the gooseneck.

Andy Lamont: Yup. That’s good to know. What about, is there anything you would have done differently now that you’ve done it once like as far as the boat goes or?

Jessica Watson: What was that, sorry? Would I do anything differently?

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that you sort of think, “Oh, that was a bad idea.” Were you able to rely on certain things, or is there anything you would have done differently?

Jessica Watson: Look honestly, there was very little with the boat, which was fantastic. I don’t know if it was me now, I would probably actually enjoy sailing it a little bit better and get the code zero out and things like that but equipment wise, yeah, really very little. There was a few things that corroded and didn’t sort of work and rigged up a new little battery meter, but there were all such small things that didn’t really matter.

Yeah, no I can’t honestly say that there would be one sort of big thing that would really, I’d change. It’s the right boat for it and yeah, just keep it simple with the equipment and back up for everything, it’s really all there is to it.

Andy Lamont: Did you have separate bilge? Did you close up all your bilge or did you have it all draining in under the motor? Oh no sorry, you didn’t have the motor in it, did you? So did you have your separate bilge or was it just one big bilge of all that?

Jessica Watson: No, they were quite separate and that was some pretty impressive bilge pumps in all of them and hand pumps as well, probably a bit overboard. Yeah, so have you got the engine in the centre, do you?

Andy Lamont: Yep.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, that’s great.

Andy Lamont: Yeah I got the engine in the centre. I want to close it off, because it all drains into the bilge, the one bilge…

Jessica Watson: Yeah okay.

Andy Lamont: …under the motor and I was wanting to sort of change it all up so that I’ll separate to have a forward bilge, a mid ship bilge, and an aft bilge so that if there is bilge coming in, I know where it’s coming from. Did you have that? Or did you just have it all separated? The bilges?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, it was quite separated obviously at the front. I think the engine really was a bit separate but got to a point and it would just drain in and I did have a pretty leaky prop glands, stern gland.

Andy Lamont: Oh did you?

Jessica Watson: Yeah. Which didn’t worry me but towards the end it was getting a little worse, which wasn’t ideal.

Andy Lamont: Yeah. Was that just a stuffing box gland or?

Elle Bache; major sponsor for Jessica Watson

Jessica Watson: Yeah it was. So yeah, there wasn’t too much I could do about it but it didn’t even matter too much, I just had to make sure I was pumping out every now and again.

Andy Lamont: Right. Cool, well that’s pretty interesting. Is that right on you?

Jessica Watson: Yep, that’s right. I mean I don’t know how, my rig was definitely pretty overkill so whether that’s entirely necessary but I suppose the rigger just thought it was absolutely no harm at the time. Yeah.

Andy Lamont: Yeah. I know you say the inaudible were pretty easy to deal with, and you didn’t have any problem with accidents. Did you have a boom break?

Jessica Watson: Oh what sorry? A boom break? I did use one a bit to start with but I actually just found that really your only option is just to run a preventer and just run something towards to the front of the boat and back and because you’re only tacking every few days, it’s no big deal just to set it up and yeah.

Andy Lamont: Set it up, yeah.

Jessica Watson: That really is the only thing that I found really effective.

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that’s really cool. Well that’s quite all. I’m sort of in the boat ready now. I’ve been sort of working on it over 18 months. Just slowly getting everything done. That was sort of very interesting things to talk to you about. The main thing was just sort of pretty much the boat’s pretty much standard as it comes, and it handles everything pretty good and not really insistent. What navigation do you use, chart plotter?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, chart plotter but I also just had the software on the computer, on the HP Toughbook, which was great and then all the backup GPS handhelds and charts. Which hopefully never had to get used and there was even a sexton on board which I would have been in trouble if I needed that. Might have eventually found where I was.

Andy Lamont: Yeah it’s the same. I’ve got like a million different GPS’s and sextons.

Jessica Watson: Yeah exactly. Yeah, likelihood of needing it is pretty low.

Andy Lamont: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So Andy, David here, when we were talking, you had some questions around downwind sailing and whether you were going to pole out your genoa or run wing and wing, or what have you. Did you have any other questions around down and sailing sail configuration at all?

Andy Lamont: Did you run twin heads at all Jessica or?

Jessica Watson: I never did, no. I mean it probably would have helped. Yeah, but I never did, I had a code zero too which I reckoned was pretty useful. I didn’t use it a huge amount but yeah, poling out would definitely be a good thing to be able to do but I never tried the double.

Andy Lamont: Yeah, right. I was all keen to pole out and do that and I re-read John Sanders’ book and he was saying that he didn’t want to pole out the genoa because it rubbed the foresail too much and I was thinking, “Oh, all right.” So I might not do so much of that poling out. But that was what I was talking to David about, whether or not to use the pole or not.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, I mean I’d definitely have it with you but I mean, John’s the real expert. If you’re going to go around three times, you’re going to really going to have to really keep an eye on what’s going to wear out and what’s going to be an issue.

Andy Lamont: Well that’s really interesting. Yeah.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, well do get in touch if there’s anything closer to the time. Yeah I’m sure there’s a lot of good people and you’re talking to all the right people I’m sure…

Andy Lamont: Yeah, how much metho did you take?

Jessica Watson: I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head but it would be in the back of my book. I actually had far too much.

Andy Lamont: It’s in the back of your book? Yeah.

Jessica Watson: I think it is but if not, I’ll follow up with that but I did have far too much.

Andy Lamont: I’ll have to have a look at your book again.

Jessica Watson's route around the world

Jessica Watson: I didn’t need quite that much and it was great with the little cylinders that I had so it was completely sealed and there was no way that any meth could spill even completely upside down.

Andy Lamont: Yeah. I’ve got one of those, it’s fantastic.

Jessica Watson: Great.

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so do you know if you had a lot left over when you came back or whether you’re sort of go back and have a look at how much it took and do you remember that or not?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, no I do remember there was a lot left over. So however much I took, it was too much. But I suppose it’s something that you don’t want to be running out of so you know, cold food would be pretty miserable. Yeah, well good luck with the wind vane. It’s awesome, it takes a bit of getting used to. I’m sure you’ve used one before but lots of spare blades, loads of spare ones because I did snap a few of them and also lines you can never have enough lines because they did even if I set it up perfect, it will still chafe a lot.

Andy Lamont: Yeah. So that’s good. I’ll take lots of spare blades. It’s so light, so you can sort of take as many as you need, can’t you?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, exactly. Honestly, however many you think, just add a few more.

Andy Lamont: What about anti-foul? Do you remember what anti-foul you used?

Jessica Watson: It was an international brand and there was a lot of it on there.

Andy Lamont: Was there?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, there was. Probably the only thing there is you probably couldn’t go high enough because that’s where I had a bit of growth because you obviously healed right over and then so much water higher up that we probably should have gone even higher than we thought. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, I hear you. I was thinking the same thing actually. I was thinking I might even put a vinyl strut above my water line and to sail that. That’s probably six or seven inches above the water line because yeah, they do tend to get dirty, don’t they? Close above the water line.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, definitely.

Andy Lamont: Well that’s good. Well, look I really appreciate you taking my call. It’s quite great to contact you. I sort of followed when you began to turn around and yeah, I thought it was fantastic what you did. It was very inspiring, so it’s great to talk to you. If I come up with something, I might have to shoot you an email or something like that, if I need some advice on something.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, please do.

Andy Lamont: Ah thanks. Your boat was pretty much perfect as it was, probably the whole way.

Jessica Watson: Perfect in that we didn’t get tempted to over complicate anything. If you keep it simple, there’s only so much that can go wrong. So yeah. I’m sure there’s more we could have done to get the right speed and different things out of it, but it wasn’t about that.

Andy Lamont: No it’s the same for me. It’s about finishing really, that’s the main thing.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, exactly. Good luck with it, I’m sure you’ll be sort of posting or updating somehow on the way and look forward to following you as well.

Andy Lamont: Yeah, well I will be and Dave will be working with me on that, so that will be great. Thanks very much for talking with me Jessica and you have a great day and I’ll shoot you an email and so you’ve got my email address if you ever want to talk to me about anything. Let me know if I can do something for you?

Jessica Watson: Sounds good, yeah, I’ll do that.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, we can arrange that.

At age 23, Jessica Watson has packed a lot into her young life already

Andy Lamont: All right. That would be great. As I said to you, if I have some questions I might just shoot you an email and maybe get some tips, and I’d really appreciate it. So thanks very much and again for all of that. Thanks for your time Jessica.

Jessica Watson: No problem, good luck with all the work.

