Chapter 4

I was learning just what was a vision but that will have to wait as it’s way off on a tangent, so I’ve moved it to the end of this chapter.

***

My father had died while I was in jail and left me about Australia $50k. I’d been dramatically struck off his will, but my sister Virginia had gone to New Zealand where he lived and intervened, she told him I should be included. That money would now be used to seed this new boat- building venture. Virginia was a fabulous daughter for Peg, even as a 10- year-old preparing and cooking the family meals while Peg was struggling to keep us alive and our family together. When Virginia needed to lead her own life, Peg sold assets and gave her the funds for a deposit on a house. My brother David got the same sort of assistance, which of course she couldn’t give me as it would have been blown on some nebulous alcohol fuelled scheme, or half baked scam.

I used to say 2 successful kids out of 3 wasn’t bad, but now I seemed to be heading in the right direction, though Peg, the confirmed biologist wasn’t going to accept any of this spiritual nonsense. It took me a while to realise this as I was like a born again evangelist, if someone would listen. It’s hard when you have lived through my experience, l lived the absolute proof that the oneness, the real reality was there, and the physical world was the illusion, the opposite to what people think, and an impossible concept to explain to an atheist. But I tried, hoping she would see that life was not the dead end she thought, maybe even feared.

Peg had presumed I was dead as she hadn’t heard from me for years. Virginia had married and had 2 little kids. Peg had retired from work and was ageing, so Virginia and her family bought a house and moved close to Peg so they could look after her in her old age, but then suddenly Virginia died of a cerebral haemorrhage. Peg would have died too if she could. She descended into a bottomless black depression, but now living nearby were her 2 grandchildren, who needed her. So Peg rose from her grave and became their mother. With me presumed dead, Virginia gone, that left one out of her 3 children left to survive her. That’s extra hard for an atheist, the dead dead end, the death of the body, unnecessarily hard, which is what I wanted her to see.

Eventually I was shown in one of those crystal clear colour dreams that I should stop. It was one of those dreams from which you wake, wondering was that real or not. It’s real alright, but that depends on what you think reality is. It was set at one of those steep subways that pass under roads or railways, about 3 metres wide, steep ramp down, sharp 90 degree right turn under the tracks, sharp turn and up the other side. I was driving a Kenworth forward control prime mover, a big flat square front cabin with a trailer on behind. Peg was in the passenger seat. I drove down the ramp and stopped at the end wall in front of us, obviously we couldn’t turn the corner. I woke and sat up, acutely aware of the meaning, leave Peg alone she’s not coming with me on this journey. It just shows what sort of fool and blockhead the Joker knows I am to have to resort to such a huge truck to make the point. But  that’s how It works with me.

I had graduated from the Dhaka Central Ashram in 1990 and moved permanently back to Australia in 1992 and set up my “factory” in Peg’s double garage.  It started with unpacking the hull I’d shipped from Singapore lashed to a pallet. I had tried creating a kit boat in Malaysia using tropical hardwood plywood, but that wasn’t going to work for 2 reasons. First, it’s environmentally irresponsible, and secondly, people don’t have the time to spend on a boat building project like they did back in the Mirror Dinghy days.

But I continued on with that kit boat concept for a while, Steve, Darren and me building a prototype up near Cairns in North Queensland where Steve’s family lived. Then we moved south to the Gold Coast where we shared a house, the 3 of us on social security benefits, so with plenty of time to further develop the concept. I know exactly when that was as on TV was the first televised war, George Bush Senior’s Desert Storm, and for the world outside the USA, CNN was born. We stayed on the Gold Coast a few months, then Darren and I moved to his father’s house in Sydney where we built another concept hull. This boat was pretty radical, a folly really and showed me that not everything I did would turn to gold. So get back on the tracks and stay focused.

Eventually I moved back to Peg’s in Melbourne and decided this boat had to be built in fibreglass. Paul Keating was then the Prime Minister of Australia and his Labor government had introduced a program called “New Enterprise Incentive Scheme”, which encouraged an aspiring business owner with a year’s social security funding, a 6 week small business management course, plus a business mentor to advise for the following year. I applied and was accepted. I had a business plan which would be refined during the 6 week training.

I turned up on the first day, still a very shy insecure misfit, but I had great faith in the future as I alone knew how this project had evolved, with this extraordinary thing calling the shots. So if I was going to waste my inheritance and end up with nothing, or it was going to work, there was only one way to find out.

The program was being held in Ringwood, a Melbourne eastern suburb. It was a bus ride from Peg’s house. We assembled in a class room with tables set up in a U, our coordinator worked from a desk and whiteboard against the back wall. We had to fold a sheet of A4 along the landscape centre, write our name and project on it and then around the tables we went, each of us introducing ourselves and our project.

There were 21 of us and I was very disappointed when we had all finished as there was no fibreglasser amongst us, as I was sure there would be at least one. There was however a spare seat next to me on my right, when the door flew open and in strode a very confident young guy about 30, carrying a light grey briefcase. He came around and sat next to me, making 22 participants, and announced himself as Peter Scully. His proposed business was Pete’s Family Playgrounds, in fibreglass. Great, I turned and said in my blunt awkward way, “We should talk. I need to learn about serial fibreglass production”.

So at 10.00 we had a recess and we quickly determined that he planned to set up in Dandenong, which suited me as that’s where I’d already found a place. Yes, he was an expert fibreglasser, and yes, if I rented a factory he would use half the area for 6 months for free and in return help me and show me how fibreglass works.
And that’s what we did, with some hiccups of course, the first being  on the eve of moving into the little factory. Having just signed the lease, I  went up into the nearby hills to see a friend who I’d bonded with on the NEIS course. I’d driven there in Peg’s car, I’d started having a few social drinks,  and it was time to leave. Already late, as I had to pick up Peg, I was about to drive away when Michael my friend handed me a big glass of red wine. I scoffed it down and drove away, out of the hills and straight into a booze  bus, a mobile breath testing laboratory operated by the police.

But before we go there I can remember towards the end of that 6 week course I’d written a speech and first thing I did that morning was ask our coordinator could I please come to the front to deliver it. I was terrified of public speaking, which is what stood between me and reaching the vision. It was a speech about how terrified I was, how I felt physically, dry mouth unable to speak, mind blank turned inside out by fear. That speech was rewarded with sympathetic hand clapping and applause and so broke the ice for me..

***

In the state of Victoria if you are over .05 blood to alcohol ratio you are drink driving. They had one look at me and smelt my breath, I was a little over the limit but they made me wait half an hour to take another reading. Sure enough I went up to .11, which meant a mandatory loss of my driving licence for 11 months. The last thing I’d said to Seth in Pattaya before I went under the train was “thank you very much Seth, I’ll never drink alcohol again”. Well, that lasted about 8  years, with a few tipples, like Darren’s home brew in Dhaka Central, and now this, the first time I’d really overdone it, one day after signing the lease  on the factory. What timing. So this time I thanked this non thing called Spirit, thank you sir/madam, whatever you are, I promise I Will Never Drink Alcohol Again, and I haven’t. There’s been no desire, no interest. This thing took that away, or I did.

To control an addiction I think you can set yourself up at a boxing ring. In the black corner (choose your colour) is your negative side, the alcoholic, the smoker, piss weak. In the opposite corner is a character who doesn’t drink,  or doesn’t smoke, strong, not interested, while looking on outside the ring is me, with better things to do than join their squabble. I’d also given up smoking dope this way so now I was on a serious mission. Didn’t know where to yet, but I was learning fast.

***

With Peter’s help I made a set of moulds, but it was based on the clinker lapstrake hull from Singapore days, and a couple of deck variations, as the original concept was a sailing tender. I built 10 boats in those moulds, but there is no point building fibreglass boats based on wooden boat construction methods. That’s because all those sharp corners formed by overlapping planks are really susceptible to air bubbles under the fibreglass production gelcoat. Plus, fibreglass is plastic, glass reinforced plastic, GRP, or FRP, fibre reinforced plastic. It wants compound curves. That’s where it gets its inherent strength, not flat surfaces. The bolder the better. So I built a heavy-duty hull in the clinker-hull mould, stiffened it, turned it upside down  on a strong back and filled it all in to create a smooth compound curved shape. You sandpaper, fill, sand, spray, fill/sand/spray over and over till it’s sanded with 1200 grit sandpaper which you then polish, on which a new hull mould is made.

I’d decided on 3 models, as I liked number 3, still do. But we will get to the real meaning of a trinity later. First came the Sailer with a wide seat, which started off woven in cane, or rattan, which was later sewn from outdoor furniture fabric slung like a hammock on aluminium or plastic tubes. Its centreboard was shaped like on a Finn dinghy, or lightweight Sharpie, which I’d owned years earlier at Aspendale, the idea being you could just sail it up onto a beach, or it would sail straight over a fish net. Up would come the board as it met the net, and with a shallow barn door rudder so it also would sail over the net. The tiller curved up over your head and came down in front of you as you sat facing forward in the sling seat.

Another model was the Tender which has its own deck mould. It rows, sails or takes a 2hp outboard motor. It would also take a sling seat but had a little dagger centreboard as it has a longitudinal seat for rowing. This is a very classy little rowing boat. Its stainless steel rowlocks turn in PVC electric conduit bushes. We still have these options, but things were about to go a different way.

Third was the Keelboat, which is now the 2.3 Single. In those days lead sheet for roofing was sold in a 20 lb pack, about 13.5 kg. I made a 12mm thick plywood centreboard which fitted in the Tender’s centreboard case, figured about 3ft draft should work, and fashioned the lead into a streamlined shape, made a high aspect rudder blade out of a piece of Oregon (Douglas Fir in America) that I’d had for years, obviously meant for this purpose, and took this jigged up keelboat down to Aspendale on the bay near where we’d lived to see what would happen. It was very impressive.

Work then began on a dedicated deck for the 2.3 Keelboat model. First laminate a hull in the hull mould, then I fitted a heavily laminated Sailor model deck as I wanted to maintain all the same principal dimensions and position of the fore and aft decks, mast, keel and seat. Inside that cockpit I bent timbers between the ends to form the coamings which are the edges of the new narrow cockpit, then clad that in with plywood. The side decks were now much wider and angled up higher, which gave a great sense of security and would let the boat heel to extremes before you’d get wet.

I decided to make a keel that would contain the ballast because a bulb under the hull is a bad idea as you can’t remove it, and found some lead shot at a gun shop, and brought the ballast weight up to 15kg. Also made a new console that would include this new wide centreboard, now a keel, and made a joystick which pivoted on the back of the keel case. So now we had the ingredients of a mini keelboat, and it was obvious that disabled people would be able to sail it.

What a great little boat the 2.3 S is, maybe our most important boat, as it’s a serious Open racer. Being very small, it’s crew weight sensitive, but as an entry level sailboat, the boat to get anyone sailing solo it’s unbeatable. From little kids to adults, able bod to severely disabled people, it’s fantastic.

The next project was fitting the console and keel case from this little single seat keelboat into the deck of the Sailer, which created the 2.3 Wide Seat mini keelboat. If anyone asks why is the 2.3 rudder like it is, well that’s because it obviously needed to be very high aspect ratio so you could steer it with a short lever like a joystick, and it needed to be nearly as deep as the keel. Plus, that piece of Oregon timber I’d always had was the prototype, and it was perfect, so why change? Why has the 2.3 got 15kg ballast? Because it works. “You shouldn’t use more than you need” is a golden rule which should be the golden rule of life. Don’t make a boat bigger than needed to do the intended job. But I must say, at this stage of the project I didn’t know what was the intended job, but this thing that seemed to have me on a leash seemed to know, so who was I to argue?

I exhibited these 3 boats at the Melbourne Boat Show, where Frank Hammond of Horizon Sailmakers had a working display. I had a spritsail rig on it at this stage, like an Optimist, but Frank was enthusiastic and we designed the current mainsail, which Frank made for $100. Other sailmakers couldn’t see the vision and were talking $220. Frank remains our close friend and ally, though we now get most of our sails from lofts in Asia.

The rig deserves a few paragraphs as the mast, the reefing system, and the cut of the sails are a harmonious package where each element complements the others. Change one and it blows the lot.

The rigs on our little boats are based on common PVC water pipes available in Australia. We found that 50mm (Nominal Bore or NB) Waste Water Pipe telescopes nicely inside 50mm Class 6 Pressure Pipe, so we could use this pressure pipe as a bush fibreglassed into the boat, with the waste water pipe turning smoothly inside it, so we could attach the reefing drum to the waste water with a hose clamp below to lock the reefing drum component to the mast. Another pipe, 50mm Class 9 Pressure Pipe has a thicker wall than the Class 6 which makes it a tight fit on the waste water pipe reefing drum component, so it is used as a collar with the addition of 2 x 1/4”nylon screws to hold the reefing drum in place.

All we needed to do then is have dies made to produce 50mm OD drawn aluminium mast tubes as 50mm OD is a good telescoping fit inside the reefing drum’s waste water pipe. So the whole rig specification starts with those readily available plastic water pipes. Otherwise we would have to machine all these tubes ourselves to make this system work. Another water pipe we use is 40mm Class 12 Pressure Pipe, which is for the mast step.

By the way, the difference between pipe and tube is that pipe is used for the movement of fluids and gasses so it measures the ID, hence for pipes the key dimension is the Nominal Bore, whereas tubes are generally structural members so measure the OD.

Round aluminium masts are therefore tubes, and these can be either extruded in a standard or a structural alloy, or drawn tubes. Drawn tubes are first extruded a little oversize and are then cold drawn over dies which bring them to much finer tolerances than extruded tubes. So if you need tubes which accurately telescope inside each other then they need to be drawn.

