Free All Piss and Wind by David Salter Page A

tactics, Hardy immediately called a tack under his stern, then another on top of them before they could respond. Within minutes we crossed clear ahead and were pulling away. Our elation was unbridled. We’d sailed from stone motherless last to first, with the finishing line just 200 yards away. Then …
    â€˜What a bugger!’ Considering the circumstances it was a remarkably mild oath. Sir James Hardy, OBE, had just watched his elegant white three-spreader rig disappear over the side into the warm waters off Waikiki. Other members of the crew were less reserved in their use of language. The race – and any chance of winning the regatta – evaporated in that split second. The mast had succumbed to enormous compression forces when Police Car dropped into thin air from the top of a huge rogue wave. We’d hit the bottom of the next trough absolutely flush, and with a tremendous bang. It was like pressing down hard on a stack of 20-cent coins until one of them popped out and the whole pile collapsed. The 60-foot spar failed in two places, rod-rigging looped everywhere at bizarre angles, runners and checkstays lay twisted among the lifelines, most of the main and jib were deep under water. What a bugger indeed.
    Yet in less than an hour our combined muscle power and some quick thinking from the older heads had the rig back on board with only cosmetic damage to the topsides. Even so, as Jim pointed his boat for home under motor and a steady stream of tinnies was handed up into the cockpit, not a man among us believed we would race again in that Clipper Cup series. Then, the odd wistful suggestion began to surface. Maybe if we could find a bit of similar mast section somewhere? Could we save the top half intact? Tim Stearn, the leading US spar-maker, was in town. Maybe he could help? Howzabout we give ‘Zapper’ a ring in Sydney? He carries all this stuff in stock … Hell, we’ve got enough willing hands to do the work, and the crew includes Chris Messenger, a professional rigger, and Fred Neill, one of the best boatbuilders in Australia. ‘Bugger it, let’s give the bastard a try!’
    So, before fenders were slung or the docklines brought on deck, despondency had first turned to hope, and finally to determination. We whistled up the local boatyard on the VHF radio and arranged for a crane to meet us at the dock to pull out what remained of the rig. Police Car would be back in the fray, even if we had to fabricate a mast from bloody railway sleepers. We flew our kangaroo-and-boomerang battle flag upside-down from the stern (the international sign for distress), as a show of defiance. But all the resolve in the world doesn’t amount to a hill of bandicoot droppings without two magic ingredients: money and know-how.
    Enter two fairy godfathers. The first, from within our own ranks, was Ian Gray, an ex-Heavyweight Sharpie sailor and now heavyweight winch man. ‘Gravy’ was a mild-mannered senior partner of PriceWaterhouse, one of the world’s largest accountancy firms. ‘I could get on the phone,’ he muttered, as if the mere act of picking up the dog-and-bone would produce the buckets of dollars we needed. (For starters, the insurance company back in Australia would have to agree to a payout on the advice of a local assessor.)
    Ian was quite unfazed by these complications. ‘Don’t worry too much about the money side of things, boys.’ Gravy pulled out a little black book of contacts that is provided to all PriceWaterhouse directors and began scribbling down phone numbers. Next morning he was seen heading downtown towards his company’s Honolulu office in a suit and tie. Money problem solved.
    The second fairy godfather had materialised at the dock as Police Car limped alongside. Ed Dubois, the brilliant young English naval architect who’d designed the yacht, happened to be in Hawaii and wondered whether we might appreciate a little