Andy Lamont: All right, thanks very much.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Thanks Andy.

Andy Lamont: See you, bye.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: See you later on. So that was a few challenges just getting sound clarity and stuff.

Jessica Watson: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So thanks for doing that because I know Andy’s been consuming all of the good advice that he can, form all sorts of people and getting as much as he can read to prepare, he’s got a massive to do list as you can probably appreciate.

Jessica Watson: Gosh yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I know he wants to…

Jessica Watson: Never ending. Yeah. No it’s funny because I sort of go, “Oh, I don’t know how much there is.” I can sort of tell him but you start realising all these little things and yeah, there are a lot of simple little things that would possibly make a big difference.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I saw one of your presentations once and the thing I actually truly felt sorry for you on the sail was having to rebuild the toilet because it’s not and a very pleasant job.

Jessica Watson: No, no that was one thing that it fell apart during knock downs. Bit annoying.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, that’s great and so is there anything else you want to touch on before we wrap up the day Jess? Is there anything else you want to share or talk about?

Jessica Watson: No, I think I’m good. I mean, as I said, I love sailing of all kinds these days and I love good stories and following and looking forward to following trips like that, it’s a wonderful thing to be able to do. I think that the Internet and things like this these days you can just follow such great stories from around the world from home.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Actually, one question, on last question on that. What percentage of your trip was reaching or downwind sailing would you say? Versus going upwards?

Jessica Watson: I don’t know, probably maybe only half or I don’t know? I’ve never really kind of looked at it on percentage terms, yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay. Because Andy’s going the opposite way so I was just wondering if we were to work backwards on the percentage his was going to be upwind as opposed to downwind.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, he’s in a bit more trouble but I reckon as much of the course is into the prevailing but mine was probably a bit unique because I was supposed to be further south. The idea is you’re down south and you’ve got more wind behind, stronger and faster but I tended to enjoy sunshine warmth and the whole way across the Indian Ocean which is of course such a huge percentage of the trip, I was just so much further north than I really should have been. I was getting a lot more headwinds and lighter winds as well.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right, but you are warmer and drier.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, I was pretty happy about that. I was totally okay that it was a little bit slower.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, and if you’re not in a hurry, you might as well stay warm.

Jessica Watson: Exactly, and just the severity of every storm that came past was just that you just see it, it was so blatant on the weather charts that if I was a couple degree further south it would be 20 knots more and that’s not good.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah. Okay, well, Jess, it’s been really, really great talking with you today. So thank you so much for traveling to the Queensland Cruising Yacht Club so we could sit together and thanks for sharing your story on the Ocean Sailing Podcast and thanks for taking the time out to talk to Andy as well. I know he really would appreciate that and I’m sure when he gets off, when he got off the phone he probably had five more questions straight away for you.

Jessica Watson: I’m sure, yeah no problem, it’s been great.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, great, good luck with Deckee. It looks like a great business model, a great idea and it’s going to be a great new website and a great service. So I encourage everybody to take advantage of Deckee.com and you’ll find all sorts of great help and advice and tips and stories and blog articles and reviews, and it’s a great looking the website, so good luck with that, that adventure.

Jessica Watson: Thank you very much.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Thanks Jess. 

Interviewer: David Hows

If you enjoy the show and find the content valuable, consider the extra benefits of becoming an Ocean Sailing Podcast Patron.

Episode 9: Andrew Randell Show Notes

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Folks, welcome to this week’s episode of the ocean sailing podcast, this week we’re with Andrew Randell and he’s got a really interesting story that really is quite unique and again came across it by chance, a neighbour of mine who sails with me regularly, knows Andrew through his work and just to take a couple of steps back, back in 2011 Andrew received the Hal Harper Award for a boat that he had completed the construction of and he’ll tell you that story. 

Andrew Randell receiving the Hal Harpur Award in 2011

We’re going to retrace that story today and really the story of what turned out to be a 48 year project in total and the Hal Harpur award that Andrew received is awarded each year to a person who has best contributed to the New South Wales Wooden Boat Association’s objectives of encouraging the retention of wooden boat building skills and the preservation of historical wooden boats and artefacts. Quite a mouthful to explain the objectives. 

Welcome along Andrew, thanks for joining me today.

ANDREW RANDELL: Thank you very much for that, a pleasure.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Interestingly, Andrew, when he won this award, it was the first time the award was ever given to somebody that was a first time boat builder and non-sailor at the time. Andrew is a unique entrant for a number of reasons and reading an article published shortly after this award was given to Andrew, there was a comment in there about the judges being issued a pack of Kleenex tissues before hearing Andrew’s story, it’s quite an interesting story.

So Andrew, I guess lets goes back to when you were young and this story is about you, it’s about your father, it’s about your family, I guess its something that’s probably consumed a reasonably large chunk of your life.

ANDREW RANDELL: It has. Probably going back to before I was born. Back in the late 50’s, my father who was a keen sailor, had done many races to Gladstone and used to race on Sydney Harbour. He was looking for a boat to build himself to compete in the junior offshore group and he was searching out several designs in the late 50’s and he happened on a design that was from Western Australia by Len Randell.

The Rugged 23 designed by Len Randell in Western Australia

The review of the Rugged design published in 1960 in Power Boat & Yachting Magazine

So he got the plans for a 24 footer and he started construction with that a year after I was born in 1963. He was a very skilled wood worker even though that wasn’t his profession, he started building this boat and I had a sister who was a couple of years younger than I was and unfortunately, we used to go on holidays down the South Coast in Sussex Inlet and unfortunately on one of those trips in 1966, my sister Jackie fell off a wharf and drowned and dad never touched the boat after that.

It was just a hull, steam bent ribs, timber hull with a deck, the cabin was made, no interior, just bare and that’s how it stayed till he passed away. In the meantime, the boat was shipped from Sydney where he started building it, in Cronulla up to Lismore where we bought a farm after he retired and then it was shipped up there in 1976 and then it stayed in a shed for 20 odd years and then they decided to move down to Yamba so the boat was in shipped down to Yamba where it was in a sort of a tarpaulin tent.

So it stayed there, I tried to encourage him to work on it but he wouldn’t. I think he couldn’t bear to part with the boat, but he sort of couldn’t bear to finish it, so he was sort of stuck in this conundrum of what to do and I loved the boat. When I was very young and my sister Jackie who passed away, we used to play in the boat in amongst all the sawdust while dad was planking it up, I still remember that, even though I was very, very young and I used to sit in a boat when I was in my teens, even thought it was in the shed and just loved sitting in it, just loved this boat.

Andrew with his sister Jackie in front of the families boat building project

When he passed away, I said to mum, “Well do you want the boat?” Because she was still alive and we got it valued and it was worth nothing as a bare hull. So she said to me, “Well do you want it?” I said, “Yep,” and knowing nothing about building boats, I’ve built a few houses before so I was good with woodwork, like dad. I think watching him over the years sort of taught me that, his accuracy and everything like that. So I decided to finish the boat. So I spent a year reading about how to build wooden boats, several really good references and then slowly but surely started pulling it apart.

Of course in those last 10 years, the cover on the boat had failed so it had a bit of rot in it, so I had to replace the hull, deck, tops of the cabins, all the deck beams had gone, bar or few and there was a bit of rot down near the bottom of the keel in the back end. I had to replace all that and rebuild the boat to a point where I could start completing it. That was pretty tough, I did a lot of research, glad the internet’s around these days because it taught me a lot too.

Called on some old friends of dad who actually helped in plank the boat up when it was first being built and they sort of guided me here and there on a few of the harder issues. I think building the boat now is probably good for the boat because it’s probably going to last longer than what would have if it had been built years ago with the modern products out.

The rot that needed cutting out down the bottom of the keel in the back end

So I think she’ll last a lot longer than if dad would have finished it. But anyhow, I finished the boat, it took seven years to finish it, so I was doing it every second weekend, I could only afford to go there every second weekend to finish this boat and it was a good bonding time with my mother too because she had a lot too play in the boat. She used to help dad steam bend the ribs and help with the little things with the construction and put up with him building a boat.

Keel rot repairs and the replanking well underway

It was a culmination of when we launched it, I named it after my sister who’d passed away so calling it Jackie after my sister, was a big thing for the family. The loss of Jackie was a big thing, my parents grieved terribly over that, as you would. So yes, launching it, calling it after her, mum being at the launch, was just a big circle of everything that had gone on over the last 40 odd years, 50 years, had just sort of just come together.