The cold drawing process also tempers the aluminium so you wind up with higher strength and bending qualities similar to ligh structural alloys. So our masts are 50mm OD drawn tubes with a 1mm wall thickness as you cannot extrude this 1mm wall thickness in a structural alloy. To stiffen the mast where it has maximum load which is where it passes through the console is the inner which is 47.4mm OD with 1.4mm wall drawn tube, which is also used as a joiner of 2 piece masts.  Another range of telescoping drawn tubes are 25.4mm, 28.6, 32, 35.5 OD’s. which are for our foremasts.

Unfortunately drawn aluminium tubes are becoming harder to source as manufacturers withdraw from the process, so one day we will need to change the specification of our spars.

Then there are plastic outdoor furniture pipes which serve as the bush fibreglassed into the bow as the foremast socket, and also used as front seat tubes. And while we are on about plastic pipes, our C Crane shafts are 42mm OD stainless steel which telescopes inside 40mm Class 12 water pipe, as used for mast steps, so it’s also used as a bush for C Crane sockets.

That discussion of materials and specifications shows that good design, particularly universal design doesn’t just accept conventional wisdom as every item in a design needs to dovetail with its neighbour and you want to use as many off the shelf items as possible, even from totally unrelated industries. The final product has to tick all the boxes before you can sign it off as having arrived at the destination, which is the end of the time line of the vision.

It can happen that you reach a blockage, a stumbling block, something inconsistent with the harmony of the project, it looks like tits on a bull, then go back to the start and see if there was a fork in the road you could take as it might lead to somewhere totally unexpected. Once again, if you have what I’ll call “too much money” you could just buy the solution, but then you don’t get to see the magic. So it comes down to what’s the purpose of the journey, and it’s sad if it’s simply to produce a product for the market.

The actual design of the sails is also interesting and very logical when you consider the constraints that must be considered. The sail area, as  discussed elsewhere, needs to have its centre of area so it exerts a force just behind the lateral resistance of the hull and its keel. That Centre of Lateral Resistance (CLR) is where you would push the hull so it moves sideways and not start to turn. Push 100mm further forward and the bow will turn away. So the centre of the force from the sails needs to be in relation to the CLR.

But the sails are curved, and adopt an aerofoil shape, which acts like a wing with a low air pressure in front of the sails’ leading edge. Plus we roller reef our sails on the mast so, when reefed, the sail area moves forward. The centre of sail area translates into the Centre of Effort  (CoE) which you can see is dynamic and not a fixed point projected down to relate to the CLR of the underwater shape of the hull, which itself is forever changing as the boat heels, yaws and pitches as it works through waves.

So you can try to calculate all this in the design stage, which you do, but it will need to be fine tuned on a complete boat in sailing trim with a variety of crew weights in different positions. The more so the smaller the boat, where crew weight becomes a major factor. An example is 2 heavy crew in a 2.3 fixed sling seat will put the stern down, which rakes the mast aft, taking the sail’s CoE aft with it, while the keel rakes forward, but more hull immersed aft to counter this effect. So obviously this all has to be worked out and things finally positioned after real-time sailing trials.

So on the 2.3 we have the mast raked forward as that’s where the sail’s CoE needs to go because the foot of the mast needed to be in the cockpit so the reefing system could be hidden and accessible. Plus, the keel needed to be where it is with the joystick behind it so the sling seat could be as far forward as possible, close as possible to the hull’s centre of buoyancy so that seated crew weighed the stern down as little as possible. So there are a lot of things going on to make the 2.3 work.

In actual practice it means that with the stern weighed down the boat is out of trim or balance and will have excessive weather helm because the CoE of the sails is too far aft of the CLR, and so the bow will try to turn into the  wind.

A minor consideration relating to sail design is that a heavily-aft-raked mast means the sail and its boom will want to fall by gravity to the fore and aft centre line. That means in really light wind, particularly if the stern is weighed down, the sail will need a bit more breeze to take the boom out when the sheet is eased. That becomes a problem and needs to be considered on a Universal Design boat, as severely disabled people can’t physically push the boom out by hand and move their body weight to heel the boat so the sail will adopt the right aerofoil shape in very light wind.

Other factors relating to the boom are because sailors are in a fixed seat the boom doesn’t hit you on the head in a gybe, and the boom can angle down so the gooseneck is close to the deck, close to the mast’s fulcrum or pivot point, which is where the boom will exert the minimum bending force on the mast. And because the boom is already angled down and is highest above the traveller at the stern, we can get away without a boom vang, which all adds up to only needing a small diameter tube for the boom.

But you know all these odd ball features don’t look familiar and comfortable for traditional sailors and give them cause to say our boats are specially designed for disabled people.  Whereas their not, they are all out of left field perfectly logical solutions which make our boats user friendly and accessible across all the variations of human functional ability.

On the 303, which enters the story soon, it’s got a jib on a foremast, another outrageous innovation, how dare we do that. So its sail CoE is a combination of both sails working together, which preferred the mainmast to be vertical and not raked forward, and because the hull needed to trim nicely with one or two people in the sling seat, their weight needed to be as close to the CoB of the hull as possible, otherwise the bow would obviously point skywards with two big-sized crew on board.

It’s all a case for bigger boats, some may say. The bigger the boat the less crew-weight sensitive they are, but costs go up exponentially as boats get bigger. They cost more to produce, store, manage, transport. The loads on the sheets grow, so bigger winches and batteries are needed if the boat is gong to rate well on the UD/Inclusion Scale. So it’s all a balancing act, and if you want newcomer nations with limited resources on board you’d better use boats that are as small as will do the job.

***

Back around the time of the 1994 Melbourne Boat Show when we first exhibited the little 2.3, Campbell Rose was executive director of Yachting Victoria and he had met with Ian and Pauline Harrison, who had started Sailability in England. Ian and Pauline had moved on as President and Secretary of the International Foundation for Disabled Sailing, the IFDS. Following that meeting, Campbell brought Sailability to Victoria, and there was one program operating at Albert Park Lake in Melbourne. It was managed by Grahme Lemon, who had multiple sclerosis. I didn’t know anything about disability, but it was obvious to me that this little 2.3 had great potential.  Low cost, no bulb, sail while seated, so easy to store and transport, reef-able etc. It was all just common sense to me, but not necessarily to the sailing fraternity, who wouldn’t see it that way at all.

Campbell’s dad, Dr Allan Rose, was the chair of Sailability, and he was enthusiastic, so I brought my little boats to Albert Park Lake. But you get a frosty reception when you come out of left field with something as innovative as this, and that’s probably the signature lesson from this story. The world is actually a very negative place, controlled by self interest, the little self, mind, that’s what the world is, and that’s what it’s meant to be so we shouldn’t destroy ourselves trying to change that. The world is what it is because of the imbalances already created, and this needs to play itself out. And the idea that this world will some day become a paradise is not realistic, that’s not its purpose. Maybe the best outcome today is to slow its progress towards our self destruction. 

Australia in those days had a national Australian Yachting Federation (later changed to Australian Sailing), which was the Member National Authority (MNA) of ISAF (International Sailing Federation, now called World Sailing). Each state of Australia had it’s own administrative body, so the Australian sailing administrative structure was a federation. With the visionary Campbell Rose in charge, Yachting Victoria, with the AYF, called a national conference to establish Sailability Australia, a disabled sailing administration body.

In parallel to this my old friend Maurice, from the skilift building days, who, being a creature of habit, read the Sydney Morning Herald every day at his breakfast table, sent me by post an article about a guy called Dr Phil Vardy who was forming an organisation called Sailors with disAbilities, principally as Phil wanted to find a boat to enter the 50th Sydney to Hobart Yacht race. The year was 1994.  I approached Allan Rose and asked did he know this Vardy guy and was he invited to the conference? Yes, he was invited, I was told.

I was greenhorn with this sort of thing, very shy, incapable of doing any public speaking, but I had to do it anyway. Phil tells the story that he had only just arrived at the conference when I walked up and said awkwardly that I’d seen a story about him and we needed to talk. I was very interested in starting something in Sydney on that fantastic harbour and I presumed Phil was the key.

I had the 3 boats on display, one of each model. I’d paid for a couple of friends to attend, so I wasn’t alone. Today I use a Power Point Presentation,  which creates a focus, but I think I have or had ADHD, as my mind won’t stay focussed when talking to a crowd. But in those days I didn’t have a PPP, so read my speech and told the audience what I was going to do. I can’t imagine anyone took it seriously, but then they weren’t to know what was the real story behind our boats and I was only the puppet who had to build them. I could see they were puppets also, but they were controlled by a different puppet master. They might have had an ace or 2, but I was pretty sure I had the rest, plus left and right bowers and the Joker.

On day 3 of the conference we assembled at Albert Park Lake and here was the chance for my boats to shine. But no one was interested, except my new mate Phil. As we were heading into the final session where there would be an election to appoint the first Chairman of the new Sailability Australia Committee, I said to Phil he was to be the man. “How do you know, do you think you are Nostradamus”? he said. “No Phil,   I’m not, but I know that my little boats are destined for great things, and none of these blockheads are going to take things forward, so obviously you’ll be the chair and it’s your role”.

There you see the power of knowing, it’s just the next level of logic, the logic of 3, where credence is given to the power of consciousness and imagination. And so it was. Phil became the Chair, which they changed to coordinator as Kay Cottie, the first woman to sail non stop, unassisted and solo around the world, would be better in the Chairperson’s role. And so Phil and I made a deal that I would come to Sydney in a couple of weeks and we would find the best place to start a program on Sydney Harbour.

Phil set up office in the brick cottage in the magnificent grounds of Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron. His office was on the top floor as that was the only level he could access in his chair from the multi-level car park next to the building. Phil is a paraplegic. So I would visit Phil in his fantastic office overlooking Neutral Bay, an office that must have been occupied previously by our lovely friend Vanessa Dudley, as in the waste bin were bits of paper and letters with her name on them. I’d never met Vanessa but felt I already knew her, but she didn’t know me because I sent her some really weird letters smuggled out of Dhaka Central, which I’ve never mentioned in case she remembered and connected me with that lunatic in the Bangladesh jail.

Visiting Phil at the AYF headquarters was really symbolic for me. Phil  couldn’t get downstairs so I’d be sent down to collect things off the printer. It was weird. You can picture me as an Alien from another world, and there are parallels as Androids are robots, while Aliens are from elsewhere, another world, a different dimension. So that’s how I saw myself, stepping carefully down the carpeted stairs, red lights on computers and printers, like eyes in those otherwise darkened rooms, from the top of the pyramid, down into the offices below.

To me it was a pyramid and I was stationed at its apex on the top floor, an invisible Alien invader, a friendly harmless one, and they didn’t even know I existed let alone who I worked for. But we were going to spread a message of love and inclusion across the world, and we started in this little cottage next door to what must be one of the world’s most glorious yacht clubs. It’s the symbology of it which shows how much of a driven madman I am.

On one trip to Sydney Phil and I searched for the best place to set up a program on the Harbour. There was already a Sailability NSW starting up at Gosford 50km north of Sydney, with our friend Denis Critchly moving things along, so the Harbour was waiting for something special. Another friend I’d met at a conference in Melbourne, Chris Sparks, a very effective disability advocate, told me to go looking for somewhere near Ryde because Wheelchair Sports is there, and Murong, the spinal injury rehabilitation unit, and the Independent Living Centre. They were all in this huge compound overlooking the Parramatta River, one of Sydney Harbour’s main feeders. Chris said there was a girl working in that complex who could be the secretary of a club we might start. Chris had all that right, but the girl he was referring to was not the one who would soon appear on stage and turn into the star of this production.

I also had ideas on where to start on the Harbour. It should not be out on the main harbour where there is a lot of traffic, it should be free from ferries, and not too far up the river as it gets muddy, has currents and ferries. Ideally it also needed to be on the southern side, not way up north, as I would be bringing boats and things from Melbourne. So the suggestion near Ryde was the place to start.

One look at the map and screaming at us was Dobroyd Point, in the suburb of Haberfield, so we went straight there. And what a perfect venue it was, Dobroyd Aquatic Club sat out on Rodd Point so you can sail both sides of the peninsula, no ferries, it’s silted a bit today, but still an amazing place. From Dobroyd we drove off to Drummoyne Sailing Club, at the head of the bay, and parked to consider our next move. Phil was a university lecturer, and there parked next to us was a fellow colleague, she was a member of Dobroyd Aquatic Club and gave us the contact details of the people to talk to.

That sort of serendipitous magic says you’re on the right track, keep going. It was a significant coincidence for Phil, but for me it was this thing’s modus operandi, the sort of thing that happens when you’re driven to do something for no other reason than it’s the right thing to do. It’s not about pursuing any personal security, as that’s taken care of, and it’s not about wealth creation when you know that the more you give away the more you will receive, unless more wealth means the more you can achieve. Maybe the only way to get taken seriously in a plastic world is to be seen to be successful, but how they measure success in that plastic world is the problem.

Not long after that I was back building boats in Dandenong when I get a call from Phil to see if we wanted to present the little 2.3 with the servo motors I was working on, at TADSEM, (Technical Aid for Disabled Seminar). Yes, I will be there. So I prepared the servo boat, and drove to Sydney with my 3 demo boats.

We had the lime green servo 2.3 set up inside on stage, and a 2.3 either side of the entrance door outside. I was outside ready to answer any questions, can’t remember too much detail, but do have an image of a reddish-haired girl a bit younger than me taking an interest. After our presentation she came and asked me if we could get these boats on the water somewhere and she would bring some people to try them. She was the recreation officer from Weemala, a home for very severely disabled adults. “Weemala, where’s that?” I ask. “Up there in that complex with Murong and The Independent Living Centre, overlooking the Parramatta River,” she said. Of course we can have the boats available when it suits you, and arranged the coming Monday at Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron, Phil’s illustrious office.

