The Steamtug Blog

This week was the exciting trip to tow Adaqua back to Geelong. Captain Dave is a retired workmate who retired a couple of years ago, and we have kept in touch. He has a big cruiser boat on a trailer and I managed to convince him to partake in a great adventure of getting Adaqua home. 

The big cruiser was towed  up by road and launched at the slip close by. He brought along Daryl, another work mate to spot and watch the lines during the tow. Now Daryl and I go way back. We worked together before joining my present company, and have done lots of projects together since. The only problem now, is that Daryl is my boss at work which Dave would not have realised, but it made me feel a little uncomfortable, and was a little embarrassed at having my boss there to help me out of a pickle, but being such a great bloke, we all soon forgot he was my boss after a few beers, and it all degenerated into a bit of a joke, with me saying to Jamie every 5 minutes, “Did you know Daryl is my boss…”

After the big cruiser was safely fendered off Adaqua, we assessed everything, had a few beers as our last chance of using our Williamstown holiday house “hotel Adaqua” then went up to the Stags Head hotel for dinner. Jamie and I had become locals there since being marooned, and were both in love with Inge the bar maid and her fine assetts. A few more beers in the main bar listening to the live music and taking in the atmosphere before our hunger was finally wet, and we made for the dinning room for dinner.

We staggered home (probably why its call the stags head) after a nice dinner to follow up with some more beers and I put a movie on and opened up some dips and nibbles, but everyone was just so happy to be there we just talked and talked. So I turned the movie off and put some music on instead. We were laughing at stories from the old steam days, and Jamie, who had recently completed his study for his boiler certificate and still hungry for more knowledge and experience was fascinated about our work stories. Especially from old Dave who had been an instructor in the navy and had plenty of stories of engineroom miss haps and other exciting tit bits that Daryl and I had heard many times before.

Like the famous petty officer that liked to use “flowery” terminology for normal words so they could be navy-fied and land lubbers wouldn’t be able to understand them. He asked our Dave, the navies fastest, no nonsense engine man to hoist the anchor. Dave had warmed the winch through and was ready to commence when the command came to “Heave harmoniously” and so the anchor came up off the bottom, and the Petty Officer called “Avast!” so in the wind swept deck Dave increased the speed of the winching. “Avast! Avast!” came the desperate call with Dave yelling back “She won’t go any faster!” Dave later confessed, the anchor tyne marks could still be seen in the hull of the old HMAS Derwent until she was sunk as a dive wreck only recently! (ha ha ha….)

 We woke next morning early as we were all excited to get the tow underway. There was a light breeze blowing, but the calmest weather was going to be around midday, and even turn around for a tail breeze later, so we were not desperate to go. So Jamie, the ultimate “galley bitch” cooked us up some eggs on muffins washed down with lashings of ship’s tea, and we finally got underway by 8am.

The weather was just amazing, with loads of little fishing boats dotting around us as we headed out of Hobson’s Bay towards Point Wilson. Dave was steering too far South and my first few attempts didn’t get him onto the course I wanted, so after consulting the marine charts on my log table, I called him on the radio and requested he steer 220 degrees. And with true naval precision he stuck right on 220. Even fishing boats that were in the way had their owners yelling “Why can’t you steer further over there!!!” I said to Jamie, he has the whole bay, why do we have to go so close to them all? And Jamie answered, “Well, you did tell him 220 degrees… and that’s what you got no matter what!”

We arrived at our home berth much ahead of schedule with the speed sometimes tipping 6 knots with the flooding tide and slight breeze behind. A few times we “hove to” to let the little tug come along side the mother ship and we passed across cups of tea, soup and lunch. But while standing on the roof of Adaqua with beer in hand, Daryl looked up and saw my beer and I could see he was jealous. So I pointed at my can, and them to him. He just pointed to Dave and indicated he would have his neck cut for drinking on Dave’s boat. It’s a dry zone. But back in our home berth, with everything squared away and ship shape, we had a few just to celebrate an incident free, and successful crossing to our home port.

Now I just need to pull out the fuel and water tanks while I have the opportunity that there is no engine in the way, and paint, and clean up the engine room while I have the chance. I am also putting in a sewerage holding tank and an electric toilet to keep all the ladies happy…. (no no… it’s electric flush!!! What were you thinking??????)