Mum was a keen sailor, very keen sailor and from 2011 when I launched the boat until she passed away a couple of years ago, she used to come out with me and sail with me every time I was down there sailing, because the boat’s at Yamba, it’s not in Brisbane. Great sailor, and always wanted to go faster, a little bit of a thrill seeker. The boat has done a lot in bringing the family together in different ways and finishing chapters of everyone’s life, which is funny about an inanimate object like that. But it had a very important role to play.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So tell me about your earliest memories of your parents and because they both had a passion for sailing, they both were active sailors and then your dad actually stopped sailing didn’t he once the accident occurred in 1966?

ANDREW RANDELL: That’s right. I remember going to people’s places that he used to sail with and helped build their boats, I’d play with their kids in the sand pit or something or play with a box of wood, anything we could make the boat out of that floated, we’d do that and then I remember watching dad and his mates build these boats and they’re all offshore group class boats, so the were all about the same size as Jackie. So I guess I’ve been around boats on and off for a fair while with dad.

The people used to come over when he was building Jackie, I remember guys coming over and helping him lay planks or screwing planks and all that sort of thing. So early memories of sailing, I have a fair bit and all through our family, my grandparents, one was a game fisherman, one was another fisherman. So I’ve always been around the water and loved it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Then your dad didn’t sail much after that?

ANDREW RANDELL: No, not at all. He didn’t sail, he didn’t have anything to do with the water, nothing to do with the sailing club, it just all finished in 1966. The sailing fraternity was good they came around and they tried to get him to finish the boat, they did a little bit I think here and there but nothing substantial, that just sort of waned and he didn’t lose contact with his friends, they’re all good mates to him but nothing ever came of our boat. It just sat there.

Andrew Randell's father working on the hull construction prior to 1966

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s pretty awful for anyone to lose as a child, lose a sister or brother.

ANDREW RANDELL: Absolutely. It was interesting too, sort of another part to the story that when dad was researching the design of the boat, it started around about ’58, he was writing to Len Randell who was the designer and this Len Randell, we always thought it was amazing because he had the same surname as us and when dad passed away and we’d launched the boat, after 2011, mum was always keen to do the family tree.

So she was following along the family tree and happened to find a link to Western Australia. Found out that Len Randell is actually a relation of mine and dad and Len used to write letters to each other because there was no faxes or anything, it was all surface mail. So they were communicating, didn’t even know they were related, by about the sixth generation and then I rang Len after the boat was launched and I have a video of the launch and everything so I sent Len that and speaking to him was very interesting. He was telling me that I needed to adjust the weight and had to move this forward and move that backwards and that. I think he’s still going.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: What age was he when you last spoke to him?

ANDREW RANDELL: He would have been in his 80’s and he’s still sailing.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So when he designed the boat, he must have been in maybe 20’s or something.

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah, probably would have been.

Jackie R under construction in the tent in Yamba at Andrews mothers home

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Back in 1952?

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah, he probably would have been. He’s the same, exactly the same age group on the family tree as dad would be. They would’ve been the same…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And so you were related all along.

ANDREW RANDELL: We are.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: With the boat designer that lived on the other side of the country.

ANDREW RANDELL: The salt must be in the veins because that generation goes back to the Murray River and our family apparently were the first pliers I suppose you’d say of the Murray River. The captain that built the first paddle steamer and actually used the river as a freight centre and conveying the freight was a Randell and he came out from England and started that way back when. That was quite interesting. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s fascinating to be able to retrace it right back like that. Especially those kind of formative days of the country.

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: River boat captains and…

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah, well they’ve actually got streets and that named after us. I sort of thought, “Wow, it’s pretty good.” Haven’t been able to see them yet but hopefully one day I’ll get down there, down around Adelaide.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, that is fascinating. So if you go back to when your dad started the boat building project, what lead to him building his own boat?

Andrew often worked on the construction of Jackie R late into the night

ANDREW RANDELL: I think the love of his sailing, he just loved sailing. My grandmother used to say dad would grab anything he could find and make it sail. He’d sail a wooden box if he could plug the holes in it. He was always, he grew up around Watson’s Bay, Rose Bay in Sydney and he was always down the water’s edge, mucking around in the water and building boats, whether they be model boats or whatever.

The documentation my father has, he’s got every seacraft magazine since the first one was ever published, I’ve still got them. Huge library and catalog of magazines and books on sailing. He followed the Sydney to Hobart race from the very first race. Then he got involved in Sydney Harbour with the Vaucluse Juniors and then the Vaucluse Seniors, so he sailed on Sydney Harbour with those and then he moved down when he married mum to Port Hacking, south of Sydney and was involved in the Port Hacking sailing club.

So he’s had quite a career, he had a stint working in Queensland where he sailed some. He did a couple of Brisbane to Gladstone races. I think there was a win under handicap in Simba back in 1958 I think it was. Dad’s always been big on the water.

The 1952 Seacraft magazine review of Len Randell's Rugged design

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, was your mum a sailor when they met or did he introduce her to sailing as well?

ANDREW RANDELL: I don’t quite know that part of it. I know she sailed, whether it was with other boyfriends and then met dad while she was sailing and she was secretary of the Vaucluse Sailing Club. So I think that whole association way back then is how they met, so they’re both in the same club and friends introduced them, she’d go out on some VS’s or VJ’s. Don’t know whether it was that competitive of whether it was a “come on, let’s go for a sail” and bit of a romance there, I don’t know? But she loved sailing, she loved being out in the water and certainly loved sailing when we had Jackie on the water. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So did she largely stop sailing too then for the next few decades when your dad wasn’t sailing?

ANDREW RANDELL: When I was growing up, I never saw mum on a sailing boat, this was all sort of earlier before I was born I would say. We certainly had some funny times sailing, mum and I. One of them if I can recount was when we first took Jackie out and we hadn’t got the sails up yet, she just been launched a week and I was dead keen, I had never been in a sailing boat till I launched Jackie, never ever stepped on a sailing boat.

The cabin top had to be constructed from scratch

I said to my mum, “Let’s just take it out under motor, we’ll just go for a bit of a putt around, test the motor and see how it goes and make sure everything’s fine.” I think we got around the corner from the Yamba Marina and I hit a sand bank. Because I just thought, “Oh well we’ll just go out here and the water looks deep and that.” Apparently around there the sand banks everywhere, which I know now. I did have the brains to go out on the rising tide, so if we did get caught we could float it off.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Saving grace.

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah I sort of had that smarts about me but nothing else and it was quite funny, we just stopped and I’m sort of going forward and nothing’s happening and mum said, “I think you’ve run aground.” I said, “Really?” Because I hadn’t calibrated the depth gauge properly or anything like that. So we sat there and we sat there and we didn’t take any lunch or anything with us because it was only supposed to be a quick little motor.

Luckily enough it was just around the corner from the marina so It wasn’t that embarrassing. Then maritime came and saved the day, they pulled up and they said, “You know you’re on a sand bar?” I said, “Yeah, I know that.” They helped us get the boat off and he said to me then, he said, “So you’ve got to be careful now, the sandbar, the channels are here, there, you look for the marks here,” and I’m going, “I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about,” and I said “No, it’s fine, I’m just going back to the marina, I’ve had enough for one day.” We’d only had been 200 meters, that’s as far as we got. So went back to the marina and the guy was really good, he followed us back in, and I thought, “I’m in trouble.” He pulled up at the wharf next to mine, he said, “hop in my boat and we’ll go and have a look at the channels,” so he was brilliant.

Cabin top construction in progress

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Great.

ANDREW RANDELL: So he was taking me through all the channels and yeah, great. After that I knew what I was doing then.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that helps a lot. I mean if you’ve sailed around the Gold Coast, or you’ve sailed on Morton Bay, it’s not a matter of if you run aground, doesn’t matter how many times you’ve run aground particularly if you’re racing and you push things to the limit. Because unbelievably, sand and mud seem to move and don’t always stay where they are supposed to be on the charts.

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah, I’ve heard that bout Morton Bay, scares me a bit.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s all pretty soft landing stuff, I don’t think you’d want to be doing 10 or 15 knots under spinnaker and run aground but other than that you sort of bounce your way to a standstill and no harms really done other than rubbing a bit of anti-foul off your keel. 

Okay, so if someone’s listening to this and certainly in the show notes we’re going to upload a whole lot of detail around photographic information that Andrew has, so you can see pictures in great detail but how would you describe the design of Jackie R in detail if you are going to describe the kind of yacht that she is.