Now I am/was a very shy person. I’d spent most of my adult life hiding behind a mask of alcohol, so I didn’t know much about how to handle girls. But I did know that to pull off this project I had to have a partner, a lover, essential for several reasons, it’s only natural and, to promote a thing like this, which is based on love, I’ll need to be in love myself. And I’d be working with girls everywhere, as they are the mums and carers who would be vital to our success, and it wouldn’t work if I was left wondering and trying to find the one. I’d be a pest, to say the least.

Plus, being very pragmatic, I needed a confidante, a travelling companion, someone to help with our presentations because back then I was hopeless.  And it didn’t seem logical that we would need to sleep in separate rooms – what a waste of money – so obviously there must be the missing lover coming my way soon. Plus I’m a social misfit, awkward with kids, can’t do small talk conversation, so a socially adept partner to hide behind was essential. So ideally spirit would have the perfect partner sorting out her previous life and making her way into the story.

So here am I wondering who she may be when this red-haired recreation officer appears, from the same complex Chris Sparks said the future secretary worked. Same place but a different girl. And she introduces herself as Jackie Jacka.

Wow, that’s flying a flag. That’s the same initials as one of the guy’s who inspired my Spider-Man leap in Bangkok. So I’m all ears. “Yes ma’am, we will be there on Monday. What time suits you?”. But that’s not saying I’m cold and  calculating, it’s just so obviously logical. It’s just a different way of looking at things. Magic is everywhere, so is love. When you live in the middle of it miracles become the norm.

So TADSEM was a very important event. Not only did Jackie step onto centre stage, so did Barny and Pam Barnbrook, the parents of Amy, who were launching their respite resort in Narooma, and Lynne Phillips, who brought in Allan Jones. Octogenarian Allan is still with us at every major event racing a 2.3.

Monday at Royal Sydney was fantastic. I got a bit nervous when up there on a balcony looking down on us was a row of men in grey suits and one came down and asked “and what’s going on here?” But he was delighted with my explanation and brought the rest of the board of AYF down for a sail. And then there was Wynn Treasure, President of the AYF sailing around on Neutral Bay in a servo 2.3. Dressed in a suit. Imagine my excitement with all this supercharged symbolism going on around me. But that’s how spirit communicates, in symbols which only the spiritual student can see and understand.

Things then moved along quickly. Neil Anderson appeared and needed to run a community service project, which Phil arranged. Jackie brought a bunch of potential sailors. I brought a trailer of boats from Melbourne. Neil’s mate Paul Taylor came to help. And that was the start of Sailability Dobroyd, with Neil becoming President of Sailability NSW, Paul Taylor the Treasurer, which he still was 25 years later, and with Jackie as the Secretary.

Soon after I invited Jackie to come to Melbourne for a week and stay with me and Peg, and I told her the story of what was happening and where we were going. The opportunity was there for her, there was a business to run, state, national, regional and ultimately world championships, a class association, newsletters, a global movement, a mission. Partner with me to help make this happen. If she came on board she was in for the ride of her life.

The night before she went home we sat on the lounge room floor exchanging stories and I told her about her name, JJ, and its significance. To which she said, “Oh I’m going to change that.” Now that her marriage had broken down, Phil had helped her decide her new name. Her real first name was Kay, so she would turn that around and become Jackie Kay. Poor girl, with that I knew her fate was sealed. She didn’t know it yet but she was in for an incredible journey. If there was one letter in the alphabet which had dominated my life in Dhaka Central it was K.

In Bangladesh they speak Bangla, a derivative of Sanskrit. In Sanskrit the sound EK means One. Turned 90 degrees, the K pointing up, is the most fabulous symbol I know. The E is closed, it says 2, it’s mind, it’s below the line, it’s darkness. The K is above the line, it’s light, it says 3, it’s open and receptive to the ether. To me EK says One, E says 2, K says 3. This whole story is about having a foot in both those camps, the 2 and the 3, and I suspect that there, in this 1, 2, and 3 lies a source of the power of numbers.

Every boat I drew in Dhaka Central had a name which started with the letter K. For Jackie to change her name to Kay was extraordinary. We were obviously to be a team to do what needed to be done. We are like the 2 sides of the coin. We have never had an argument as there isn’t anything to argue about. We wouldn’t if there was, because we are both more concerned with looking after and protecting each other. I might be the bloke who builds things, but Jackie keeps things working. Masculine is active, feminine is passive. But that’s to do with mind and body. Soul is gender neutral, non binary. It has the best qualities of both.

The week before Jackie came to TADSEM she was staying with her husband and 2 children in Yamba, about 5 hours train ride south to Sydney. She had decided her marriage needed to be unravelled. The morning Jackie was to catch the train to Sydney she was awake before dawn, and sat on the grass outside in the sea breeze to watch the sunrise, and wrote this poem. As the sun rose from the Pacific Ocean the seagulls also awoke and came to join her with their contribution to this love story.

I used to say that life begins at 40, but realise now that’s more often true for girls as I learned from my own experience that boys can late maturers. In Jackie’s case it wasn’t the beginning as she already had raised 2 teenage children, but that morning she was 39 approaching 40 and having made some life changing decisions was heading off into her unknown, to meet me and board stage 3 of her life.

She called her poem “Insight” – April, 1995

The gull on the shore, she’s alone and forlorn, awaiting the light of the early morn.

She sits deep in thought on that lonely beach, hoping to meet a soul she can reach.

She sits all alone watching the ocean, wondering about life always in motion.

She looks at life in that deep blue water, content with answers her questions have brought her.

The day begins, the light is grey, the other birds wake and begin to play.

She sits on that beach watching the flock, hoping the other birds will not mock

Her path in life to total perception, her thoughts and dreams in quiet reflection.

But they laugh and criticise in their fears. She turned her head to hide her tears.

Far out to sea there is a storm. In strength of nature her passion is born. 

Far out to sea the birds are in flight, battling with the storm’s great might.

She sits on that beach watching the sea. And knows inside that she is free.

Free to be away from the crowd. Alone she’s free to fly high in the clouds.

The voice of her soul will always provide. A friends and ally to be her guide.
The light in her heart is brilliant white, it lifts her higher than the highest kite.
She knows at last what its like to feel. She knows at last this love is real.

Alone and forlorn she is no more.  In light and love her spirit does soar.

***

The success of Sailability NSW is built on it being right for its time. It was very deliberately independent of Yachting NSW, which would have stymied it in politics and the “specially-for-disabled-people” model. That might be what clubs and programs degenerate into, but it’s not where we wanted to start, and has never been the Hansa ethos where all our Class Association sanctioned events are open to everyone.

As far as we are concerned everyone is an equal, and encouraged to sail on their own if they can as there is something magical being the captain of your own little ship. It’s in the undulating motion as you punch through lumpy waves, driven by the wind. It’s therapeutic, and works to heal all sorts of inner troubles. You see vision impaired people beam with joy, kids who have been mute for years squeal and laugh, or it calms a usually agitated person. It breeds confidence, which grows from achievement, even if it’s sailing around in circles on your own.

The magic stems from giving people respect as an individual and not presuming you know their limitations. We hear all the time “no, our sailors can’t do that”, but how do you know if we never give it a try. The byline of SNSW may have started as “sailing for people with disabilities”, but within a year it was changed to “freedom n the water : regardless of ability”, which not long after became simply; “Freedom on the water”. There you see the positive evolution of the branding as awareness grew, but that’s because Jackie and I pushed it.

Following on from the Victorian AYF conference, Sailability groups were established in the other states and territories of Australia. We encouraged them towards the Sailing for Everyone model, with little success, as the world’s group-think is inherently polarised. It’s the way of the world, so the all encompassing oneness falls on deaf ears. In 2020 Australia had about 60 Sailability groups. Some stand alone, most are based at sailing clubs, most are a disability service, but a few are gloriously open to everyone.

It’s actually a very divisive subject and highlights deep-seated emotion- driven attitudes. It’s very interesting to observe who gets it, understands the concept and who doesn’t, and look back at who they are and what may have been their past which led them to who they are today. None of this is saying one is right, another is wrong. That’s polarised in itself, as the world is a kaleidoscope with millions of differing and opposing opinions as it is meant to be in this binary bubble. But instead of total chaos there emerges a political consensus as there is definitely a propensity to follow the same well-trodden group think path.

People don’t like change and they like to follow a leader, but in sailing it could be as simple as the mainstream running different programs to accommodate everyone, and when this new group forms its called disabled sailing. To which Hansa says, “Hang on, can’t you see that our boats are of Universal Design that everyone can use? Why do you have to brand them specially designed for the disabled ? Why can’t you use them at entry level for everyone so disabled people are simply included?”

***

Along the way Jackie and I stayed with the Harrison’s when in England and although they promoted what to us was the mildly “segregated” disabled model, as did Phil, we were all basically heading in the same direction of providing sailing opportunities which included disabled people. This was however the basic difference in our worlds. If you were mainstream within the MNA /ISAF pyramid you promoted disabled sailing, which in its way is segregation, whereas we talked about equality and inclusion. But Jackie and I worked in both worlds and later developed a boat for the Paralympics, the pinnacle of segregated, discriminatory, elite so exclusive disabled sport.

Whereas Sailability Australia was and is about disabled sailing, SNSW was envisaged to promote inclusion, but as mind is programmed to default down, so do institutions if they aren’t constantly lifted, urged and reminded that there are other more lofty ways to go. So SNSW has slowly gravitated towards the segregation model which seems the natural way of things, just as a river slowly meanders its way downhill to the ocean. If you don’t keep actively uplifting, reminding, expending energy, life will take the easy “natural” way. It takes an earthquake to change the tilt of the land, or big pumps if you want to reverse the flow of a river.

So where I was based in Victoria we created Sailing for Everyone (S4E), which quickly grew to 5 branches. Some were based at mainstream sailing clubs, where mainstream members would see the program as disabled sailing. Others were on small lakes and, unencumbered by mainstream thinking, were true S4E mini sailing clubs. But in 2000 a  key character appeared in David Staley, the commodore of a Victorian rural sailing club. He saw the value and possibilities of using mini keel boats of universal design as an entry level model for anyone. When David took over the role of Sailability coordinator in Victoria, I backed away from aggressively promoting S4E and David brought the two organisations together as the MNA sponsored “Sailability – Sailing for Everyone”.

***

Above the natural devolution of a program was compared to the gravitational flow of a river from the mountains to the sea. That’s an insight into why water in symbology speak is feminine, its passive. In relation to power its the negative pole ; whereas fire is its opposite, it’s active and masculine, and positive. Passive religion will bury its dead, its symbolic colour might be green. Active religion will cremate with fire, to release the soul, so its colour might contain yellow. But those are the thoughts of the mystics behind each religion. So I’ll let you into a secret as to why the mainstream don’t get, can’t see or understand the Hansa interpretation of inclusion. It goes right to the core of their being, to the meaning of 222.

The Oneness is the source of the universal energy, a Hansa is an individual non binary spark of this life giving force. It flies into the binary worlds where it gives life to a material binary body and it’s governing mind. A society of minds organise themselves into a community, finding a political balance between the numerous opposing pressures generated by its constituent binary minds. With such forces at play, it’s unrealistic to expect the committee, be it government or community group representing those minds to see back through the fog to their non binary home in the Oneness. They can’t seeing they don’t even know it exists.

So I doubt it’s possible for the mainstream to ever embrace the concept of non binary inclusion. In fact we can go further and suggest that by its very definition and nature the word mainstream means mediocre. How, on balance can it be anything else when so many of a society’s members are so easily led off on tangent, brainwashed, gullible, selfish, anti social, anarchistic people, free to do as they please, to those with straight out criminal intent. Whereas non binary inclusion is exceptional as its source is the true heavens, which unfortunately makes it unattainable by the mainstream mainstream and only found in niche organisations like the IHCA, where its vulnerable in a binary world and needs to be protected.

***

But back to 1995 when, soon after Phil Vardy became Sailability Australia coordinator, he applied for and won a Churchill Scholarship to tour the world to research the global state of disabled sailing. Phil had also sailed at Rutland in a regional championships where he had met Ian and Pauline Harrison, and John Morley, who ran Rutland Sailability. Rutland used Squibs, a 5.8m day sailor with red/tan sails, 4.8m or 16ft Sunbirds, and Challenger trimarans.

The Sunbird was an interesting boat, a little larger than a Laser, with a steel keel raised and lowered by a screw thread down a slot at its centre, turned by a winch handle. It’s an interesting boat because one was exhibited at the Vancouver Expo in 1986, and donated to Sam Sullivan in 1989. Sam formed the Disabled Sailing Association in Vancouver and later Don Martin was commissioned to design the M16 to replace the Sunbirds.

A Sunbird also found its way to Australia, and it was brought to me about the same time Sam and Don we’re developing the M16. Everyone seemed to think a 16 footer was the way to go, but I looked at our Sunbird and drew different conclusions to the Canadians. Where they produced the M16, I continued on with the 2.3, which at 8ft is half the length.

John Morley was so impressed by photos of the 2.3 and Phil’s description of what we were doing with it in Australia that he sourced funding from the Penny Wade Foundation for 6 boats, sight unseen. These boats were duly built at our Dandenong factory and shipped to Rutland in a 20ft container, and I arrived soon after to set them up and show how best they worked. I remember John and I racing each other across Rutland Water in a brisk 20 knot breeze, to have lunch on the other side. What a great little boat. Get to the other side, reef the sails, raise the keel, pull it up on the beach. Takes 5 minutes, then go to lunch. You can’t do that in a 16 footer with a ballast bulb keel underneath.

John and I discussed the best way forward, and decided we should find a local boat builder, and as is the serendipitous way of the Hansa, John was packing away the boats one day when Ron and Steve Sawford were unrigging their Dart catamaran. When John said we were looking for a builder, Ron and Steve were all ears, as here was an extraordinary opportunity for young Steve, who had been 8 years with Fairline, who build a range of expensive power cruisers. Steve had gone from apprentice to expert tradesman, and was ready to start his own small business. Ron was an old hand at business and after retiring had started and ran Teamwork, a NFP social enterprise which has 3 facilities, which in those days were called the now frowned upon “sheltered workshop”.

