⛵ Voyage #18 — Stitch & Glue
Below is the blog version of my fortnightly newsletter on the ocean, photography, craftsmanship, books and living a curious and exploratory life. To receive this directly into your inbox, subscribe.
The Coral Sea sits to the east. To the west stretches the Great Dividing Range, a series of plateaus which runs 3700km across three states and a territory, creating a boundary and a basin. Within this basin, snakes a trifecta of waterways: the Clarence, Richmond, and Tweed rivers - a region collectively known as The Northern Rivers.
We live on our boat in the Clarence River. The water is calm and warm, our vessel Euphoria is covered in navy coloured shading canvas - although, she’s solid Corten steel and still manages to heat up on the port side which faces north. The fish who live beneath us, act like piranhas when we throw food scraps overboard - they appear as if from nowhere at the sound of discarded pasta hitting the surface. Bull sharks are known to swim 90km up this river, although I’ve yet to see one. The mangroves are populated with Mud Crab (Scylla serrata) which can weigh up to 3.5kg - I keep meaning to buy a net and go catch some with the dinghy, but it never happens.
We were meant to be somewhere inside the Great Barrier Reef right now, but Covid-19 closed the country just days before we could make a run for the border into Queensland. We are settled in here now though, the season has passed for any further northward travel anyway. I can walk to a surf beach. A cafe. The supermarket. I have a workshop, with a roller door and mezzanine within walking distance of Euphoria. The workshop is my atelier, a space to work and create. Eventually I will bring my sewing machines and leather working equipment here and setup shop. It is here that I will also work on the various systems aboard Euphoria: the windlass, boom, mast, autopilot, solar panels, wind generators etc. There is lots to do. While sailing the Whitsundays is dashed, I will prepare Euphoria for upcoming expeditions. Lord Howe Island, Port Davey, the fjords of New Zealand, the tropics of Bougainville and beyond. But for now, there are adventures to be had upstream of here - adventures beyond the grip of Covid!
On the cement floor of my workshop, a series of laser cut pieces of marine ply are laid out, with various weights across their freshly epoxied puzzle joins. This two dimensional structure will have gone three dimensional by my next newsletter. The plywood will curve and bend into the shape of a lean, narrow hull, overlooking the Clarence River. With 19ft of waterline, a set of powerful sculling oars and a sliding seat, this yet unnamed craft is capable of reaching speeds of up to 7 knots. In context, my little vessel Constellation which carried me across two oceans, usually maxed out at around 6.5kts under sail. Where will we go?
As far as we can, toward the Great Dividing Range! From the sea to wherever the river goes. Rather than spoil the journey, I will avoid any kind of trip planning, charting or other unnecessary logistics - rivers are nice that way, you can often navigate them entirely by sight and feel, their boundaries clearly visible.
Living on the river, working by the river, crafting vessels to explore the river - for the foreseeable future, my newsletter will be focused on river voyaging and boatbuilding: stitching in copper wire, bronze nails, fibreglass and glue. I hope you enjoy it!
Recent inputs
There has been a bit too much input of late. These lockdowns have led to a copious amount of unnecessary subscriptions: News subscriptions, streaming subscriptions, cloud subscriptions, this that and the other subscription… It doesn’t take long before you realise you are going broke by a thousand cuts. Not only financially broke but spiritually broke, from all the absolute rubbish you’ve subscribed to and let creep into your life. So, this month was a month of cutting back and re-focusing on healthy inputs - the healthiest input being a copious number of books.