ANDREW RANDELL: I think she looks beautiful. Sweet lines, very traditional. I haven’t changed any of the design at all, it’s built as per the plan and I’ve probably tried to strike a medium between easy to maintain and functionality. It’s very traditional, she has the wooden mast that was designed for her. All the fittings that dad bought. He was even still buying fittings before he died. The strange part about that I guess is that he labeled everything, probably knowing that I was going to finish it, so he put all these little labels on the things tied with strings saying, “This goes there and here and there,” and all that sort of thing.

Andrew and his daughter, Jaime sailing Jackie R on the Clarence River

Dad was a bit of a perfectionist in that sort of arena. All the original fittings were on it from the 50’s and 60’s. I had to make a few fittings, there was no detail on the plan as to how to make fittings for the mast, there was no cad drawings obviously in those days, so there was no detail. I guess the people that were expected to build these boats were yacht builders who knew what they were doing. So I to sort of work that all out but I’ve kept it as traditional as possible. 

It has very sleek lines, fairly narrow beam I guess, seeing that she’s a racer I suppose. I’ve left the interior showing all the ribs which gives it a bit of character. The interior’s comfortable as you probably see from some photos, I’ll give you to upload. Sparse but comfortable so you can sleep on it, there’s a toilet in it, and there’s a galley and an icebox. So it’s got all the basic things in it. I just think a very pretty yacht.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, what’s the length?

ANDREW RANDELL: 24 feet.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: The draft?

ANDREW RANDELL: Three foot six she draws.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s pretty modest, for shallow sailing, that’s helpful.

ANDREW RANDELL: She’s got about 1.8 tons of led in the bottom I think it is. I’d have to check on that but a beam of 7 foot 3.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and then overall weight, do you know what that is?

ANDREW RANDELL: I don’t, there’s no figures on the plans, to get the displacement figures here, I wouldn’t have a clue. I’d be guessing two and two and a half, three tons maybe.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: How high is your mast, do you know? What sort of rig have you got on?

Andrew and Jackie with their Dad

ANDREW RANDELL: It’s just a Bermuda rig, which was as per design, three quarter rig, so it’s got jack stays up the top of the mast. Mast heights 34 feet, it’s a fairly high mast ratio I suppose, but the three quarter rig brings some of that weight down a little bit. It’s got a large main sail on it, I don’t remember the square meterage of it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s all right.

ANDREW RANDELL: Traditional where the boom goes right over the helm position so it doesn’t finish short, so it’s a head breaker if you're not watching out. Yeah, just a very traditional nice little boat.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and what sort of sailing have you done so far?

ANDREW RANDELL: Just river sailing. I’ve only ever, as I said before, I’ve only ever hopped in a boat after it was launched.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s your first time sailing ever was seven years after you started the building project and then jumped in on day one.

The interior fit out of Jackie R progressing well

ANDREW RANDELL: Exactly and then the first sail was — I’m going to sort of digress a bit was when the rigger put the sails on her which was a couple of weeks after mum and I run aground. He said, “Oh, well let’s go for a sail,” and he’s a great bloke, he’s become a friend of mine and yeah, we took it out and run the motor and this is me never been in a sailing boat and never having hoisted a sail. We got outside the channel at the Clarence River and he said, “Cut the motor,” which I did and he said, “We’re sailing,” and I went, “ Wow. It’s great. No noise, it was just such an exhilarating feeling the first time.”

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Had you visualised that day all those years you spent working on the boat? Is it something that sort of tucked in the back of your mind?

ANDREW RANDELL: Not really, I didn’t know what to expect. I really didn’t know what to expect having never done it before. It was quite strange, I guess I approached it with a lot of in trepidation but felt really valiant I suppose that I was going to take off in this boat and do all these great things but yeah, my sailing is basically just river sailing. I sail up and down the river, that’s enough for me at this point in time.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: How wide is the Clarence River just to give people an idea because it’s not a small river is it?

ANDREW RANDELL: No, it’s actually a port, we do get big coastal freighters in there, there’s a tug boat in Yamba and as big as the ones in Sydney, basically some of those. I don’t know how wide it would be, it’s deep like in places that’s 30, 40, 50 foot deep and there’s a big channel that goes to the actual port where they unload the freighters. It is a big river and it goes all the way to Grafton, you can’t sail that far, not in a keel boat.

The cabin top construction stage commences

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And they have a big regatta on every Easter.

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah, very big yacht club there and awfully good people yet again and they do twilight racing once a week and I think every second weekend they do comp racing on a Sunday I think it is.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, what sort of fleets would they get down there what sort of sized fleets?

ANDREW RANDELL: I think they’d probably get 12 yachts out at a time but they probably draw on 25, 30 yachts, they have a lot of members but its who can make it on the day. Yeah, 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s good; it’s not dissimilar to the Gold Coast.

ANDREW RANDELL: Very strong sailing community, a lot of yachts there

Ocean Sailing Podcast: When your dad started the project originally, what sort of tools did he have to work with back then, sort of 50 odd years ago from now?

ANDREW RANDELL: He was very traditional, of course back in those days he wasn’t on a good wage as most people weren’t. He had all very nice tools, strong tools but nothing electric, the only electric tool, I think I ever saw him use was a very old metal cased drill, aged drill with a sanding disk on it. He had the loan of a band saw which I think eventually bought, then a friend of his used to bring in a belt sander and they are the only three tools I ever saw on the job, the rest was all hand planed, using adze to cut the keels and hand saws, everything was hand saw cut and even routing, he routed with the hand router and it’s a carvel planked boat and Monel nailed between the planks. 

The planks are only three quarter by three quarter on steam bent Tasmania Oak ribs and they’re all screwed and glued to the ribs and then nailed to each proceeding strip plank so it was quite solid and he used to screw all those screws into every rib. I think there’s 168 strip planks on each side, all that was hand screwed with brace and bit. Very traditional tools. 

Jackie R under construction prior to 1966

I take my hat off to him and the boat is just so symmetrical when I was building it like you, you fit off the rub rails and things like that. You measure where it’s going to go on the side of the boat for example and you can guarantee if you went to the other side, it wouldn’t be five millimetres extra or half an inch extra, it would be spot on so the overhang would be the same on both sides. It’s very well built.

I remember him lofting the boat from the plains in a local scout hall, I do remember that, I must have been so young but I just, well maybe I remember the lofting sheets that he still had. I remember them in the garage that he didn’t throw away. I remember all that, very traditional.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Did you have any other brothers or sisters?

ANDREW RANDELL: Apart from Jackie I’ve got another sister, Meredith who was born sometime after Jackie passed away in 1968. She’s six years younger than I am and she goes out sailing with me when she has the time.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay. After 1966, did you still carry on going away on the same family holidays, or did lots of things change about life?

ANDREW RANDELL: Yes, that finished, all that finished because those holidays were connected with the ocean and the sea, we used to go down there and my grandfathers and myself and dad would go out on these little single cylinder putt-putt boats, go fishing for the day or whatever and the ladies would stay and do whatever they wanted to do and then we would come back in at night and clean all the fish and eat them. All that sort of finished, they didn’t want to take the risk, there was just no more water.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow. That’s really sad especially when its something that carries through the decades following that tragedy.

ANDREW RANDELL: I took mum back to Sussex Inlet a couple of years before she passed away because she wanted to go back down there and revisit the site so that was a good thing to also do. I guess that was because I was down at her place working on the yacht all the time, I had to drive from the Gold Coast down to the Yamba to work on the boat. I’d do it every two weekends, every second weekend for a whole weekend, so we sort of got a bit closer.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: In that time.

ANDREW RANDELL: Then she said she’d liked to do that. So I said, “Yeah all right, let’s go.” That sort of completed another part of the story I suppose. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Did you think your dad suffered a whole lot more than your mum in terms of getting past, I know everyone suffers at the time, but in terms of being able to move on?

ANDREW RANDELL: Back then, men were stoic and there was no support systems for men back then, you didn’t go down to the pub and tell your mates or anything, you just kept it to yourself. For dad I think it was probably a bigger load to carry, mum did have support with all her girlfriend’s of the day. It was a big thing for dad and I think that was the major effect, he just didn’t know what to do.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s like a post-traumatic stress syndrome type situation.

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah, that went on for 40 odd years and he sort of had to carry that load.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s interesting reading your story about having conversations with him about kicking the project into gear and you saying, “I’ll bring my tools down,” and him saying, “That would be great,” and then he just found other reasons never to start again.