So I returned to England not long after as John Morley had lined up a few prospective builders for me to interview. But the only one who had prepared a business plan was Steve, or should I say Ron, as it was his business skills which would prove invaluable for Steve to get a start in his own business in conservative England.

With Steve Sawford Marine established, we shipped a container of 2.3 to GBR and unloaded them at one of Teamwork’s facilities, while all the new owners arrived with trailers to collect their boats. Steve was still at Fairline but would soon leave as next we shipped a container of laminated parts, rigs and joining jigs, and set up a sailboat assembly shop in Steve’s double car garage. Next step was import another load of parts, and patterns so Steve could make himself a set of moulds and begin full production.

It’s always been our way, out of necessity as no one had much money, to move slowly, venturing into the unknown with a flexible plan, leaving opportunities, unknowns, like holes in the story, inviting them to be filled by serendipitous things. I advised Steve to not rent a conventional small business factory in an industrial estate, but to find a shed out of sight near the local rubbish tip, with cheap rent and where no one would complain about the dust and smell of styrene, which brought him to a disused barn on a rural farm.

Around this time I was emailed by a Canadian named Keith Hobbs, who worked for the Canadian Federal Government, which is centred in Ottawa, a federal territory within the province of Ontario. Keith loved sailing. His kids all started in Optimists, moved on to Lasers as per the encouraged ISAF model. The biggest sailing province in Canada is Ontario, and Keith was on the board of OSA, the Ontario Sailing Association and had taken on the big volunteer role of disabled sailing, and established Able Sail as an OSA  program.

The internet was young then, but we must have had a presence as Keith found us. Keith’s job with the government was a researcher, preparing briefs for senior bureaucrats and politicians, so he knew his way around the internet. Keith was interested in our boats, as was a fledgling group in New Orleans, and someone at Yknot in Albany, and Bob Ewing at Footloose Sailing Association in Seattle. So we arranged a trip for me to North America: New Orleans, Albany in NY state, Ottawa, Seattle then back to AUS.

New Orleans looked like it might work, but in the end it didn’t, as we sensed they were only interested in getting hold of a boat so it could be copied. The people I was talking to at Yknot were keen, but that conversation dried up when other committee members who favoured the M16 became involved. Next stop was Ottawa where with Keith I was talking to a kindred spirit. We formed quite a bond which continues to today.

This trip was marred by being sick with what I thought was an enlarged prostrate, and a severe UTI. I saw a doctor in Albany who gave me some free sample medication which seemed to settle things down for the next leg to Ottawa in autumn, which meant it was getting cold and shivery for me in my fragile condition. I was imagining the worst so it was with trepidation that I discussed the situation with Bob in Seattle. Bob Ewing is a quad so knows a lot about UTI’s. He’s also a radiology equipment technician so he dealt with people fearing cancer every day. I asked Bob what was the radiologist’s process to investigate further, to hear it was “lie still on the table while an image is developed, to be followed by a needle inserted through your back, into the prostate to collect a sample of tissue for analysis”. Well I wasn’t rushing into that and getting caught up in the USA health system, so I just stored this information.

Back in Australia I asked my brother, who is a doctor, “What do you do in  this situation?” He said “Well, it depends. If you talk to a surgeon he will operate and remove the prostate, a radiologist will insert that needle  followed by ultra sound therapy, or other specialists will use chemotherapy and other drugs”. Jackie had recently been on a fast which had been really enlightening, so I asked Alec Burton, the doctor who ran Arcadia Health Centre, how he would treat prostate cancer, if that’s what I had. Alec’s solution of not eating for a few weeks and resting made sense to me. No knives, radiation or chemicals involved, so off I went to Arcadia for a 3 week vacation.

A serious fast like this isn’t something you do at home, unsupervised. The clinic has 10 bedrooms for fasting patients, so after unpacking my bags and settling into mine I was called to a consultation room where, after an initial physical inspection, Alec took a blood sample and showed me what it looked like in the microscope. There were red cells, white cells and cloudy carrier fluid with a lot of miscellaneous garbage suspended in it. Then it was back to my room, deliver a urine sample when I could, but that was it, treatment had begun.

This is a very logical process. If you’re sick, stop eating. Stop loading your body up with poor choices of food, and highly processed taste sensations of non foods, and your body will thank you. Now it can just get about fixing all the problems created by it having to deal with and process all the poisons it gets fed every day. Dr Burton told me that people mistake genuine hunger with their body crying out for nourishment, but instead of delivering what it needs, which are plain simple natural foods, it gets fed another load of garbage which needs to be disposed of, broken down, some stored, but  most just expelled.

The first 2 or 3 days you have a headache which is only withdrawal symptoms from tea and coffee, sugar maybe, but that fades away and so does any sense of hunger. In fact, once you decide you’re not going to eat, it seems your mind gives up prodding and reminding you about food and the concept of hunger ceases to exist.

Over the next 2 weeks I read books and watched videos about diet, lifestyle and fasting. You come away from there with the distinct impression that the western medical movement isn’t about curing anything, but only treating the symptoms of disease, and that much of the disease is caused by lifestyle and poor diet. It’s really quite logical. If you stop eating your body breaks down all those superfluous materials it’s stockpiled and uses them for energy and you pee out the waste.

Here’s a question: What do so called “dumb” animals do when they feel sick? Tuck into a 5 course over-cooked and spiced dinner with desert and finish off with cheese, caviar, cognac and coffee,? No, they aren’t mad, they go on a fast.

If you’re obese, with garbage clogging up arteries and veins, bits of which break loose and cause strokes and heart attacks, well, all that stuff gets burnt up for fuel. The body starts with the low-hanging fruit first, so stored  fat, an enlarged prostate, its gone in the first week. Stuff that causes inflammation, arthritis, scabs and sores, infections, they all disappear. Your tongue turns a fresh clean pink, your eyes start to sparkle, your mind becomes very clear and focussed. After 2 weeks you don’t have a lot of energy so the day’s stroll is reduced to only 100m. Every day a urine sample is taken, and when the nitrogen being excreted exceeds a certain level it’s time to stop as your body is starting to break down excessive muscle. For  me that’s about 3 weeks, for a really obese person it could be 50 or 60 days.

Unfortunately little research gets funded for fasting, as there is nothing in it for the pharmaceutical industry who spend their money developing new drugs to treat symptoms of disease, and wine-ing and dining the medical profession to encourage the prescribing of their products. There will be more about this elsewhere, but here is an example of the human race having things back to front, where the actual solution to many problems is freely available for no cost, but the whole system revolves around its own self- sustaining circle, which is funded by drug companies, supermarkets selling packaged and processed garbage, hospitals and old age retirement centres looking after the resultant damage, all sponsored by government which is after all supposedly there to further the will of the people.

So how can anyone or anything call a halt to that machine? Try it and you will be labelled a looney. How can the whole system have it wrong when, after all, we are told we have evolved from darkness and ignorance, to the present scientific enlightenment?

Unfortunately the whole thing is back to front as the naive simplicity of a baby is closer to the ultimate truth than the PHD graduate. The mindless drunk in the gutter can be closer to God than the priest in his pulpit. Maybe here’s another rendition of the truth behind 222, the way the human mind sees the world is upside down, back to front and around the wrong way.

By the way, religion doesn’t tell us the whole story here either, as their role is not necessarily to lead us to the truth, but to their own relative truth, codified in a book so you don’t go looking further. Religions with their Gods and  Devils are very much part of mind’s duality, at the source of it in fact, so their role is to actually prevent you from escaping their trap and identifying with the oneness.

So I’ve reached a stage where it’s obvious the whole thing is back to front. I suspect that if mankind does it then maybe we should take a closer look, as there will probably be a more sensible way. Take climate change, global warming, plastic pollution of the world. Is unlimited growth sustainable? Of course not. Therefore the concept of capitalism that we take for granted isn’t sustainable, well certainly not the model which says the shareholders come first, as shareholders are too far removed from the collateral damage their investments encourage.

***

Things are always evolving. New elements come into play, people come and go. So in retracing the evolution of our little boats it’s tempting to ask what if this happened instead of that. I have to assume that where we are today is where we should be, the situation today is the truth of the matter, so it’s interesting to look back at the timeline that got us here. After leaving Dhaka Central the thought was that Steve should go and live in the USA and manage our affairs in what was then about 25% of the world’s pleasure boat market. In the end that didn’t happen so the question is why, for which there will be many contributing factors, two of which are if it had worked it would have been too easy, we would have been too successful too fast, and this is actually my story, while Steve has his own journey to live. So, to cause the eventual outcome, Steve teams up with partner Jennifer, and they produced a baby boy. So Steve wasn’t going anywhere.

Steve had been heir to take over the family’s Garden of Eden business in far North Queensland, which would have been too easy for him too, so his involvement with our boats took him away from there to which there was no easy return, so when he moved away from the boats he had to make his own way, with all its unknowns. Interesting how we were both played off to lead us both on our own individual journeys.

But before Steve joined me in Dandenong I’d developed the 3 models of the 2.3, and responding to the need for something bigger, but not too big, I drew a plan for a 9 footer, a 2.7m long hull with a pointed bow, whereas the 2.3 is called a pram. So it’s close to being a 2.3 hull with a pointy bow. I followed the standard procedure which is building the pattern for this hull, made a fibreglass mould on the pattern, then laminated a hull in this mould.

I can’t remember exactly what was the plan, maybe there was no plan and I was being a bit cocky presuming that everything I touched would turn to gold. Well the 2.3 did, it was magic, but not this 2.7. It didn’t seem to have a purpose. A fantastic little hull which a few years later we turned into a very classy little sailing tender, but for now it was too short to add a sensible-sized jib, which is what I was trying to do.

So we decided to extend the new hull another 300mm, and turn it into the 303. To do that we cut off the stern and suspended it 100mm further aft, cut longitudinally into the hull about a metre to form “planks” about 100mm wide and extended them back to the newly positioned stern. You can then bend very flexible fibreglass battens around inside these extended planks and, using tie wire, wire the planks and battens together to create a reasonably fair shape. Anyway, you keep playing with it until it’s as fair as you can get it.

The bow is treated the same way, cutting it off about 100mm back to leave flanges to attach the “plank” extensions to and moving it out 200mm, attached on a piece of timber. Then the “planks” are cut, extended and wired onto the repositioned stem flanges. Next you wire on full lengths of electrical conduit under the rollover at the gunwale to make it all line up symmetrically.

This flimsy creation needs to be set up on a strongback, which is like a rigid table the length of the hull, upside down with at least 2 frames supporting the original hull, then with a string line down the centre you set about ensuring it’s symmetrical and prop up the ends to keep it all in shape. You can then grind off any obviously out of place protruding bits, then put a layer of chopped strand matt (CSM) and resin over the newly extended areas. Then turn this thing over and put a couple of layer of CSM over the inside of the extended areas which will tie all this together.

This new extended hull is pretty crude but you will be able to float it and see in actual practice what weight it will carry and where the sling seat needs to be. It was based on a 2.7 hull and we wanted to also base this new boat on the 2.3 wide deck, so the key thing to determine is where the seat should be, as that’s what positions the sailor’s weight.

The float test was positive. Well, it leaked like a sieve so it had to be quick, but there was enough length there for a 2.3W deck positioned about 100mm forward of the transom, which positioned the sling seat, with enough length forward of the mast for a jib. So back at the factory we took measurements off the 2.3 and crudely fitted tubes for a seat, a socket for the foremast to sit in, a cross piece of timber to support the mainmast, and a frame screwed onto the gunwale onto which we could clamp a piece of plywood to simulate the centreboard. Frank of Horizon made a main and jib to suit and we took this contraption for a sail, on a quiet protected lake as it in no way qualified as a seaworthy craft.

The key to this boat is it needed to have the centre of gravity of the sailors sitting in the seat as close as possible to the centre of buoyancy of the hull so it’s trim didn’t change much when it was being sailed solo or doubles. I mentioned this before about balance and trim but here it is again. If it doesn’t trim evenly it will change its balance when, say, the stern is weighed down and the bow is up, the masts rakes aft, taking the centre of effort of the sails aft with it. With the stern down the keel rakes forward, and you are out of balance and will have weather helm, meaning the boat has too much tendency to turn into the wind. You want a little bit of weather helm, but when steering with a short joystick you need to have the helm near neutral.

Our very crude prototype sailed well, way beyond what its appearance  would suggest, and it was obviously going to work, so we turned it upside down at the factory and Steve got to work filling, sanding and spraying the hull until we had it ready to laminate the hull mould. Next step is to make the mould, prepare it and laminate a hull.

Next step is set the hull mould up level in both length and width planes. Then we fitted into the newly laminated hull a 2.3W deck and console, keel case, filled in all the open deck spaces with foam and thin plywood, being careful to minimise excess weight as we wanted to simulate what a production boat might weigh. We also wanted to use the same sling seat, similar console, same keel basically but a little deeper, much the same cockpit as the 2.3, but it still needed to trim well as described and balance when sailing. There was a little bit of room to tweak the various elements, but the goal was as much commonality as possible across both 2.3 and 303.

The keel for the 303 was a 2.3 keel extended by 200mm and an extra 10kg  of lead shot, so we extended the 2.3 rudder blade 200mm. The mainmast went from the 2.3 at 4100mm up to 4700mm. The foremast was a standard length of 28.6mm diameter drawn tube, which is 5500mm long, cut in half to minimise waste. We tested this hull on Albert Park Lake in Melbourne and it was obvious we were on the right track. The extra leverage of the extended rudder blade caused the lower gudgeon on the rudder box to fracture, but otherwise all went well. So back to the factory to create a proper deck pattern in a new hull and produce a deck mould. Also needed was a new console mould, and moulds for rudder blade and keel.

