HOANA, One Hundred
By Martin van der Wal
HOANA racing in the 1920's. From the Hall Collection
Next year, HOANA will be one hundred years old - I think! I bought her thirty-eight years ago, and everybody told me she had been launched in 1920. Then, when Joe Adams gave me the line drawings, he and the next owner, Hank Kauffman had made of her, I noticed that 1920 had been struck out, replaced by 1924. Mmmm, the plot thickened. Sometime later, Simon Sadubin of Sydney Wooden Boats while doing a major rebuild after an accident found a picture from an old January 1925 magazine titled “Sydney’s Latest Cruiser.”
To be safe, I’ve decided that 1925 is her hazy launch date. What is it with these hoary old memes, ‘the fog of war’ - ‘the mists of time’? I’ll tell you what it is: “it’s entropy!” One of Simon’s favourite chestnuts, “Wooden boats are entropy Squared!”
So what keeps a wooden boat alive for one hundred years fighting off that ruthless multiplication? Many factors conspire against it. A traditionally built wooden boat is essentially an elegant basket of sticks fastened together at crucial junctures with pins of various sizes. It's launched into a hostile environment that takes no prisoners, suffering relentless attacks from above and below. One half is exposed to UV, dehydration and freshwater rot, the other half is saturated by a corrosive solution, prone to decay, and attacked by burrowing organisms. Then there’s the elements! Air is hellbent on furiously dismantling everything sticking up. Water equally hellbent on twisting and penetrating anything sticking down. Earth awaits to be struck upon. Fire has consumed countless craft. Ultimately, though, it all comes down to ‘foibles’.
Ownership of an old wooden boat is a foible, a “minor weakness or eccentricity,” as the dictionary would have it. Possibly the most critical factor in a vessel’s longevity is a historical absence of extreme foibles from previous owners. From serious neglect; down to, I’ll just stick a bit of bog in it; any old screw will do; let’s wack a big anode down there and see what happens. You know the story. So, it appears the ideal owner is prone to foibles but within the bounds of reason. Except, you and I both know, nothing is reasonable about a commitment to an old wooden boat, especially one approaching one hundred years old.
After a somewhat rambling introduction, I’m finally getting to the point of my story. A few weeks ago, HOANA’s faithful little engine rewarded my annual service by dumping the contents of its sump into the bilge. Thirty-six years that little Nanni ran sweetly, it still ran sweetly, when; with a recharge of oil and another quarter turn on the new oil filter, I started it up again.... Nup, something more dastardly was afoot! A mechanic friend explained that the new oil had probably dislodged a patch of old oil plaque covering some rust hole somewhere. Unfortunately, ‘somewhere’ was both unreachable and unseeable. Oil in the bilge is one of life’s more groan-worthy occurrences. Yes, I did groan! The groaning got louder when I realised that the only way I would find out where it was coming from was to pull the engine out of the boat. And that, dear reader, is when the slope got slippery.
Perhaps at this time, if you’re sitting comfortably, hopefully in the saloon of your timber boat, with the soft slap and ripple aided and abetted by gentle sips of a peaty old whisky, your enquiring mind will take you to the fascinating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ List_of_fallacies of which the ‘Slippery Slope’ is one. It starts with an internal argument between Mr Foible and Mr Reason. Mr Reason categorically states that throwing a lot of money into a boat on the cusp of its century is itself a perfect example of the ‘Sunk Cost Fallacy’ - it follows therefore, that repairing and reinstalling the engine that has been perfectly adequate for almost every eventuality for thirty-six years is the only cost-effective solution. We know it fits, runs beautifully, is less than halfway through its nominal, engine hour life, and can be fixed; Mr Foible, on the other hand, has his own ideas!
A common foible amongst hominids is ‘Horsepower’. It can be the kiss of death for a floating basket of sticks. That thrust vector is all well and good in a straight line on flat water. Throw a tight turn in a vicious chop; said vector is wildly oscillating, wracking throughout the entire structure. It was why I’d chosen a modest fifteen for the Nanni when replacing the 1932 20HP Utility Four that came with the boat. This charming historical artefact required muttered incantations every time the key was turned, followed by loud imprecations when resorting to the crank handle. Replacing that explosive mass of cast iron and its concomitant forepeak trimming ballast led to a sigh of relief, (and a cruel tweaking of her handicap), as she rose two inches on her waterlines.
Mr Foible then made his case: The whole exercise of classic boat ownership is a Sunk Cost Fallacy. Go the whole hog! The Nanni fifteen had gone in when her old bones were a little weary; a lifetime of racing and a world circumnavigation will do that. But thirty-six years later, with nearly every frame in her Kauri hull replaced and refastened, many floors added or replaced, a new Jarrah bridge deck beam, hanging knees, lodging knees, engine bearers, running gear, the list goes on, she was substantially renewed, restrengthened, and ready again for the extra horses.
My partner is convinced that my demanding mistress has a mind of her own. When told the engine needed removal, she said, “Of course! She wants new Bling; her big birthday is coming up!” After letting that statement settle into its rightful place on the astral plane, I informed her of my horsepower foible. “Safety First,” was the cut through response. With less than a month between oil in the bilge and sea trials, the new Beta three cylinder shallow sump 20HP was chosen between equally robust competitors because it was the only one that fitted the existing engine bearer arrangement. The weight difference between old and new engines is more than compensated by replacing 36kg of Lead Acid batteries with 12kg of LiFePo4 Lithium.
Her slippery hull now slopes along most satisfactorily, shrugging off Southerly Busters and Wicked Westerlies. With her next century coming up fast; bringing with it an ever more unpredictable climate regime, Mr Reason has to grudgingly admit, ‘Safety First,’ is no foible.
Hoana racing in the 2020's - Image Andrea Francolini.