ANDREW RANDELL: I was Mr. Power tools and he was Mr. Traditional tools. So yeah, I’d pack all my electric rip saws and docking saws and routers and everything in. I’d say to him, “I’ll come down and help you,” and it’s be on and he’d say, “Yes, let’s do it, let’s do it.” And I’d get down there and he’d find any excuse not to do it, “Ah, beautiful day, let’s go fishing from the rocks,” or something like that. I never wanted to force the issue with him. No is no, and no will always be no with him.

The cabin top being attached to the hull on Jackie R

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Especially after all that time.

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah, which was a shame but yeah, he would have loved to have seen the boat in its current form. He would have loved to have been on it. I think I did him proud by how it’s turned out. It’s exactly the way he would have wanted it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It looks immaculate. I mean to be recognised by the Wooden Boat Association, given the criteria and given the high calibre of people that are lifelong craftsman and sailors that you’re competing with, it’s a huge acknowledgement.

ANDREW RANDELL: It was a big thing.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Given the background, it really is.

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah, that was a huge thing because I’ve never really sought any acknowledgement from anything and to be nominated for that and then winning it, then I had three judges come up from Sydney to have a look at the boat and they were the ones that came up with the winning entry and yeah, took mum down and we received the prize in Sydney at the Wooden Boat Association meeting and yeah, it was really nice to get that and the little plaque that goes on the boat. It’s sort of yeah, it’s sort of says I’ve done a good job.

The Hal Harpur Award Plaque proudly displayed on Jackie R

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, I guess it takes you from thinking, “I’ve done a great job with this,” to, “Wow, I really have done a great job with this,” in terms of when you get outside people validating the quality of your work.

ANDREW RANDELL: Well, that’s right because I’m no boat builder. For your peers to say, “Yeah, you have done it.” It’s a good reward.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You definitely did your dad proud…

ANDREW RANDELL: Oh thanks.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: …too with that kind of acknowledgement. And to pick up any project and work away diligently for seven years and from where you live right here to where Yamba is, is a good two and a half hour drive, maybe more in a bit of a traffic.

ANDREW RANDELL: Back then there was no bypass.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So to do that every second week for years on end. That says a lot about your character and commitment to the project. 

ANDREW RANDELL: Having said that, there was one stage in particular where I was going to throw it in because I’d done a fair bit of work on the boat and I’d checked everything and I thought it was sound and then probably about 75 to 80% through the construction or the restoration of it, I found rot in the knee at the back of the boat. Of course it got to the point where I was working away from the front of the boat to the back of the boat inside and it was time to do all the engine beds and things like that and the plumbing for the exhaust and all that sort of thing. 

I was sanding it down, ready to paint the undercoats and the final coat for the engine bay and I was poking around with a screw driver and the screw driver went straight through the side of the boat, it was just rotten to the core and I thought, “This is now beyond me,” I thought. I went down to Sydney and saw this friend of my father’s that helped build the boat originally and spoke to him and he said, “Oh that’s all right, it happens all the time when these things get a bit of fresh water in them.” That’s what it was from, fresh water, because that was the lowest part of the boat. It found it’s way down there and just sat there, and we didn’t know. 

The cabin top and forward hatch taking shape

Ocean Sailing Podcast

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah, it wasn’t too bad. It was the knee that was gone, which supports the transom and the keelson, so it was just basically a wedge of timber but it’s quite important to the whole integrity of the boat. So I started pulling the planks off from the outside because it had rotted through to the strip planking and the boat is constructed from solid, straight lengths of spruce. 

When dad was building the boat, he happened to be talking to someone at the hardware store and they said, “We’ve got all this,” — he was looking for boat building timber, “We’ve got all this spruce out there that someone was going to make an aeroplane with.” And he said, “He never came and picked it up so we want to get rid of it.” So it was worth a fortune but he got it for next to nothing and they were longer than the length of the boat, so the whole thing was planked without any butt joints or anything like that, only blocks end to end, which made it quite strong.

Anyway, this little bit that I had to do was probably about a foot from the keelson and probably a couple of feet long so it only went over two or three ribs. So I pulled all that apart, it was rotten both sides because it was down beside the knee, made a new knee, got some spotted gum which is what the keelson’s was made from. Used the old one as a bit of a template and the plan, I still have the plans of the yacht. 

I was able to reconstruct it. I built new ribs for it and then I got some spruce, which costs an absolute fortune these days. Re-planked it and scarfed all the joints in as they are supposed to be overlapped over several ribs, it’s as good as what it was but yeah, that was a bit of a back breaker that one. Because that was a mammoth task

The cockpit construction underway with cut outs for windows and lockers

Ocean Sailing Podcast: How far were you into the project time wise by the time you discovered that?

ANDREW RANDELL: I’d actually fibreglassed the boat.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh right.

ANDREW RANDELL: It’s glass sheathed, always was meant to be. I had fibreglassed the boat because it seemed solid from the outside. I’d fibreglassed the boat early on to protect it and didn’t know it was rotten. I had been around most of the boat and tapped everything and checked it out but for some reason, that bit — because it was down beside this knee, this block of timber, it was down in the valley that you wouldn’t normally go in to. Probably if you knew more about boats, that’s be probably the first place you go to.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Lucky you found that while it was still on land, not on the water.

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah exactly, yeah exactly. I think the back of the boat would have fallen off but yeah so anyway, fixed all that and that was just the major thing and then the motor was another thing trying to get it going. I was a couple of days out from the launch and had the cranes all arranged to come and pick the boat up and truck it down to the marina and I thought, “I better try and start the motor,” and it wouldn’t start, I spent hours and hours and hours trying to get that motor to start. I’m now an expert on Kubota diesels because I found out they’d been sitting for so long that all the injectors in the pumps had frozen.

Cabin top complete at last

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right. That was originally in the boat, the motor.

ANDREW RANDELL: My dad had it, he bought it, it wasn’t the original motor, the original motor was a five horse power Stuart Turner petrol motor.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right. 

ANDREW RANDELL: Dad hated petrol, petrol and gas in a boat, he hated it, hence the galley’s got a metho stove in it and the motor’s diesel. So I remember going to a boat show in 1965 I think it was and in those days it was in the old Sydney show grounds near Randwick, Maroubra. I remember going to buy the motor and it was a Yanmar single cylinder motor and I don’t know what model it was but this motor just sat on a pallet, we had to go and pick it up several weeks later and I remember throughout my whole childhood time, this motor just used to sit in the garage on this original pallet from Japan.

It had never been started and dad sold that unfortunately and then bought a two cylinder Kubota marinised diesel, which is probably a better motor, it’s 15 horse power which is more than adequate for that sized boat but I believe some astute person bought this motor as a museum piece because it was brand new out of the factory, never operated, had all the original paint on it and it’s quite a good buy for somebody I’m sure. Yeah, getting the motor started was a big thing and when I finally fired and smoke went everywhere and I thought, “You beauty I’ve got you.”

The hardware being fitted to the cabin top

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, that’s good. In terms of how the boat was stored, how was it stored in the years before you started the project, where was it stored and how well was it looked after?

ANDREW RANDELL: Not looked after at all basically and when we moved from Sydney to Lismore in the late 70’s, it was stored in a shed that dad built, so it was a purposefully made corrugated iron shed, that was a good place for it, concrete slab on the floor so it was put on blocks there, in its cradle. Rats got into it and all the timber he had, dad collected timber like you wouldn’t believe. Unfortunately, so do I.

It was all just stacked up there in the shed and that’s where it stayed, that’s where I used to get in with my mates and play sails and that sort of thing. Would have been a perfect place to work on the boat, because they had power there and it was sheltered and it was just brilliant. Then when they moved down to Woombah, near Yamba, it was put under a sort of a make shift tent with a metal frame so it was like a canvas tent and the boat had a cover over it. Those cheap plastic covers you can buy.

Yeah, that’s when it started to go downhill, like that’s when water got into it, fresh water rot. The rot made its way through the decks between the cabin and the top of the deck and got down, that’s when it traveled down, would have flowed in there and then down to that keelson area, that I was telling you about before were rotted out.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Just sat there.

ANDREW RANDELL: Just sat there and stagnated and rotted out. I guess that was probably in the last couple of years before he passed away. Even though there was rot there, it wasn’t bad but in the interest of getting rid of the spores in the timber and fixing the whole thing, that’s when I decide to just rip the whole thing apart and just rebuild it. Luckily the cabin sides were okay because they were all mahogany.

All the important timbers that are the show pieces of the boat remain, it was just a deck and the beams which gets fibreglassed over anyway so it was no great way.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, okay. When did you first seriously considered taking in this project on and you thought, “I’m going to do this.”?