At this stage our bobbins, reefing drums, mast ends and joystick holders were all made by hand in complex little moulds, as were the early fibreglass rudder boxes. So the next stage in our evolution was to have these parts produced in plastic. DMC is dough moulding compound, which is a polyester resin based fibreglass material used in compression moulding. Compared to plastic injection moulding the DMC process is labour intensive where heated steel moulds are loaded manually with the correct weight of pre-catalysed DMC which is then compressed to 150 PSI, which generates more heat which sets off the process and cures the part in about 3 to 5 minutes, depending on its mass.

Compression moulding is labour intensive but its moulds were cheap. It is good for small production runs of, say, 50 to 100 parts. Injection moulding produces parts in seconds so is used for mass production with a minimum run of, say, 500 parts, but its moulds were in those days expensive. So DMC parts were our next step up in plastic manufacturing from hand laminating.

Our rudder boxes were also upgraded, to resin transfer moulding. Here a mould is loaded with the glass reinforcement and the catalysed resin is pumped into the sealed mould, air exiting through a breather tube. The pump we used was simply a screw thread turned by a crank handle which pushed  a plastic piston down a piece of 100mm steam pipe. It all worked well for hundreds of rudder boxes, you just had to be careful to complete the process in a timely fashion, before the resin gels. The glass used is continuous strand, which stays in place where it’s laid in the mould.

The general purpose chopped strand matt glass is held together by a powder or emulsion which dissolves soon after being wet by resin, which means if its used in a resin transfer process it would flow along with the resin as it’s pumped into the mould, so you have to use continuous strand glass.

We didn’t apply gelcoat to the mould so we placed tissue under the continuous strand glass which gave a glossy finish to the rudder boxes. There are over a thousand of them still in use, some 20 years old. But they were a challenge to make and were superseded by the stainless steel cassettes which are bullet proof.

The first production 303 built is number 157. We were at the house of a prospective sponsor who owned a fish and chip shop in Drummoyne, a suburb of Sydney. George was toying with the idea and asked what number would be on the sail, we looked at our data base, 157, which was also the street number of his house. Ocean Foods was a jade deck with beautiful  jade sails with multi-coloured tile-shaped fish, as per his Ocean Foods logo and shop decor. Ocean Foods was a member of the fleet at Sailability Dobroyd where Jackie was the Secretary, Neil Anderson the President, Paul Taylor the Treasurer. Sailability Dobroyd to us is an icon as it was the first club to use our boats in Sydney, and SNSW was the backstop which kept my fledgling business alive and was the foundation on which Jackie set up the global Sailability network.

***

The major innovation introduced on the 303 was the foremast, so while we usually refer to the 303 as using a jib, technically it’s not, as the boat is a schooner, not a sloop. A sloop is a single mast sailboat with a main sail and one jib, whereas the definition of a schooner is that it has 2 or more masts with the tallest being the aft mast. On the 303 we call it a jib because that’s what it looks like, but as it’s on a mast not a forestay, a foremast which is heavily raked aft so the rig looks like a sloop with a jib.

I remember standing alongside one of the first 303Ws which we had on display at the Melbourne Boat Show. I was explaining the boat to Alistair Murray, who is the main guy behind Ronstan, the sailboat fittings manufacturer. Alistair’s eyes were scanning across its features, the cockpit, its seat and joystick steering, then up the masts, then jolt, hang on, that jib’s on a mast not a forestay, wow, this is a mini schooner. It’s really a simple thing to do and it has quite a few advantages over a forestay, and you can see quite a few other classes that would be much improved if they too were mini schooners, but strangely no one else agrees, or maybe they just can’t see it.

Parallel to what we were doing was 1), the development of the Martin 16 in Canada, and 2), the IFDS was being recognised as the peak international body for disabled sailing. IFDS was an incorporated association registered in the Netherlands, while on its executive committee was Reikus Hartzman, who was also on the IPC Sports committee, the body who evaluated and put forward the sports to be represented in the Paralympics. This gave IFDS the pathway for sailing as a demonstration sport in the 1996 Atlanta Paralympics.

Dennis Critchly, Woody and Phil Vardy represented Australia in Atlanta sailing the popular North American Sonar daysailer. When Sydney was selected for the 2000 Olympics, and therefore the Paralympics, and it was announced that sailing would be a medal sport, Phil, who had joined the executive of the IFDS, became the man on the ground sorting out issues with the Sydney Olympic and Paralympic organising authorities. So Phil was a busy guy at the centre of many things.

But between us there was always this constant tension, everyone was focused on disabled sailing while we were developing boats of Universal Design which everyone can use, so we were about “sailing for everyone”. Not that we weren’t interested in Paralympic sailing, we were and had vowed that we were going to work on changing the rules so servo assist equipment could be used in Paralympic and IFDs events, which would encourage more severely disabled sailors to participate. That was our gripe: here was an organisation purporting to represent disabled sailing, but it didn’t make it easy for quads or, as we soon noticed, people with an intellectual disability were also excluded.

We were always banging on about the need for another discipline in the Paralympics and set about developing a boat for the job. I had also toyed with building the Norlin Mklll 2.4 in Australia as it was one of the 2 Classes used by the IFDS, the other being the Sonar. I also considered building our own 2.4 and spoke with Alan Payne about the way forward. I visited Alan at his home. Phil Vardy came with me. He said to talk to John Swarbrick as he was the intuitive designer behind the Kookaburra 12m campaign which unsuccessfully defended the 1987 America’s Cup in Perth.

I also spoke to Andy Dovel who worked with Ian Murray, the front man for the Kookaburra campaign. Yes, Andy could produce a lines drawing and sail plan for a 2.4. So we had 3 options including the Norlin Mklll.

Like all the Meter Rule boats, the Norlin was a development class, meaning there was an equation into which you fed the measurement of key parameters, and the result had to be within 10mm plus or minus 2400mm in the 2.4 case. Other Meter boats are the 5.5m, 6m, 8m and the America’s Cup used to be sailed using the 12m.

But for events like the Olympics and Paralympics the boats all had to be identical so couldn’t be a development class, so the IFDS were going to have to select a design and tie its class rules down into a One Design Class.  So I wondered if we couldn’t produce a boat as good or better than the Norlin, could we get our boat selected and if so we would offer to supply an identical fleet for all the competing Paralympic nations.

In the end we dropped this idea as a miniature operation like ours couldn’t do everything, so it was either concentrate on the 303 or the 2.4, we didn’t have the resources to do both. So I went to Finland and learnt the tricks to 2.4 building. At least we could build the Norlin, or help find someone in Australia who could. We settled on this last option and got stuck into developing the 303, which eventually got selected as a Para World Class in its own right, as we will see in a later chapter.

Alan Payne died 3 months after our visit, and I feel honoured to have eventually met him as I wrote to him when I was a 10 years old dreamer asking him to design me a cruising boat, and he replied. What a gracious gentleman he was and I imagine he would have understood what our boats are about. I wish I still had his letter as it would be one of my most prized possessions.

Our first crack at a new prospective Paralympic Class was a single seat 303. Jackie had met Nava George, an ethnic Pacific Islander girl who was injured in a vehicle accident when she was 2 or 3. Nava is a quad who relies on a ventilator to breathe. She was also keen to go sailing. So we produced a single seat version of the 303 and built Pink Panther for her. Nava was the first ventilator-dependant quad to go sailing. She participated in our Australian National Championships and the 1999 USA National Championship at Clearwater and was on her way to Chicago to meet Oprah Winfrey when 9/11 happened and everyone, including Oprah, boarded that bandwagon and Nava’s appearance was cancelled. We had made several starts in the USA but they all fizzled out just like this one.

The 303S is an excellent boat for club use, but its J measurement is too short for a really effective self tacking jib, but OK for the 303W standard jib which overlaps the mast. The J Measurement is the distance from the forestay to the mast, which in our case is the foremast to the mainmast measured along the deck. The result is the 303S self tacking jib is too small to set in really light wind. Jump forward though to 2022 and we have produced a vertical batten square top jib for the 303 which carries its extra sail area up top in the square top which feathers away to leeward in a strong breeze. So now the 303S does have an effective self tacking jib.

The original S also had slightly taller masts and a longer boom in an attempt to give it more sail area to be competitive against the 303W. Because you couldn’t shift weight to windward like on the W, it also had more ballast, and as it heels more I gave it 2 rudders. All this meant it’s a different boat and cannot pass as a member of the 303W class. I’ve since changed most of its difference to simplify it for clubs who need a single seater with servo gear for severely disabled people, but who can’t manage or store the next boat we developed, the Liberty, which has a longer J, so a bigger and more efficient jib.

That brings us to the Liberty, what many will argue is our best boat. The Liberty is 12 ft, or 3600mm long. Again, much the same beam as the 2.3 and 303, because it came into being by cutting off the 303 hull bow and moving it forward 18”, and moving the stern aft 6”, then fairing it in as was the process when the 303 itself was created from the 2700mm hull.

Again, there is no lines drawing for the Liberty as I never drew one. What a travesty, the greatest example of Universal Design in a sailboat, the easiest boat in the world to sail, a World Sailing recognised class, and it was never designed but based purely on gut feelings and intuition.

What makes the Liberty such a great boat are all its UD credentials. It’s based on our concave bottom hull like the 2.3 and 303, which gives added inherent stability, with its very secure deep narrow cockpit so there is nowhere to move, which removes the advantage someone who can move has over a strapped in sailor. Its got 60kg of lead ballast in its keel and you sit low in the boat so it has great stability. It’s deck angles up so when heeled to extremes it’s dry, but the sailor can still see out to windward, and heel she does in big winds, so there are 2 rudders to ensure directional stability and complete control in 25knot winds.

The bottom is again concave so it loves to surf. It’s easily reefed and has a self-tacking, self-vanging, reef-able jib, so helm, main and jib are easily controlled by the servo system. The servo system is hidden away so you can’t tell if the boat is servo controlled or not, so it’s not obvious that the solo sailor is a quadriplegic racing against and beating able bods, if they’re good enough.

It’s also eminently storable and easily launched, as the keel is removable.  Eighteen Liberty fit in a 40ft standard container with minimal packing and lashing. It’s the perfect boat for Paralympic completion as it levels the playing field. It’s ideal for open competition as anyone can handle it, with add-on servo winches, so includes even the most profoundly disabled people.

Our boats are loaded with innovation, solutions out of left field which together deliver the quintessential universal design package. I can say that, and few will argue, because they don’t know what UD means, or why it’s central to our design philosophy. So they don’t know why UD should be taught at every architecture and design faculty on the planet, but of course it isn’t, as sensible things like that are not what we do here in our binary bubble.

***

The final piece of the Liberty’s innovative magic to reveal itself was how to make the jib self-vanging, self-tacking and still reef-able. I actually puzzled away at this for months, but in the end you don’t need a solution until you need it at the last minute, so you have to have faith that it will reveal itself just in time.

It was a real conundrum. We had on the 303 introduced this self-standing foremast instead of the usual forestay attached to the mainmast, which would of course prevent the mainmast from rotating, so the main wouldn’t be able to roller reef.

This was serious innovation in itself, but while the 303W jib overlaps the mainmast and has port and starboard sheets to control it, if you want to  make the sail work for people who rely on servo assist sheet winches then you need to have only one sheet. So it needs to have a boom or a wishbone, so the sail can’t overlap the mast, but you also need to be able to reef the sail on a rotating mast.

You can’t use a boom on the foot of the sail as when you ease the sheet the clew end of the boom will rise up, which spoils the full height aerofoil wing shape of the sail. So you need a wishbone which comes down off the mast to bisect the angle of the sail at the clew. But I couldn’t see how to do this and still allow the foremast to turn to roll up the sail.

Until just in time, the penny dropped as they say, we I woke up with an image of how it might work. I rose early and went to the factory and set up a foremast and sail, I took a 100mm long piece of aluminium rear seat tube and cut it lengthways and, as expected, it sprung open to form our first claw. I put 2 cuts in the centre and attached a length of cord which would be the downhaul and also to tie on a piece of 12mm tube which was to represent the wishbone, so it’s other end was tied onto the sail’s clew.

The theory was if this was set up so the wishbone was tied onto the claw, which could slide up and down the mast, with the claw and wishbone above perpendicular to the foremast, when the mast was rotated to roll up the sail the claw would automatically slide higher up the mast, and if you pulled down on the downhaul it loaded up the wishbone and flattened the sail. So it worked as a vang, keeping the sail in its aerofoil shape, and could be controlled by a single sheet.

I set this up and gingerly pulled the reefing line, and whoopee, it did exactly as imagined. This self-vanging, reef-able “jib strut” as we call it, really is an important innovation as it turns the Liberty’s downwind into a giant model yacht which automatically seeks out the wind, and goose wings when running with it.

The sail being pushed into shape by the strut meant a very small winch could manage the sheet load, so with the right winch drum diameter and speed the main and jib could be synchronised to be trimmed together by a forward/backwards movement of a dual axis joystick, the left/right axis doing the steering.

Universal Design says rig adjustments need to be kept to the minimum as every control line an able bodied sailor can adjust disadvantages the sailor who is reliant on winches. Winches add weight, as do the batteries, plus the electrics are very sensitive to moisture. Winches are also less nimble at sheet adjustments than strong hands and arms, so when we see a quadriplegic sailor cross the finish line first in an open fleet, beating the best able bod sailors it says 2 things: they are a very good sailor, and what a fabulous sailboat is the Liberty as it allowed this to happen.

