Adventure and misadventure on the high seas aboard ‘Stinkpot’

I AM sure you have heard it before.

About two years after purchasing a new boat, just about everyone starts to think that they should have bought a bigger one, with a bigger motor, to presumably catch bigger fish further out to sea.

Let me tell you my tale, which is something akin to a story that could be told to the kids before tucking them in for the night.

It concerns a brave little 11-foot tinny, ‘Stinkpot’, a Savage Gull, which I saw advertised “For Sale” in the Newcastle Herald more than 30 years ago:

“Aluminium boat, trailer, 5hp Suzuki outboard, anchor, rope, life-jackets. Brand new, won in a raffle, don’t like fishing – must go, $1000.”

That’s for me, no questions asked.

I immediately rang the accompanying number and rushed into Newcastle with the money burning a big hole in my pocket.

I was terrified that the little boat would be sold or that the owners may have had a change of heart and decided to keep it.

Towing the boat back to its new home in Fingal Bay, I felt like the King of Australia.

Launching ‘Stinkpot’ off the beach at Fingal proved a simple assignment, particularly with my newly acquired, second-hand Suzuki truck, the ‘Stinkermobile’, which was to be the boat’s constant companion.

With the wind in my hair and salt in my nostrils I zoomed around and around Fingal Bay delighting in the options now available to me.

As the weeks passed, I became increasingly confident and ventured further and further from home base, limited only, it seemed, by the fuel capacity, which I calculated could just about get me to Sydney Harbour.

Rough seas didn’t bother me as ‘Stinkpot’ would ride between the swells with the confidence of an ocean racer.

I did suffer a minor setback when crossing the Fingal spit on high tide. The spit is a treacherous waterway where swells rolling in from both the north and south smack together in the shallowest section, resulting in a vertical wall of water that lifts and drops on the one spot.

Motoring through one morning just on sunrise, I got caught in “no man’s land” and lacked the horsepower to either charge forward or do a swift around about and retreat.

Indecision led to confusion and consequently I headed skyward and did a mid-air flip, which must have looked spectacular.

Another adventure, or should I say misadventure, that found me short of go-forward was when I was fishing for snapper in a rugged sea in front of the Outer Lighthouse at Fingal.

The gears jammed in reverse and there I was, being washed around in what seemed to be a washing machine.

There was no way I could go forward or even find neutral, so I motored home in an angry sea, 2km in reverse, pulled along by 5 weary horses.

I had a stiff neck for a week.

By John ‘Stinker’ CLARKE