Andrews father in 2002 in front of Jackie R, 39 years after he started construction

ANDREW RANDELL: 30 years ago. I’ve always had my eye on it but never been game to say it to the old fella when he was alive but it was pretty much instantaneous because the first thing I thought of when dad passed away, was the boat. At Woombah where the boat was when he passed away, it was basically right outside the back of the house, so you couldn’t miss it. You saw it all the time.

I don’t know, I guess I just knew I had to do it. I just wanted to do it. There was probably no question about it and I suppose in the back of my head I knew mum would say, “I did want it,” at some point in time. It was only valued at $500 when he passed away. You’d probably be better off burning it really.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s hard to get someone else take on a project. Given the time and money to complete it.

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah, well you would have to be really keen, the amount of work that would have had to do. You couldn’t pay someone to do it and I couldn’t afford to pay someone to do it, so I had to do it myself. Like building a wooden boat is horrendously expensive in man hours. I’d hate to tally up how many man hours I spent. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I was going to ask you that next.

The anti-fouling paint goes on after the topsides have been finished

ANDREW RANDELL: Every two week for seven years and then occasional holidays thrown in plus all the planning. So I’d have to — of course I was working in Brisbane, I’d have to preplan what I had to do when I was down there the following second week and sometimes I would go down every weekend if there was something important going on that I had to be there to do it.

You have to preplan your materials so that you could drive down the Friday night, you wake up early in the morning on the Saturday, hit the ground running and get stuck into it. Because there was things like the resins curing time and all that sort of thing that I had to make sure that that was all done and completed before I went home to start work the next week.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You couldn’t leave something for a couple days and come back to it. I that to fit in that two day window every two weeks.

ANDREW RANDELL: The chemical bonding of the painting and rather than paint something and then sand it off and then re-paint and sand it off. I’d do it during the drying times of the paint. So that you got the chemical bond and not the mechanical bond. So there was all that to consider and getting stainless steel parts made in the background and all that sort of stuff.

So even though I’d go down there and work every second weekend, the weeks were taken up with preplanning or zipping away in my lunch hour to get something knocked up at the stainless steel shop or getting bolts and screws and researching all that and buying parts. Yeah, it basically took the whole time in some form or researching the next part of the project.

The painting and varnishing is underway on the cabin top

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Hours would easily run into the thousands really.

ANDREW RANDELL: And we won’t talk about the money, okay?

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay. That was my next question.

ANDREW RANDELL: No, no, no. I can’t be doing that.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, we won’t talk about that. But knowing how — I’ve done a little bit of upgrading, refitting and the hours and the money just runs away. The more you find, the more you find that you want to do next.

ANDREW RANDELL: I think my acumen with the boat is use it or lose it because I just get down there as much as I can, I’d be sailing every day if I could. My target is to go down every two weekends and every second weekend and sail, which I generally do but there’s been some poor weather, six months ago where I couldn’t get out for some reason, things happened but I’d still go down there and start the boat, at least run the motor, and just check all the seacocks and everything.

The boat, it’s got a full cover over it. The sail maker put a full cover over it. Of course there’s so much varnish, it’s not as much varnish as a traditional boat, it should have been varnished all the way down the cabin sides and the cockpit because it’s all mahogany but as much and all as I love timber and I love to see varnished timber, I sort of thought of the maintenance aspects, I’ve actually glassed that painted it the same colour as the boat.

I spent a lot of time agonising over that, but there’s still enough woodwork around the combing of the cockpit, around the cockpit hatch way and the rub rails and the toe rails, they’re all still varnished and the masts are varnished and the boom. So I’ve got enough woodwork there to make it look traditional without a huge amount of maintenance but the cover has just saved it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s gold isn’t it? ‘Cause this climate is really tough on varnish.

ANDREW RANDELL: Well the varnish has lasted, I just did a bit of touch up on the varnish in November last year, it’s lasted basically five years. The original varnish we put 10 coats on which I did when I redid it, I put 10 coats on. I’ve had the mast done once and re-varnished it 10 coats again. But it pays, it pays.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah. That’s for sure, the time that goes into prepping and putting extra coats on while you’re doing it makes a lot of sense.

ANDREW RANDELL: Well, all through the construction, I use the best that I could possibly buy, the best paint, the best fittings. I suppose being a non-yachtie at the time, I thought to myself, “Well I’m going to put my trust in this craft when I’m out on the water. I don’t want a seacock to blowout, I don’t want this to happen or that to happen.” For my own safety and sleep, because the boat’s two and a half hours away from me now. I don’t want anything to go wrong with it and get a call from the marina saying, “Your boat’s sinking.”

The bilge after painting is complete

Ocean Sailing Podcast: No, cause you can’t there in a hurry.

ANDREW RANDELL: No. So I’ve used the best quality materials.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay. So in your 93-page summary of the project, that I read through, it really showed your passion for constructing a yacht and sort of staying true to the original design integrity, right down to the materials that you used and how easy was it to do that, given how much has changed with technology and boat building methods since Jackie R. was first designed in 1952?

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah, it was no surprise in the fact that I guess I read a lot about traditional boat building. So I was sort of locked in that vintage of boat building because I had to be. The products available today like the wood hardening products, there was sort of none of that at all, back in those days was all copper naphthenate, red lead, white lead, which dad had used in places, which in some areas I’ve dug that out and used other materials.

The two pack paints are far more durable than the old paints and the glues, the resins. So I’ve used epoxy resin throughout the boat only for the sheeting and some joints to back the quality of the joint up with the traditional screws and bolts or whatever but the boat is basically traditionally built with just that touch of new products, originally she was supposed to be Dynel sheathed. I sort of researched that, the deck and the cabin sides where you’ve got a lot of sharp turns, where you can easily mould Dynel, that was really good in the rudder in places. 

So I’ve reinforced corners in that with Dynel but the basic fibreglassing was done with modern composites, epoxy resin and heavy grade woven mat. So I think yeah, doing it that way I think has been the best thing for the boat. I think it will last a fair while, the keel is not iron, it’s lead keel, lead that my father and I collected over the years. That was a big job, the lead keel. One I don’t want to do again.

The rudder under construction

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Did you pour that yourself?

ANDREW RANDELL: Yes, very difficult to do trying to keep over a ton of lead hot enough to pour that…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh and that’s a lot of weight to actually just manage.

ANDREW RANDELL: Well it was.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Into the right spot.

ANDREW RANDELL: To pour near the boat. Then using old Roman way of rolling things on logs and stuff like that, that’s how we sort of manoeuvred it around on winches and ropes and jockeyed it into position. I suppose the hardest part was to lift the boat up so that I could get the keel under it and drop it back down. But yeah, it took weeks to do that. It was just one of those big jobs that just inch by inch…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Did you manage to draw any sort of mates or friends or volunteers and supporters in along the way to help you here and there with some of the tougher jobs that required more than one person?

Clamping the tiller during the lamination process

ANDREW RANDELL: Not really, as soon as I mentioned the boat, everyone would disappear. There was a fellow next door who lives next to mum’s place that he helped me on a few things but basically, I just did it the smart way. There wasn’t too much I couldn’t do by myself with a block and tackle or whatever so I didn’t really have any help. 

The only trouble I had was actually towards the end when I was fitting it off like putting all the deck fittings in, the cleats, et cetera, you couldn’t be holding the screw head or the bolt on the deck while you’re trying to do it up from underneath. So the fellow next door had come over and helped me do that. So I know it was basically a self-effort, the only time that I nearly did something stupid was I was putting the belting around the side of the boat for the rub rail, that’s a fairly substantial bit of timber, it was laminated timber and trying to spring it around the side of the boat so it was all epoxied up and I’d predrilled all the holes.

I sort of got to the point around the bow where it was starting to come in rather sudden. I’m trying to get this timber to slowly screw it into the side of the boat and the damn thing let go and nearly sent me flying off the ladder, cause it just sprung back. I’m off the saw horse and I’m gone and that’s nothing too. I’ve never fallen off the boat while it’s been in the water but hell, I’ve fallen off the boat when it was up in the cradle a few times.

The laminated tiller is completed and ready for fitting to Jackie R

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I guess it’s quite high up too, especially once you’ve got a keel underneath them.

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah, that’s right. I have been sanding away and suddenly oops, there we go, off again. Yeah, I didn’t really get too much help.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Along the way, did your mum keep quite close tabs on progress, did it to become a growing interest for her?

ANDREW RANDELL: Oh yeah, it was fascination for her and another part of that story was the boat where I was building it was underneath a lot of trees, big gum trees and that was always a constant worry for me and I mean huge gum trees, just one branch is coming from one of those, would have just destroyed the boat.