***

The impetus for a 3rd discipline in the Paralympics moved into the offical realm when Phil Vardy woke up one morning and realised that the IFDS had been too focused on athleticism, and not enough on participation. He then prepared a presentation for the next IFDS Worlds, to be held in 2002 in Medemblik, where the attendees would be the world’s elite disabled sailors, their coaches and administration officials. It sounded like a good idea to us, but Phil got howled down and ridiculed as the last thing the precious group of sailors wanted was their pool of funding diluted by a new class and the inclusion of severely disabled sailors. But over time the IFDS executive committee moved it along, with Serge Jorgensen as the new President who took it on as a project.

Meanwhile the M16 at 16ft and 3 times the cost of our 12ft Liberty set about turning their boat into a two person craft, or 2P, and were trying to match our global expansion, a lot of which was through the Sailability network. Here’s a recap of the background.

Ian Harrison, the founding father/president of IFDS, had passed his fledgling Sailability over to become RYA Sailability, and Campbell Rose had at the same time introduced Sailability into Australia as the disabled sailing initiative of the Victorian branch of the Australian Yachting Federation, the AUS MNA (reminder: MNA means Member Nation Authority, being the national member of International Sailing Federation or ISAF, which in 2015 changed its name to World Sailing), so it’s not surprising that the Australian Sailability model was also based on disabled sailing.

But as the RYA had taken over the name in GBR, and developed a new logo, Ian’s old logo was used in Australia. And so it was that Jackie asked Ian if he would mind if we used that logo to promote the Sailability movement world wide, to which he agreed, though we would be promoting the inclusion model. As new groups were established around the world they were encouraged to develop their own logo which embodied their own national identity.

In 2020 there were 3 RYA Sailability international affiliates: Hong Kong, Dubai and Antigua, and 35 Sailability which Jackie assisted.

The phenomenal growth in participation that followed would subsequently be used by the IFDS to demonstrate to the IPC how disabled sailing was indeed a viable, flourishing, growing sport and deserved its place in the Paralympics. Periodically Jackie supplied IFDS with our development numbers, new nations and start up programs, general participation numbers in each nation and participation in our national and regional competition events. Ours was a grass roots people’s movement so our numbers were added to the Sonar and 2.4 events run by IFDS in conjunction with the participating MNA’s.

This arrangement worked well and to us was quite legitimate as although we ran open events we were a feeder into the IFDS’s elite disabled sailing. But something went wrong years later when the IPC decided they would only accept numbers of actual IFDS sailors competing in the actual Paralympic classes, which would show there were only 2 or 3 hundred sailors from 30 nations participating, and sailing was rejected from the Paralympics. To us it was not really surprising as we have always said a good Paralympic boat should be a good development boat, easy to manage both on and off the water to encourage new nations to participate.

If you ask elite sailors which boats should be used in the Paralympics you will be told, not surprisingly, the boats they like to sail, not boats that will attract new nations. In an effort to be reinstated in the Paralympics, Para World Sailing (the name of the reformed World Sailing disabled sailing committee), ran trials to select more people-friendly boats and the 303 was successful. Kieler Woche 2017, (or Kiel Week in English) the WS Olympic and Paralympic Classes regatta held in Kiel, in northern Germany, was the first PWS Worlds where the 303 featured.

At Kiel between races I was talking to an experienced Sonar and 2.4 sailor who has also sailed extensively in our boats. The conversation was going surprisingly well, we discussed the merits of the 303, but then he looked at me as if puzzled at something I’d said, to finish with “but the 303 isn’t a Paralympic boat, no way”. And there lies the problem, and is part responsible for sailing being kicked out of the Paralympics. The boats used are too complex and technical, and newcomer non-professional-sailor nations can never get up to speed to be competitive and win. This subject, and the other reasons for sailings expulsion is covered in greater detail in the next chapter.

***

But back then following the Sydney 2000 Paralympics there was movement to introduce a new Paralympic discipline which was more accessible so higher levels of disability were also included. We were promoting a single person (SP) discipline, and the M16 was now a two person (2P) as they couldn’t match our extremely efficient 12 ft Liberty. The IFDS were caught in a difficult position as to choose one or the other would have opened a political can of worms, the MNAs of North America and England versus our independent world, so decided to host test events for both these new disciplines.

In 2004 we ran a Liberty SP Worlds for IFDS classified disabled sailors, where all these solo sailors had to be either Functional Classification System 1s or 2s. The venue was Blairgowrie Yacht Club, on Port Phillip Bay in Australia, while the M16 ran a 2P Worlds a few months later in Florida.

The Liberty was a new, untried boat so we didn’t know what to expect. Our event was part of Sail Melbourne and we were very fortunate to be hosted by a sanctioned World Sailing Olympic and Invited Classes World Championship event. When this event was scheduled the Liberty was still being refined, so the fleet of 20 boats were still to be built, and all were to be servo assisted, but the system was still under development. This was quite a leap of faith for all involved.

There were 3 clubs contending to run the event, Geelong, Brighton and Blairgowrie, all of which had the facilities, but Blairgowrie won as it’s on the southern end of the huge Port Phillip Bay and geographically offered us a better chance of more manageable weather conditions. Brighton is a great club but would almost certainly get hit by a Southerly Buster with a 40-knot- plus front with 30 knot winds on at least one day of a 7 day schedule, and Geelong was open to wild gusty 30 knot northerlies in summer.

Blairgowrie, on the other hand, was 50 km away to the south and those vicious northerlies turn into a pleasant 10 knot sea breeze by the time they have crossed the bay, and the wild southerlies that could have created havoc at Brighton are offshore at Blairgowrie, so with a fleet of untried boats, all with severely disabled solo sailors on board, we thought it prudent to play it safe.

We had run a one day test event with 10 Liberty at Docklands, where it actually was gusting northerlies with a peak gust of 47 knots at Melbourne’s airport, but at Docklands we only got about 40 which was managed by heavily reefing all the boats, and it was in a protected harbour so flat water. But we didn’t know what would happen in 25 knots with 2m short steep seas on the bay. As it turned out it didn’t matter, as the Liberty could handle it.

Three weeks before the event, which started on the 13th of January, it was Xmas so everyone was on summer holidays, everything was prepared and I had nothing to do. So I spent the days and nights pondering all the “what if” scenarios, and making adjustments. The boats would carry lead ballast to bring the minimum sailing weight up to a yet to be determined number, which depended on the weights of all the sailors, so I had prepared half a ton of lead shot in 1, 2, 5 and 10 kg bags. We had built a 6 boat trailer, we had inspected and booked all the local accessible accommodation which Jackie had vetted and booked on everyone’s behalf, so we were fully prepared.

Our friends arrived from all around the world, the club had prepared its side superbly, we moved all the boats on site and rigged them ready for the practice race day, which blew in at 20 to 25 knots. Well here we go, this is make or break day. All the boats were out racing, including Andrew Hartley, who had broken his neck as a 20 year old playing rugby and was the first ventilator reliant quad to ever compete in a world championship, in any sport.

I always stay on shore at an event, at least until everything is settled, as boats sometimes come in needing assistance, when heading back into the marina at speed came Charlie Simpson’s RIB. He was head of the IFDS classification team, behind him came an orange Liberty. I was nervous, what could have happened. I gingerly asked Charlie, “What’s wrong?” to which he replied, “Absolutely nothing, I’ve never seen anything like this before, these boats are amazing, it’s blowing 25 knots out there and I’ve just come in to film Zoltan’s cockpit because I think it’s  dry.  It should be swamped. It’s unbelievable.” Well,  that was it. If you start off on a high like that it’s all over, the event was going to be a success.

The #1 highlight of Blairgowrie for me though was Zoltan, who had married his Hungarian schooldays sweetheart in a ceremony out on Bradley’s Head in Sydney a week earlier. He was leading the fleet, concentrating on eating his lunch, while surfing down waves toward the bottom mark. Close behind was Peter Thompson, fresh from competing in his 2.4 Worlds a few days earlier. Peter was Australia’s leading 2.4 Paralympic sailor, and he was employing every mind trick he knew to convert every quantum of energy into forward motion, but he couldn’t catch Zoltan, as Zoltan was embroiled in a state of love, soul was in control of his boat, not mind; his hands moved the joystick and adjusted the sheets activated by an impulse, like intuition, while his mind concentrated on feeding his face with a sandwich. I’ve explained that scenario to Peter, and Zoltan, but I’m not sure they agreed with my explanation. I think Zoltan won every race in his division.

Another highlight was sitting on the deck at the end of the wharf with Phil Vardy while the last race was being sailed. We had done it, the boat was a sensation. Fleet A was 13 FCS 1s, (Functional Classification System) so they were all quadriplegics and sailing full servo assist. That is, steering and both main and jib sheets controlled by winches via a dual axis joystick, including Andrew Hartley, who was also breathing via his ventilator.

Fleet B was 9 FCS 2s, who were either incomplete quads like high level Cerebral palsy or high level paraplegics, who were either sailing manually or used partial servo assist, which is steering manually with power assisted sheets to adjust the sails.

It was a euphoric but drained feeling sitting out the end of the pier with Phil. Last race, light breeze, nothing can now go wrong, it’s what you feel when a huge emotional and physical challenge has been achieved. So much can potentially go wrong when you strap a disabled person into a sailboat you have designed and built, and sold the concept that it can be done.

That night was the prize giving and closing ceremony, always the best part as the job is done, and immediately you start planning the next adventure, which in this case was another IFDS SP worlds to be hosted at Rutland in GBR in 2005.

***

There is always more than one side to a story, though ultimately there will only be one version of truth. There will be a lot of options along the way, so discrimination is about which ones to choose, with a lot of events playing themselves out leading to more choices, or cancelling themselves out, but ultimately revealing the truth at the full stop at the end of the sequence. But that full stop is more than an end as it’s also the start of the next cycle, because there is always one more. For those who play a musical instrument they see this all the time as an octave says eight, but it only has 7 notes, so number 8 starts the next sequence.

You can see cycles in everything if you look, and so it is regarding which boats should be chosen for the Paralympics. We of course thought it should be our Liberty, a minimal-size development sailboat, easy to handle, transport, and store: what’s needed to bring new nations and sailors on board. It needs to be of universal design, so it provides equity and includes more severely disabled people, with the overriding principle of never use a bigger boat than you need to do the job, or you are just wasting everyone’s money, and the planet’s finite resources. Though the negative there is the smaller the boat the more weight sensitive it would be, which is where weight equalisation regimes and compromise come in.

Those considerations should have been in the brief given to the evaluation committee, but logic is only a part of it as there are the interests of boat builders, unimaginative gatekeepers like conservative administrators who are coupled to MNA’s looking after their national interest, and the self-interested current sailors who think they should be the first to be listened to. Let’s say it’s 50% politics, unless you have an outstanding boat, which we did, but the first determination was not which boat, but was the new discipline to be SP  or 2P?

I was in Sydney for a few days and left Jackie’s house on Sunday morning to drive the 900km to Melbourne but had only been driving for 20 minutes when I pulled over to sketch a boat I’d been mulling over. I used “mulling over” instead of “thinking about” as thinking denotes an activity of mind and I doubt that’s where this inspiration came from.  After all it’s a vision, a picture you can see, which needs to be sketched so you can think about it, and embellish the picture. It’s a combination of using physical, mental and etheric tools. It’s nice to get that trinity working together, consciously, it’s possibly the secret to very elegant and efficient design.

It’s easy to use the word genius to describe people like Einstein or Beethoven, but imagine what those guys could see or hear beyond the normal power of mind. We can ask what drugs was Beethoven on when he “composed” his 5th piano concerto, had he artificially tuned in to an etheric world, or maybe he was just listening naturally to some heavenly music. I prefer the latter in Beethoven’s case, it’s how it worked in his golden age of music. So where’s it gone, why don’t we have composers of his awareness these days?

So I pulled over and sketched this boat. It would be around 16 to 18 ft, wide beam as it had to plane, wide radius’d stern curving forward to a straight vertical stem on the front, a shapely sort of cone so it could heel over and  still sail in a straight line. With 2 rudders of course so it would stay under directional control on extreme angles of heel. When upright or flat it would plane, when heeled over 15 degrees it would still plane as its underbody had a constant curve. When heeled to 30 plus degrees it would sail along a narrow hull with a point on the front and a point at the back at the leeward rudder. The windward rudder would be way up in clear air. It was a symmetrical wedge shape compromised to give sufficient buoyancy to support the weight, but flat enough aft to plane when moderately heeled.

Because heel it will, as unlike skiffs with trapezing crew, our crew, because of mobility constraints would be confined to seats near the centreline. So a good UD boat has to sail in a straight line with little weather helm when at extreme heel. With long thin boats that’s easy, but wide planning hulls are usually sailed flat.

That was the theory anyway, so I’d only been gone 20 minutes from Jackie’s house this Sunday morning when I rang her on my mobile and said we are going to build a planning 2 person skiff-like hull with asymmetric spinnaker to hedge our bets just in case the IPC wants a 2P instead of the Liberty.

Whereas back in Singapore I’d used numbers divisible by 3 to bluff my mind to rest as I ventured into an illogical world to explore a vision, back in Australia I’d go driving with mind lulled into serenity driving the car, physical eyes on the road, but I’d consciously see the thing, the vision I was working on. These days I might have a number of projects on the go, some of which are vague concepts. Australia is perfect for this as it’s got good roads and sparse population, so I head off on a long drive, put on some modern classical music I’ve collected for the purpose, once on the open road I go right, where are we, and run through the various projects. Where are we up to with that. No breakthroughs at first, but when least expecting it, there’s something new.

If a project gets stuck it pays to throw all the cards on the table and ask for a new beginning, a clean slate, and run different ideas till they reach an obvious negative that kills it, but as you drift in and out of reverie then bingo, when least expecting it, there it is, some new strand to follow.

