While the yacht was planing before the breeze out of control, two shifting wrenches were secured to the remains of the tiller straps and the tiller was made fast to these.

Gradually SANDRA was brought back on her course, but by this time the constant flogging of the storm staysail had caused both forestay hanks to part and the jib sheets to come adrift at the tack of the sail.

Rope weaves together the fascinating story of one of humanity’s oldest inventions — a simple twist of fibres that literally held the world together. From hauling stones for the pyramids to anchoring ships on daring voyages, rope has been the silent hero behind some of history’s greatest achievements.

News of the victory was celebrated in Hobart, with the result announced in cinemas and greeted by thunderous applause. Not one to rest on his laurels, Skipper Batt soon designed and built Tassie Too.

A recent interstate road trip with lifelong friend Martin Bryan, led us to a glide on the Murray river. Aficionados of wooden boats ogle at the age of Echuca’s paddle steamers. We took the PS Adelaide, claimed by the owners to be “the oldest working wooden hulled paddle steamer in the world”. She was built in 1866. This  claim deserved research and I will refer to the result below.

But if nowadays we crave isolation, for thousands of years previously communities were searching for means of connection with other settlements, a long way away. The first people to try and address the problem were the Greeks who devised coded torch systems to send specific letters or messages over long distances. But it wasn’t until the middle ages that watchtowers across Europe and the Mediterranean, like the Genoese towers in Corsica, using fire and smoke for warnings They could only convey very simple information such as “enemy sighted”.

A raid on the north-east England island monastery of Lindisfarne in 793 – the first documented attack in the west – was probably launched from Norway. Its precise targeting suggests the raiders were well-informed about their destination, and no doubt attracted by stories of the riches held there. Writing afterwards, York cleric Alcuin described how the church had been “spattered with the blood of the priests of God, stripped of all its furnishing, exposed to the plundering of pagans”.

They’re votive offerings — some more than 200 years old — that residents of this Mediterranean port city continue to bring in gratitude to the Virgin Mary for everything from avoiding shipwrecks to successful rescues of migrants trying to make it to Europe on unseaworthy boats.

The dream of owning a yacht, started as early as my teens. But it became entangled into Trimarans, Racing yachts and 21ft Mini-Transats to name a few. What would I settle for? Then I read a book by Lyn and Larry Pardey, sailing in 24ft Serafyn, designed by Lyle Hess around the world.

The Carin II survived the collapse of the Third Reich virtually unscathed and was found, moored off Hamburg, by Field Marshal Montgomery who requisitioned it as Nazi treasure for George VI and his family as a spoil of war.

The Police Report reads - “saw floating in the water the left arm of a human being, which had apparently been wrenched from the body at the shoulder joint. We retrieved the arm from the water and on examining it found that it had two large incised wounds on the upper and lower parts respectively. We also found that on the inside forearm there was a tattoo mark of two men in the fighting attitude.

The film centers on Ian King, the late Harbourmaster of American River inlet, as well as colleague and mentor of Chris. The documentary has connections to towns like Victor Harbor and especially the coastal people along the trading routes across South Australia. It also captures the inevitable changes over time from working harbour to a holiday destination.

Sailors being a conservative lot, evolution happened about as fast as continents drift. Even as rigging changed from hemp to stainless steel, and sail cloth changed from flax to cotton to Dacron, sail plans remained largely the same. By the 1960s most racing boats had discovered that a single mainsail worked better than two: yawls and ketches were abandoned in favor of higher-pointing sloops and cutters. But foretriangles remained split, especially aboard non-racing yachts without the luxury of plentiful and athletic crews

“It is remarkable that an unlikely story about a mad heretic plotting a massacre has been repeated uncritically for almost 400 years,” Koehler says. His alternative scenario describes “extreme violence driven by famine”

Other reports have the unstoppable showman driving a car down the city's Smith Street blindfolded and apparently guided solely by the gift of mental telepathy.

After that whirlwind of stunts, Calvert boarded the Sea Fox in Darwin with his crew, including the banana-loving Jimmy. Unlike the other passengers, Jimmy boarded the yacht in a cage and, it was claimed by Calvert, was the chimpanzee that played Cheetah in the 1940s black and white Hollywood versions of Tarzan. More diva than monkey, Jimmy was known for off-screen antics, from demanding the odd banana to drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes.

Stand awhile with the Little Ships in view, cast your eye to the open sea, imagine how it looked in 1940; Ramsgate was one of the harbours used for the landing of rescued soldiers.

“Nothing can be more ridiculous to my mind than our open boats here with their enormous sails and unseaworthy qualities, they are always on the brink of capsize and their owners seem to measure their sport to the nearness they can go to the inside of a shark.”

One of the remaining trees was this 700 year old specimen, bought and felled by the late Dick McIlvride whose goal was to build an all-Kauri 47-foot ketch to the plans of the naval architect John Alden.

After around 15,000 years ago, sea levels began to rise quite rapidly, reflooding the low-lying coastal areas of the Bassian Plain. It took about a thousand or more years for Lutruwita/Tasmania to be separated from mainland Victoria, and another few thousand years for the main islands of the Bass Strait to emerge.

It happened in the early hours during darkness. Graham was below trying to sleep. They'd had little rest for three days and he'd just done 6 ½ hours on the helm. The first indication anything was wrong was when the seas suddenly changed, becoming very steep, and FORTUNA felt different. 

The crew of 1958 pilot cutter Goondooloo called police at 3:45pm on Wednesday after the vessel experienced a mechanical failure in D'Entrecasteaux Channel, in the state's south.