I’ve actually got some photos of such an occasion, where we had a huge storm and every time I’d go there and there was a storm, of course that area is renowned for some pretty good storms. So in the summer I’d be standing on the veranda with mum and we’d be just watching each lightning strike, thinking, “Oh no. Please no.”

One day a big branch did come down and it just clipped the bow — no it clipped the tent that it was in and the tent fell down sort of on to the bow and just put a very slight mark in the toe rail or something, it was near the end of completion but it was hardly any damage. I think the old man must have been watching over me at that point in time because it was so close. 

If it had been another foot it would have possibly knocked it off the cradle. It fell from a fairly good height and there were just tree branches, there’s a photo of tree branches just all around the boat and there’s the boat just standing in the middle of it. That was quite amazing.

Jackie R narrowly missed serious damage after the storm passes through Yamba

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Somebody was watching over you. Those things weigh tons when they shear off and come down.

ANDREW RANDELL: Well mum was straight on the phone, “Quick, get down here, there’s been a storm and I think the boat’s been moved off the cradle.” So I was panicked and I’ve flown down there, the two and a half hour trip that seemed to take a lot less that day. But got down there, luckily the boat hadn’t moved. It was just the tent was all skew if, and we put it all back up and everything was fine.  So lucky escape for Jackie R. there. Very lucky.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: With your mum during that time, did you have any conversations about what might have been if you completed it earlier? Did it ever come up or something she…

ANDREW RANDELL: All the time, we used to sit out on the veranda because we don’t mind a wine each. So we’d sit out on the veranda with a bottle of red and some cheese or something and just look at the boat and discuss what was done that day and she would always come down, I’d be working away on the boat and she’d always come down and see how it was going with it, checking the progress, see if I was still alive or something probably.

I’d go back down there after dinner at night, she’d be down there with a torch at 10 o’clock at night saying, “You ever going to come to bed?” So yeah she was quite actively interested in it. I’d tell her “I’ll be down this weekend” and she’d say, “Oh, what are you doing this weekend?” Yeah, it involved her completely and I think in a way, when the boat was lying idle and it was just a bug bear in a way to her I think, because the boat had cost money to drag it from Sydney to Lismore, from Lismore down to where they were. I think mum sort of had a bit of a thing about that where she couldn’t understand why dad would want to keep it. So that became a bit of an issue.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: An issue between them as well?

Andrews Dad relocated Jackie R from Sydney to Lismore when the family moved north

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah, I think so because when dad was alive, she’d say things like, “Why don’t you burn the thing?” Or something like that, or, “Get rid of it.” I guess because it symbolised Jackie as well. So there was all that going on in the background. When I started building the boat, she did a 180 on that. So then it became a passion for her as well and it was good for us because I used to live a long way from mum and dad so I never used to catch up with them very often. But again every couple of weekends was good for mum.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Great for her, at her age, to see her son every second week all of a sudden for years on end.

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah, so it was really good for her and then going sailing with her was great because then once she was launched and we went sailing and we’d come back home, bottle of red wine on the back veranda and talk about the sailing. So it was quite a good thing, a great togetherness there.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Pretty special kind of last chapter for her really in her life.

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah well that’s right, and I’m glad I finished it before she passed away so she had five or six years of still being involved in that and seeing dad’s project through, which I think was a bit of a, I don’t know whether a light bulb moment would be the right thing to say, but a turning on of yeah, it was a good thing to do and she’d often say, “Ah it’s a shame your father’s not here to see the finished product,” so as I say, she’s done that 180 and yeah.

Andrew preparing to take his mother Fae out sailing in Jackie R on the Clarence River

Ocean Sailing Podcast: For her to actively sail with you too as your main crew member.

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah, that’s right.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Up until she was what - 83?

ANDREW RANDELL: 83 yeah. 

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah up until then, probably 12 months before then but yeah, no worries she’d hop in the boat and she’d love it and it was easy I had someone to hold the rudder while I was hoisting the sails in the wind and that sort of thing, so it was quite handy and I’d just give her the tiller and she’d quite happily sail down the river and I’d just sit back and look at the world go past. Suited me. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Do you prefer sailing upwind or downwind or any preference?

ANDREW RANDELL: As long as the boat’s moving in a forward direction, that will do me. I like tacking, I like sailing upwind, I like the tacking. I like being busy on it so to do a good tack and to see you go through your 90 degrees or whatever and come out of that without losing too much boat speed, I’ve got an appreciation for that and I do like doing that, gets a bit monotonous sometimes like if you’ve got an easterly blowing on the Clarence River and you got to tack all the way home, it gets a bit monotonous. You could put hundreds of tacks to get home.

The finished cabin interior 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s a long slog.

ANDREW RANDELL: But yeah look, I’ll leave it as long as I can before I have to start the iron sail up. I hate doing that. So I’m determined that I’ll get home under sail if I can. Unless I run out of light.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: How much time do you typically spend out on the water on any one day?

ANDREW RANDELL: Oh it’s usually about four hours. I try to pick it as the tide’s sort of building. So I’ll go out on the incoming tide. Of course coming to the marina there, I don’t — I’d have to have another look at the chart. The depth sounder always goes off in low tide when I go through there. So I know the channel, there is a sand bank in the middle of the channel that is quite shallow.

So I’m always just a bit weary of that, plus that’s where I ran aground last time or not far from it. So I have a healthy respect for that part of the river. I generally go out as the tide’s building and come back in at the top of the tide towards the end of it, which presents a little bit of a problem because Yamba’s got a training wall you’ve got to go through and that is the main channel, just on the other side of the training wall as you’re coming from the marina.

The plushly fitted out interior of Jackie R is completed to a meticulous standard

To go through the gate, it’s not very wide and you’ve got to really approach it with a bit of a gusto otherwise — because as soon as you get past it, the tide will take you either port or starboard, depending if it’s going in or out. You got to be ready for it and then the same thing applies, probably worse when you’re coming back home if you’re on a run out tide or a run in tide or something like that. You’ve got to basically put your bow right into the tide and then flick it at the last minute to get through the hole because it’s not very big.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: If you can handle that, you can handle most marinas. That’s about as tough as it gets. I think I’ve berthed in a marina once on a river where you had to point your bow 45 degrees to crab your way through the channel with mud on either side because if you pointed straight, you just got swept down river and onto the mud bank.

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah, scary stuff.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s a bit unnerving, you’ve got to commit, you can’t half commit.

ANDREW RANDELL: That’s right, you got to commit, and sometimes I’ve been through the wall at 45 degrees just keeping the bow to that tidal line, ‘cause it’s very strong, very strong tide there. You’re dropping down into, probably going from 12 foot into the 25, 30 foot or something like that.

The cockpit finish is first class complete with windows and lockers

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah right.

ANDREW RANDELL: So it’s a fairly big drop away.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That is a big tide. Okay.

ANDREW RANDELL: Correct me if I’m wrong, any Yamba sailors out there.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: What’s next for you Andrew? Do you have plans to get out of the river one day? You have plans to be cruising, any racing, any…

ANDREW RANDELL: Racing is definitely on the menu, I’d like to get involved in that very much so. I don’t know what the future holds where I will keep Jackie. I don’t know whether I can continue driving down there for the next 20 years or whatever. I don’t know about that. 

I do like the Clarence though for what it offers. I can be sailing when it’s fairly crappy outside which I like. Sailing outside, I really don’t know, I need probably help with that. It’s not off the menu but I don’t have enough confidence in my skills or the boat because I only started sailing five years ago and I’m 54 now.

So if I’d have mucked around with boats right from the start, I’d probably have that — not blasé approach, but I would certainly know my limitations and of other boat’s because I probably would have stepped from the boat, to boat, to boat.

The sun sets as Andrew takes Jackie R for a sail on the Clarence River

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

ANDREW RANDELL: I would have liked to have the opportunity as a kid sailing lasers and that sort of thing, I’ve even thought of even buying a laser so when I’m not down at the boat, I could at least muck around up here on the Gold Coast on a laser.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s a good idea. I mean out of Hollywell you can launch off the beach there quite nicely indeed, and store your boat there if you want.

Launch day for Jackie R

ANDREW RANDELL: Relationship wise, I think I would be killed but anyway. Yeah, I’ve often thought of that. So going outside is a bit daunting to me. I like it, I’ve been outside before but for me, in my boat, yes, I don’t know.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Crossing bars just for the benefit of people listening, crossing bars on the Australian East Coast, you’ve got some that are a lot nastier than others, you’ve got to time it all right and then they’re not suitable in all weather conditions. So there’s a little bit of a challenge getting in and out of, and over the bar there.