So the key is “least expecting it”, when mind is inactive and you are awake and aware as consciousness with an open channel to the ether. That’s one way I use to engineer a breakthrough, but everyone will have their own stairway to heaven. What I’m trying to do is describe the mechanics of it, to describe what mind cannot see, which can only be experienced when mind is still, which is nearly impossible for most of us, so I play its game and catch it off guard. Because that’s what mind is, it’s actually the gatekeeper, it’s the lock that keeps us in place, it prevents us being aware of and escaping into the oneness where we actually belong. That’s one of its jobs, until you have earned the right to your freedom.

***

I’d seen a wide symmetrical shaped keelboat in a marina in Melbourne and asked Frank our sailmaker what boat it was. Spirit of Downunder, designed by Gary Cameron, an aeronautics lecturer who designed radio-controlled model yachts. Not a bad boat, Frank said, he had made her sails. His only problem with her was she didn’t develop weather helm when overpowered. Excellent I thought, weather helm is a real negative when you are going to steer a sailboat with a very short lever like a joystick.

I contacted Gary and he called into our factory one day and brought an A4 print of a lines drawing of a 5.5m Trailer Sailer he designed for another sailmaker and 2 had been built. It was extraordinary as when I held the A4 drawings of my sketch and his symmetrical Trailer Sailer up to the light, overlaid one on the other, they were in concept the same. There on the side of the road a few weeks earlier I’d imagined and sketched a very basic version of his symmetrical concept, at the same scale to match his A4 print. It convinced me we were on the right track.

About this time I got a phone call from Serge Jorgensen, the President of IFDS, to say the IPC had decided on a 2P discipline so the Liberty was not going to be considered, and suggested that I continue developing the 2P boat I was working on. It was now a serious situation as we weren’t about to lie down and give up, because that would have left the M16 to talk to the MNAs and shut us out, whereas we actually had the boats the sailing world needed. Boats which appealed to non sailors, boats the sailing industry needed to use if it was ever going to turn around its decline and change its image. But looking back at that statement from the future, we see now that sailing couldn’t take up that opportunity so didn’t reverse its decline as the image of elitism and luxury is ingrained into one of its assets.

So I followed up on the symmetrical form and asked for a design which we would build as a development project with Australian AusIndustry funding. Gary did produce for me a lines drawing which I meant to pay for, but didn’t as circumstances changed, a memory and regret I’ll take to my grave. On the next trip to Sydney we were at the Sydney Boat Show talking with Julian Bethwaite, who is the front guy for the Olympic 49er, 29er and other Bethwaite Classes. I ran the project past Julian who said the symmetrical concept was a hole in the water not a performance planning hull, and he could get his naval architect partner, Martin Billoch of Argentina, to do something much better.

I had contacted the sailmaker who had built the 5.5m TS to Gary’s design and he said quite emphatically that a symmetrical hull form was probably not a good idea for a retractable keel sailboat for disabled people as with the keel up this type of hull form has very little form stability. It’s round underneath so is the opposite of a fat bottom barge in that it has little resistance to rolling over. That’s not an issue with a fixed keel but on a retractable keel on a TS or what I was considering it would be a problem.

So over the next few weeks I emailed Julian the specifications of what was needed. LOA – must fit inside 20ft container. Beam – 2300mm max, again must fit container. Draft – can stand 1750mm, ballast – 150kg. J  measurement – 1700mm approx as we needed a long cockpit for potentially 3 crew. Mast height – 7200mm above deck, enough to not look dorky. 2 rudders. Self draining cockpit. Displacement including 2 crew – 600kg. We paid a 50% deposit and a couple weeks later duly received preliminary drawings. Looked good. Made a few changes, received a file of full size offsets which we got printed at a plan printer and got to work.

We set the MDF stations up on a strong-back and planked them with 8mm PVC foam planks made by joining foam sheets end on on 3 sheets of white melamine coated chipboard taped together on the factory floor. The foam sheets were sheathed both sides with 160gsm surfboard cloth and then cut into 50mm wide x 7metre long planks. When finished we turned the hull over and planked the deck.

When the deck was finished we separated hull and deck, removed most of the MDF frames, added the keel case, bulkheads, made 2 rudders and keel, made a pattern for the ballast and had a 150kg bulb cast, made a cradle, bought an old boat trailer on eBay, took the hull and an extended 29er mast around to Frank’s where we stepped the mast and took measurements and designed a sail plan on the spot on Frank’s SailPro design program. That’s a long sentence, but that’s how it went, each step quickly followed to get the job done in a hurry as we had a deadline to meet. 

When the sails were ready we took the boat down to Royal Yacht Club of Victoria, craned her in and went for a sail in a gusting 20knot northerly. She worked pretty well, was fast, highly manoeuvrable, stood up well in the breeze. Frank was impressed, so what was I to say.

We had built in a long keel case which gave provision to move the keel back or forward to get rid of excessive weather helm. There are many factors which affect this longitudinal balance, but generally, if we reduce it to near zero at this stage of development there are plenty of options to fine tune it later. Already I’d added 200mm to the hull aft and a 100mm bowsprit out the front to make the jib bigger and create a better way to attach the forestay bow fitting. As long as the hull was maximum 5900mm it would fit in a 20ft container.

We had built a sailing prototype so now needed to strip off all the fittings and prepare the hull to laminate its mould. We did that then laminated a hull in the mould, fitted bulkheads to support the deck, then cut the deck off the sailing prototype and fitted it onto the hull in the new mould. That’s then filled, shaped, sanded until perfect then polished and a mould made on it.

All that work was to build the hull and deck moulds, the patterns on which they were laminated are then rubbish so are cut up and thrown in the bin. But we now had the hull and deck mould and could build an actual light weight hull in foam sandwich and see what it would do.

***

While all this was going on we published a Telltales newsletter which described the lengths I’d gone to to ensure a quad strapped into a seat on this UD Skiff we were building would be safe, even if the boat was knocked down, another boat sailed in over the rig and the hull got pierced and the buoyancy chamber was filling with water. So the boat has huge side deck buoyancy chambers with 600 litres of foam inside, enough to support everything in the worst case scenario.

I think that was taken as a shot across the bows of the M16, which was a single person fore and aft rigged boat converted into a 2P and a spinnaker added. The trouble is, as soon as you hoist a spinnaker you have to presume you are going to be knocked down, so you’d better prepare for it. I don’t think the M16 was actually thought through like that.

In the same newsletter Jackie wrote about gifting a Liberty to Princess Anne, the Patron of RYA Sailability, to be used at Weymouth, and how she was incorporating and formalising Sailability International as a home for the 20 or so Sailability groups she had helped establish around the world.

The next thing a website appeared in the UK called Sailability International, which purported to be a site researching and testing equipment used for disabled sailing. It had a number of stories about our boats capsizing and had doctored pictures of masts poking out of the water, obviously suggesting a sunk Liberty or 303 on the bottom. The owner of the site was involved with the M16 Class in the UK so things were getting dirty and we were obviously in for a war. With that my mission changed from building the best boat for the Paralympics to building the best boat to stop the M16 being selected.

In December 2004 the IFDS organised a conference in Holland called YES, Young Enabled Sailors, which we attended. So did the guys promoting the M16. On the first day Serge, the President, arrived late and was probably jet lagged as he suggested in his presentation that this website with phoney pictures of sunk boats was a good reference for anyone researching boats suitable for disabled people.

Jackie was pretty upset. We were tired of not being taken seriously by the mainstream, particularly as we were the growth in accessible sailing and our participation numbers were helping keep the ship afloat. So we expected the IFDS to denounce the nonsense being published on this phoney website. Serge is one of the good guys and quickly saw why Jackie was upset and we all moved on.

We stayed to the end, but it was raining most days, which added to the gloom, while the prospect of running our second Liberty IFDS Worlds at Rutland looked pretty ominous as we felt it would likely be sabotaged by the other side in our war. We still didn’t know which discipline would be selected for the Paralympics. It’s an adventure in itself to watch how these situations play themselves out, when things aren’t going your way and you consider throwing everything in and get it all over at once. Even at the airport we were last loaded instead of first, which is unusual for someone using a wheelchair.

It was an Air Italia flight, so most of the passengers were Italian going home, but the staff in Holland were Dutch, and uncharacteristically they seemed to be poking fun at the last of the Italian passengers as they boarded, behind their backs, while we were behind their backs watching. I’ll repeat here a sentence from chapter 3. “Spirit can play extraordinary games with people, so be aware (or is that beware) we can all be played like puppets, and won’t know anything about it”.

We landed in Rome and rolled out into another world, it was warm, the Italians were warm. We were met by Luigi and Gabriela who took us 100km south to Sabaudia and checked us into a hotel and left. It was late, around midnight. They’d be back in the morning to take us to breakfast. We didn’t know where we were but could hear the waves outside so we opened the window and shutters and there we were, on the Mediterranean with a warm sea breeze, gentle waves breaking on the beach glistening in the moonlight. It was obvious what it was telling us, there will be the perfect place to run our worlds here in Sabaudia, we will be shown this tomorrow. That’s the excitement of it, and it should be a reminder when your down and feeling defeated, hang on as you know the solution to the problem is about to be revealed.

So next morning we went to Luigi’s sailing school on a little lake on the canal, in behind the 1000ft high monolith that was dumped there on the coast during the last ice age. San Felice Circeo is a small city named after Circe, (pronounced like Chirr chee in English), the witch who turned men into swine in the Latin version of Homer’s Iliad. She lived in the caves on the mountainous monolith above. The old city, with its Templar’s fort, is up there on the monolith and overlooks the marina below.

The sailing school lake was a delightful spot, the canal was both natural and man made and used by Roman ships as a safe passage up the coast to Rome to avoid pirates, which was surprising as I’d have thought the mighty Roman Empire could have policed its coastline better so close to its home port. The small lake worked for Luigi’s sailing school, but would be too small for our fleet-racing Worlds. The marina however was open to the Mediterranean, the marina office was registered as a yacht club with the FFV, the Italian MNA, so it could act as the organising authority, while the marina carpark was huge, with plenty of room for the marquee and tents we would need.

Nearby was a hotel owned by the church which was once a monastery and still had an active chapel open to the public. We could have the whole place, all 50 rooms, at 65 Euros per day per person, full room and board. So by the end of day one all was revealed and we were obviously moving the 2005 IFDS Single Person non- technical Worlds to Sabaudia, Italy.

***

Don’t know the exact date, but around April 2005 I was working in the yard of our house near the Dandenong factory when I received a phone call from Serge who called to tell me first hand that the IPC and IFDS had decided the new Paralympic event would be the 2 Person discipline. There was something about how they already had a 1 and 3 Person events which might have a nice symmetry, but was going to prove a big mistake when 12 years later sailing is excluded from the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics.

We were however committed to our 2005 IFDS non-technical SP Worlds even though this wasn’t to be the new Paralympic class. The event was destined to be a great success.

We still had some of our Blairgowrie 2004 Worlds boats, so built new ones to bring us back to the optimum of 18 to fill  a 40ft container. It turned out that the Liberty is perfect to stack in a container as they jam each other in and need little lashing. First you wrap 3 hulls in bubble wrap and stack them on one side 3 high, upside down with sterns against the back wall. Next wrap 3 more and stack them up the right way, bow in first.

Because of their geometry, these 2 stacks of 3 jam each other in tight, no need for lashings as they can’t move, but just to make sure, and to get rid of 6 keels, 3 keels are lashed together and stood up at the back wall before the 2nd stack of boats are brought in. Then after the 6 boats are in position, 3 more keels are tied together so they stand between the 2 stacks. There’s a rope placed between these 2 towers of keels which pulls them toward each other, the keels pressing on the gunwale fenders of the hulls, pushing the hulls outward against the container walls, locking everything, including the 6 heavy keels, firmly in place.

That got rid of 6 boats and their keels, which is followed up with 6 more, and 6 more after that. The top hull on the 18th boat is the lock. If it’s tied back so it can’t slide forward, then they are all locked in place. This still leaves about 1500mm clear space at the door, and room above the boats for lightweight stuff and to lash bundles of spars up in the roof/wall corner. Wow! I didn’t plan the Liberty to stack and load like this, it arranged that itself.

So we got 18 Liberty in a container and on its way to Italy to arrive about 3 weeks before the event. In those days we were sponsored by P&O Nedloyd who gave us free shipping, free containers, they did all the logistics and paperwork. Bob Kemp, then General Manager of P&O Australia, told us that we did more community work than his entire organisation worldwide, so they were happy to help.

They also sponsored Australian Sailing and various Class Associations and shipped containers to their World Championship events, until one day the marketing manager of Australian Sailing rang Bob and complained that we were a For Profit business and shouldn’t be eligible for P&O sponsorship, to which Bob answered he would decide who was eligible, and cancelled all further Australian Sailing and its affiliated Class container movements as they had been rorting the P&O generosity. After that our relationship with the peak AUS sailing body sank to a new low as we still had our free shipping.

That arrangement continued till P&O was sold to Maersk which coincided with us moving our production to Batam, so Jackie and I were summoned to Singapore to meet with the Maersk management who gave us 10 free 20ft containers per year, an arrangement which lasted for a couple of years, until a local manager took over the office. She apparently didn’t share the love, was more focussed on profit and our sponsorship was cancelled.

***

Jackie and I arrived in Italy 3 weeks before the event and soon the container arrived so I set about preparing the boats and the pontoons we were going to use. That wasn’t hard as we only had 15 metres of pontoon so would need to be innovative. The event would be run out of marquees in the carpark, while everyone would be staying at the hotel owned by the church, where Jackie set about ensuring all the competitors had the right rooms and resources.

Jackie’s first week was working with hotel maintenance staff fitting handrails and ramps to suit each sailor’s needs. The second week was planning all the transport; who was coming from where, making sure that the appropriate vehicle and driver would be there to meet them. We had a variety of vehicles as our disposal: taxis, buses and vans with ramps or hoists. As we were about 100km south of Rome, everything needed to be planned to perfection, which it was. Our third week saw everyone arriving: the competitors, the race officers, the jury, classifiers and Pauline Harrison, who was the technical delegate.