ANDREW RANDELL: I read a lot of yachting magazines, I subscribe to Cruising Helmsman, a few other good magazines. You read the hell stories there.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well they don’t write stories about the people who make it, because that doesn’t sell covers, they write the horror stories.

Jackie R is carefully craned onto a waiting cradle on the back of a truck

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah well that’s the trouble, I’m reading all these stories and going, “Cross that off the list.” So it doesn’t really help me.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: There’d be hundreds of movements a week in and out over the Gold Coast Seaway out over the bar there.

ANDREW RANDELL: Successful ones.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Successful yeah. Certainly good to give them the respect they deserve.

ANDREW RANDELL: Its things like that. You hear about the odd green one that comes over the side and stuff like that. I’d probably need someone that knows more about sailing than myself to assess the boat and say, “Yeah okay.” It’s things like reassurance, “Yes, your cockpit is good enough to drain, yes, your bilge pumps are good,” which they probably are but I need someone to say, “That’s it.” Before I trust the boat to go and do that or, “Your propulsion’s good enough,” and all that sort of thing. That’s the only limitations that are stopping me.

A very proud Andrew and his mother Fae watch as Jackie R is lowered into the water for the first time

Ocean Sailing Podcast: What sort of speed can you motor at?

ANDREW RANDELL: I tried under motor with the GPS on, I’ve got a chart-plotter and everything on board. Probably five to six knots.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, yeah so that’s pretty reasonable. So it’s always good to be able to motor sail out over bars or back in over the bars just for safety sake and getting through as fast as possible.

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah. So yeah it gets along at a fairly good clip.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay. Well that’s great. I guess when you look back over the last 50 years but certainly over the last 15 years, what has this whole experience taught you about life I guess? It’s an interesting story.

ANDREW RANDELL: Hard question. That you can achieve anything if you want to. I’d have never really consciously thought that I would be finishing the boat 20 or 30 years ago. It was probably an idea but to do it, to actually get in there and do it, under some fairly adverse conditions with problems that cropped up and just the enormity of pulling the whole thing apart and with some sadness too that I was pulling apart dad’s work.

Jackie R is finally complete after 48 years

But I think that if you tackle something and you do enough research, I would think you can do it. So it’s probably a bit like, “Yeah I can probably sail outside,” I’ve just got to look at that and get the mindset right. I can do it, I know I can do it, it’s just a matter of doing it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And it sounds like the boat’s more than capable of doing it.

ANDREW RANDELL: Probably. It’s probably the owner that’s the problem. I mean that’s what she’s designed for, she’s designed to be smashing her way through the sea because that’s what she was designed for. The original prototype’s still going, that Len Randell made.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Do you know how many were built under the design?

ANDREW RANDELL: I don’t. And I’d love to see another one. There’s been one for sale in the Afloat Magazine, I noticed it last year or the year before. Quite a pretty little boat too. More traditional than mine. In the original design, they actually had slatted cockpits so all the water would go down and you’d have someone there with a bucket and they’d bail it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right.

Jackie R's wooden mast in construction and finished with 10 coats of varnish

ANDREW RANDELL: The idea when they used to sail those, the whole race you’d have someone there bailing and that was it, that was your job, you just bailed. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s not all that fun.

ANDREW RANDELL: No. I don’t know how many are around, I’d love to know. I’d like to see and I think there’s rumours I read the other day, the JOG classes sort of, there’s a bit of a rumour that they might be starting it up again, which would be nice. I’m sure there’s a lot of old ones still out there. Even in the modern guys, there’s a fibreglass 24 or whatever the tonnage has to be to pass, I think it would be a great idea. That just adds another dimension to sailing. 

I’ve had a call from another fellow in Western Australia that is doing up another boat called Rani. So I’ve had a few email conversations and a few phone conversations with him and I’ve sent him over my plans, I’ve got the full set of plans. Apparently this fellow went and asked Len. I don’t think he had any of the plans left or didn’t have any copies of them. So I’ve got the original plans for the — it’s called a ‘rugged’, the class of boat, a rugged design. 

The meticulously constructed wooden mast and spreaders

So I sent him over the copies of those and he’s got a lot of work to do, he’s basically pulled that whole boat apart. Of course it was in need of a lot of rib replacements, a lot of cracked ribs because the original design was kauri planked, corked with roves on the ribs so dad for some reason, in discussion with Len and decided to carvel plank it and then fibreglass it, which Len seemed to think that was fine.

Bu it made it a bit lighter than the original because kauri’s a lot heavier than the spruce. Which just meant he had to have more weight inside the boat but we I’ve got more moveable weight in the boat now, I’ve got led ingots that I can move around the boat, depending on who is there, it’s very sensitive to weight.

Okay. Well that’s handy when you’re racing as well, if you can put the weight in on a heavy day and take it on a light day.

The masthead contains 21st century marine electronics 

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah, I’ve got a couple of the ingots I’ve got left over that are made up from the keel lead, so they’re quite handy so I just got big handles on them and I can move them around. Yeah, it’s an amazing project, I’m glad I did it and I guess the recognition from the Wooden Boat Association plus fellow sailors that I’m just out on the water with. I was out on Saturday with my nephew and I’ve got a yell from another boat saying how pretty she looks and that’s just common place. I’m not blowing my own trumpet. It is a pretty design. I think dad picked a nice boat and I think Len designed a beautiful boat and it’s all in the Randell family.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s fantastic really and I think any yachtie admires a classic well built boat that just doesn’t date. It’s a timeless kind of look. And then, if you own a boat, you appreciate the upkeep involved when there’s varnish and timber and there’s a lot more to keep a boat looking great. 

ANDREW RANDELL: Maintenance wise, I think my idea of how I did it is working well. Like the maintenance is doable and all the products were good products like two pack paints and that. It sat out quite well.

Andrew playing on Jackie R in earlier years when his father was still working on her 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Keeping it covered is good.

ANDREW RANDELL: Yeah, that’s the main thing, keeping it covered. With the covers off it looks as good as the day it was launched. So she’s doing all right.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well it’s great. Well Andrew, it’s been really great talking to you today. It’s been really interesting reading your story and hearing your story. Talking to you has been really, really fascinating.

ANDREW RANDELL: Thanks.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: If I can give you any help with the bit of a test sail out over the bar on Jackie, or doing some offshore racing here, just with me…

ANDREW RANDELL: I’d love that.

Fellow sailing friend; John Green with Andrews father in earlier years

Ocean Sailing Podcast: …feel free to, because its just one step at a time, if you’ve got a boat that’s fit for purpose, which she sounds more than fit for purpose, then it’s just a bit of building up your skills and confidence and knowing where your limits are as well and…

ANDREW RANDELL: I think going out on other people’s boat too gives you that aspect of the other side of it and you can relax more and probably learn more because I find that when I’m sailing, I’m very attuned to where I’m going, how I’m doing it and all that sort of thing. Even though it’s a pleasurable experience, it’s great but you’ve got that worry about your boat.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You’re busy, you’re responsible, you’re navigating and.

ANDREW RANDELL: That’s it, yeah. When you’re and someone else’s boat, it’s not that you don’t care, it’s just that you have one less thing to worry about potentially.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah. You can soak up whatever detail you want that’s interesting to you, cause you don’t have to look 360 degrees as well.

Jackie R safely under cover in her berth in the Yamba Marina in Northern NSW

ANDREW RANDELL: I have found that when I’ve been sailing in other boats that little bit of a worry factor is gone, so therefore you’re sort of taking it all in, you probably are enjoying it to a different degree. Yeah, that would be lovely.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay. Great, well, we’ll wrap that up there and when publish this, we’ll make sure that in the show notes that we upload photographs and plans and everything else. So lots of detail in terms of checking the website when you hear this episode so you can really appreciate the beauty and all the thousands of hours of pain and passion that have gone into completing the Jackie R project and I’m sure our listeners will really love to be able to see that level of detail which will really put it into context for them.

ANDREW RANDELL: Thank you very much for the opportunity to tell the story.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You’re welcome.

ANDREW RANDELL: I’m glad someone’s taken me up on that.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well it’s my pleasure and it’s going online so it will keep it somewhere forever.

ANDREW RANDELL: That’s good.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s great. Thanks Andrew.

Andrew Randell sailing with his mother Fae in Jackie R on the Clarence River

Interviewer: David Hows

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