As soon as Pauline arrived she took over management of the facilities at the marina, a great relief for Jackie as that wasn’t our area of expertise. This was the IFDS Single Person Non-Technical World Championships, where all the sailors were Functional Classification System (FCS) Ones or Twos, that’s high level paraplegic or quadriplegics.

This was a disabled sailing event. To run a world championship a class association must be a World Sailing recognised or affiliated class, which at this stage we weren’t, so the only way to run an official Worlds was through the IFDS who had been given the authority to run 5 Worlds per annum, which then were the 2 Paralympic classes, the 2.4 and Sonar, plus 3 others at IFDS discretion.

By 2008 we had our 3 classes, 2.3, 303 and Liberty recognised by World Sailing so ran our first Open Worlds in Whitby in Canada, but for now we worked with IFDS, so this effort in Italy was for disabled sailors only.

As we were about to get under way a huge low pressure positioned itself over Western Europe and it began to rain and blow half a gale. Day one was fantastic, it was blowing dogs off chains and pissing buckets of rain.

Somehow we got a course set, we got all the sailors in their boats, but having only 15m of dock frontage meant as each boat was loaded I took it over and tied it bow and stern between 2 ropes we had positioned. Eventually everyone was loaded and waited, it was quite a spectacle, I’ll call it the most colourful lineup of sailboats ever seen on planet earth. Well the most spectacular I’d ever seen.

It was bucketing down, there were waterspouts crossing the racecourse, it was 25knots of wind, but eventually we got the signal to release all the boats and send them out into these extraordinary conditions. I worked my way across the line of boats, unrolled and set the reefed sails, adjusted each, untied the bow, tucked away the bowline, moved across to the next boat’s aft deck, untied the first boat’s stern and pushed it off on its way, then repeat till all were gone. Maybe 60 seconds each boat, so all were gone in about 15 minutes.

Most of the fleet were servo assist which was all preset. These severely disabled sailors have to be applauded for being so trusting, sitting hunched over in their cockpits in the pouring rain, waiting to be pushed out into the raging tempest.

The start boat was Luigi’s 40ft modified accessible cruising yacht, which took on a lot of water anchored at the start line as waves were breaking astern and getting scooped up and washed forward through the cockpit, and down below. So, with pumps running and crew bailing out buckets of water to keep the start boat afloat, we got underway.

24 Liberty in total, most were servo controlled, deluged in rain, half a gale of wind, but no damage or casualties. It was very exciting with me watching from the shore, hulls disappearing behind what were huge swells for the Mediterranean. There was a lot of water on board each boat when they came back to the marina, but it was rainwater off the sails. We got them all back to the dock and unloaded in the rain. They ferried all the sailors back to the hotel while we secured all the boats rafted up along our short pontoon and between our two ropes.

When I got back to the hotel, absolutely saturated but overjoyed, in those conditions on day one we had actually got in a race, it was unbelievable. I went into our room to report this success to Jackie, but she was sitting up in bed shivering with fear and crying. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “It’s going so badly” she said. After all the work and preparation we were headed for a disaster. “Not so,” I said. These amazing boats had blown everyone away, against all the odds we had sailed a race and the stage was set for a huge success, which it was.

There is something to be said for housing everyone in the same hotel. Luigi had arranged entertainment each night, it was 65 Euro per day, full board, with as much tiramisu as you could eat. We stayed on after the event, went to Pompeii and did some tourist things. It’s always a great time when you can sit down and relax, in a sort of trance, and ponder how the hell did we ever pull this one off. But of course it was the atrocious conditions that made it so memorable, that demonstrated so clearly that the Liberty was an exceptional boat which was safe for the most vulnerable people in the most extreme conditions.

You would think the IPC would appreciate that concept, a sailboat of Universal Design that achieved a previously unattainable level of inclusion for disabled people, a game changer which lifted the bar and reset the standard to aspire to. But interestingly the IPC isn’t about that at all. It’s interest is not inclusion as it’s really just a huge bureaucracy which promotes segregated elitist discriminatory sport, whereas inclusion is in the opposite corner and would see many at the IPC headquarters out of a job.

***

But that heavenly outcome wasn’t to be, they had already decided on a 2P event, not an SP, so the Liberty was not in the running.  The two selection trial opportunities were set for the 2005 IFDS worlds in Denmark, and at the IFDS AGM 2005 held in November just prior to the ISAF annual conference in Singapore. We didn’t make it to Denmark as we would have had to airfreight the boat which we half-heartedly explored, but Singapore being my second was where we preferred to go.

The M16 went to Denmark, and invited a lot of people to their special event on the side of Sail Kingston in Canada, but they ran out of money and didn’t make it to Singapore. But 2 other contenders did, the Go 16 and another designed by a Spanish designer, which gave the trials an air of legitimacy, even though one of the serious 2P contenders wasn’t there.

A big plus for us was that the IFDS AGM would precede the ISAF Annual Conference, which meant Julian Bethwaite would be there, and the 2 Aussie boat builders who had established a factory on Batam Island in Indonesia, a 45 minute ferry ride from Singapore, could also attend. So we would be there in strength, with an extraordinary over-the-top boat, Julian to play the trumpet, and an Asian boat builder to mass produce it.

Julian is a rock star in the world of elite sailing, son of Frank Bethwaite of high performance sailing fame, Julian was 3 times 18ft Skiff World Champion, the mouthpiece behind the success of the Olympic high performance 2P 49er skiff. Julian’s design partner is Martin Billoch of Argentina, who does the technical calculations and develops the lines drawings.

The SKUD concept however was mine, deliberately wanting to create something different from the16ft relatively narrow, cigar-shaped hulls everyone else produced. I wanted maximum width with a wide flat stern to plane on. So specified the draft, as it needed to be deep, it had to be stiff enough to sail flat enough to plane without a crew on trapeze for righting moment. But if we went too far it would overly restrict its potential, being too deep for many venues.

Its width was only restricted by the need to fit into a shipping container, with 3 hulls fitting in a 20 footer, so the mast had to be 2 or 3 piece. I’d specified the position of the mast as we needed a long enough cockpit for 3 crew, 2 rudders and many other features of the boat. Martin’s job was to produce a lines drawing for a rocket ship with a displacement, including crew of around 600 Kg, which would blow away the M16.

Meanwhile the IFDS decreed that the successful 2P contender would need  to have 2 crew sitting one behind the other on centreline seats, which meant no hiking crew, so the deep draft and 150kg bulb would be doing all the righting. I actually had doubts that this would work. The only way would be very deep draft. If you skimped on draft you were compromising on safety as you must always presume that your boat is going to get knocked down flat in a storm. So if strapping quadriplegics into seats is on the agenda, then beware.

It makes you smile when you see a fleet of SKUDs lying on their side, with their mast tips a couple of metres above the water after a 50 knot   squall has crossed the course. That’s the real test of how good a boat it is.

***

As mentioned elsewhere there can be unforeseen consequences when you convert a single person sailboat into a 2P and add an asymmetric spinnaker. An asymmetric is not designed for running square, symmetrical spinnakers do that job. One of the 2 lower corners of a symmetrical spin becomes the tack, its sheet changes its name to a guy as it is run through the end of a spinnaker pole, which is hauled out as square as needed. The other lower corner becomes the clew with the sheet attached. This is very effective running, ie with the wind behind you, which works on a reach as well in light to moderate cross winds. When you gibe a symmetrical spinnaker the spinnaker pole is detached and hooked back up to the other lower corner, which becomes the tack, and its sheet becomes the guy, so the roles are reversed.

An asymmetric spinnaker has a designated tack and the sail can be designed from very full so it works best in following winds, around to a more flat cut so it works best reaching. So asymmetric-rigged sailboats don’t run square. They don’t have a movable, detachable spinnaker pole, but a prod, a bowsprit-like spinnaker pole which, on most skiffs, extends out the front when the sail is hoisted.

Instead of running with a following wind, they tack downwind so the crew hauls the clew across from side to side like a jib. What this means is the zig- zag course to get to the bottom mark is much longer than the straight line taken with a symmetrical kite and, unless the boat can readily plane, the same boat might get to the bottom mark quicker running square wing and wing.

So on a small boat you need to make the choice between adding all the complication of the asymmetric kite, or fitting the boat with an efficient self- vanging, self-tacking wishbone jib which will hunt the breeze and automatically set itself when running square. This arrangement is of course desirable if the boat’s to be sailed by people with limited use of their hands, like quads, as it takes 2 strong arms and hands to hoist, gybe and lower an asymmetric spinnaker.

But the big issue with spinnakers is they are downwind sails, with asymmetric spinnakers working more with crosswinds, so it’s inevitable that eventually, occasionally, you are going to get side on in too much wind and will get knocked down flat. So when converting a small SP sailboat to an asymmetric powered 2P, you need to consider what’s going to happen when you’re on your side.

You’ve doubled the crew weight and presumably added more ballast, so has the hull got enough buoyancy along the gunwales to keep an immobile strapped-in crew clear of the water? What usually happens on a capsized dinghy is the crew leave their seating position and set about righting the boat, but when the sailors are quads strapped into seats, high above the normal waterline they become dead weight negating the self righting effect of the ballast.

When a hull is upright it’s buoyancy is spread wide according to the beam of the boat, so 100kg will cause it to immerse say 50mm, but the question is how much buoyancy does the hull have when on its side, as the same 100kg may cause 300mm immersion, on top of the 250kg weight of the boat, bringing the strapped-in sailor, their head and trunk slumped down by their own weight, perilously close to the water.

So were these things considered when an extra crew and a spinnaker are added to the otherwise fail-safe single-person fore-and-aft-rigged sailboat you started with?  All the spinnaker does is greatly increase the complexity, which may give the crew something to do, but it’s turned the boat into a dangerous trap and won’t even get you to the bottom mark any quicker than running square, goose winged, with a self tacking jib.

We often say that disabled people have every right to live as dangerously as everyone else, but does everyone realise the change in odds for an accident that the spinnaker brings with it? I don’t think so.

Dan Fitzgibbon, who had won our 2004 IFDS SP Worlds sailed at  Blairgowrie, was also talking to Julian as he was the M16 VP for development, trying to upgrade the M16 to a 2P.  So while I’m talking with Julian about the SKUD, parked on a trailer at Bethwaite’s yard in Sydney was an M16 and Dan had Julian working on a new rig based on a 29er mast.

What’s extraordinary is Julian was being very pragmatic and was planning on an extended 29er mast for our SKUD as well. The 29er mast may have been appropriate on a boat the size of an M16, but was overpowered by the much more powerful sail plan and stiffness of the 20ft SKUD, with its high roachy mainsail and 18 square meter spinnaker.

But in the end the M16 wasn’t there in Singapore, we were. So was Julian, the rock star, along with our new builders. So the SKUD stole the show even though the evaluation committee didn’t get to see just how safe and  powerful the SKUD is in even the most extreme sailing conditions, as Singapore in early November is in the doldrums so typically light fluky winds.

The morning of the IFDS AGM was very exciting. The exec met early and cast their votes on which boat to recommend to the general membership. As we all filed in to the AGM we got the nod from the exec body language, so we knew we were on, but it would now be ratified or rejected by a vote by the national representatives.

There were only 3 votes against the SKUD, which were predictable. Canada of course was pro M16, as Don Martin was a CYA Board member. GBR were supportive of the M16, which had been actively promoted in England, including the unscrupulous website denigrating our boats. And the German delegate said “Germany will not be supporting the SKUD as we have no Severely Disabled Sailors or disabled women sailors”. At that statement everyone laughed and someone said “Well you had better get some”.

So with that vote the IFDS had ratified sailing on a course to eventually get excluded from the Paralympics, as the SKUD might be the elite sailors’ choice, but it’s not the right boat to bring new sailors and new nations on board. Though the course to exclusion had been set when the IFDS and the IPC Sports Committee had decided on a 2P instead of the SP Liberty.

A biased opinion? Yes of course, but then I know how good a boat is the Liberty, which needs to be judged on where it sits on the “Inclusion/Universal Design Spectrum”, where it’s the world’s number one. To me it’s sad that sailing administrators don’t understand either UD or Inclusion, because if they did then they would have chosen the Liberty, and then quite possibly, but I suggest probably, the IPC would have had no case to exclude sailing from the Paralympics in the first place.

Universal Design and Inclusion are actually the 2 sides of the same coin. UD provides the physical infrastructure which allows for the Inclusion of everyone. You can’t have inclusion if you don’t have UD. So UD comes first, then Inclusion will follow. It’s a case of if you build it they will come.

As said above, unfortunately sailing administrators don’t seem to understand the simplicity, the importance, the relevance of Universal Design and Inclusion. Not that this is unique to sailing as generally people can’t see it. Just look at the home building industry and ask the question why do we build houses that aren’t habitable for all members of a family throughout their entire lifespans, taking into consideration that any one of them can break a leg or become otherwise disabled tomorrow. There’s a saying that “disability is the club we can all join for free in an instant”

It doesn’t come naturally or should that be intuitively, because “normal” people don’t see past the able/disable bod duality which is just accepted as the way things are done. Which should not be surprising in this binary world.

People don’t get it, and although on a different level it’s akin to a mystical search, like the inability to escape the duality of past and future to see the true meaning of NOW, which is the eternal present. Or another example is understanding the simplicity of the “magic in three”.

It’s interesting that these 3 examples have the same thing in common, an inability to see past mind’s contemporary binary bubble thinking.

In the context of sailing it’s so simple. If sailing used boats of universal design at entry level, millions of new people would take up the sport, because this type of boat is user friendly for the broader population, including even those with extreme mobility issues, which would make sailing the most inclusive sport in the world. But the bubble’s self interest and its related politics gets in the way.

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