Chapter 33: Come In To My Kitchen

Velocity Made Good

October - November, 1986

Over the next few weeks, we concentrated on working up the new songs to the point where they were at least acceptable for public performance; I had called Mike, and asked him if he would want to play with us again. He jumped at the opportunity; he said he wouldn’t be available for touring over the summer break; Karen had given birth to their son, Karl, a few months earlier. But before our first rehearsal session, he arrived with his Yamaha stage organ, and we set it up in the ‘keyboard’ section on the stage.

Meanwhile, Mary Beth had worked with Fifa and George at Alberts, setting up some gigs around Sydney at our usual venues – the Antler, Millers Manly Vale, Selinas, plus the Central Coast Leagues Club at Gosford; generally on a Friday or Saturday night. The timing worked out well; on the Fridays I could meet with Alexa, and after that get home early, and get ready for wherever we would be playing. Playing with the full group was going well; Rose had quickly slotted into our style of playing; her singing was very good, and I enjoyed being able to spend less time playing keyboards, and more time on the guitar. Her album had sold reasonably well; it was slowly inching towards gold record status, and we hoped to feature some of her songs in our live acts, to promote her album.

Sailing-wise, ‘Young Lovers’ continued to be fun to sail; in our first Blue Water Shield race we got a third, it was enjoyable sailing with the fleet out into the ocean past Barrenjoey headland. The boat was certainly living up to its reputation as a fast cruiser / racer, but I felt somehow we weren’t quite getting everything out of her performance. Coincidentally, I had a call from Mick Lee on the Monday night, asking me how the boat was going, whether we had gone cruising, and if next Sunday would be a good day for him to come out with us racing, so he could see how the sails performed. I thought that would be a great plan; Sunday’s race was the second heat of the Retriever Trophy, a race when we were up against the whole fleet; with plenty of close racing within the confines of Pittwater.

Sunday was not the best day, weather-wise; overcast, with rain threatening. At least the wind was reasonable; Mick was waiting at the club, he had driven his work boat up, and that was moored off the end of the club deck. We signed on for the race, and got the course; a typical Retriever Trophy course; a number of short legs up and back from Stokes Point to Taylors bay, several rounding marks in between, and plenty of opportunities for both tacking duels and spinnaker runs. During the race, Mick made a few suggestions to us; he would have Georgina adjust one or more of the mainsail control lines, or suggest Lisa steer slightly lower, or ask me to tighten or slacken the backstay tension. He had a thick yellow marker, and he made a couple of cryptic (to me, at least), marks on both the genoa and main.

“The sailcloth can stretch slightly once it is put under tension and used a few times,” he explained. “I’ll take these back to the loft this week, recut it slightly, tweak the shape and curvature in a few places to compensate for the initial stretching.”

We ended up finishing second over the line, and as we were packing things up, he held a post-mortem on how we sailed.

“Generally, you sail the boat pretty well, it’s only in the finer points of sail tuning that a bit of work is needed,” he said. “Now, the main thing that you need to concentrate on is what we call ‘Velocity Made Good’, which is how we determine our upwind course towards a mark. First, a bit of high school math and physics revision; can someone tell me what the difference between ‘speed’ and ‘velocity’ is? Anyone?”

“Um, speed is just a simple measurement, a magnitude, while velocity is a vector, it has a bearing component to it,” Garry said. “Like, it’s speed in a specified direction.”

“Correct,” Mick said. “Go to the top of the class! When we are sailing towards the upwind mark, the only measurement that counts is how quickly we are closing in on the mark. As you would have seen in today’s race, just about every boat took a slightly different course going upwind to the Stokes Point mark; based on how high each boat could point. Now, that pointing ability is determined by a number of factors, the hull shape and the cut and trim of the sails are the most important. That’s why we have the tell tales on each side of the sails, placed at various distances from the luff. We want to make sure the air is streaming smoothly across both the windward and leeward side of the sail, no disturbances, no vortices. If one side’s tell tales aren’t streaming properly, then we are either sailing too high – pinching – or the trim isn’t right.

“What we aim to do is have the leading edge of a sail be perfectly tangential to the direction of the apparent wind; to work properly, a sail needs to have a curve across its width, that’s all part of the aerodynamics of the sail generating lift. That’s also why I need to recut both sails slightly, to improve that shape, the curvature. When we are sailing, we control the sail shape by control lines attached to each corner – for the main, it’s the Cunningham, the outhaul, and the halyard tension. That’s your job, Georgina to adjust them; along with the backstay tension, Will, that puts the right shape in the sail. With the foresail, it’s the halyard tension, the sheet angle, and the sheet tension, that’s why we can adjust the position of the sheet turning blocks along their tracks.

“Now the other thing that is critical, particular for upwind sailing, but also on a reach, is that ‘Velocity Made Good’, the fastest course to an upwind mark is not always the most direct line. Even if we aren’t pinching, sometimes it helps to ease sheets a little, drop off the wind a touch. You may have noticed that when we did that, our boat speed increased, as the apparent wind shifted more to one side, and not coming from so close to head on. There is a fine balance, if we fall off too much, then the extra distance we have to sail to the mark penalises us. It all depends on the wind speed, I’ve got a chart here that you can have which shows the optimum apparent wind angle for each wind speed. Lisa, you should use that to determine how high – how close to the wind – you should be steering. You would be surprised just how much difference falling off by even five degrees can make; it’s the difference between coming in first and fourth in a race like this one.”

“That all makes sense, Mick,” Lisa said. “I’ll get that chart laminated, and I can have it stuck on the bulkhead next to the instruments, so I can see what course I should be steering.”

“There’s a tendency to steer as high as possible, aiming for the mark,” he said.

“Okay, that’s something for me to concentrate on,” Lisa said.

“Now, when you were helming on ‘Koolong’, there wouldn’t have been much difference in a VMG course as compared to steering as high as possible without pinching, that’s one of the great things about the design of the Etchells. Now, another thing that you all need to work on is making your gybes smoother. Peter, when you go up on the foredeck to gybe the spinnaker pole, have the existing sheet – the line that will become the new brace, which you will clip on the end of the pole – put that in the crook of your elbow; you don’t want to be trying to reach for it while you are holding the loose pole. There was one gybe there earlier when I thought you were about to go overboard. Ross or Garry, you will need to slacken off that sheet, so Peter’s able to do that. And once you’ve got everything clipped in, the pole is on the mast again, when you call out ‘Made’, raise your arm, so the afterguard can see that. Often, because the direction you are yelling is forward, with all the noise and confusion, we can’t hear you at the back of the boat.

“But apart from that, your spinnaker handling was pretty good; no fuck ups on the hoists or drops. That’s where quite a few crews have problems; wineglasses or the kite ends up in the water. You work there was very smooth. In fact, your whole sail today was pretty good; that’s why you were second over the line. I was pretty impressed; considering you’ve only been sailing together as a crew for a few weeks, your coordination and teamwork was very good.”

“Well, thanks for all of that, Mick,” I said. “A few pointers for us to work on, and your explanation of VMG was really good; I know I’ve learned something new.”

The others echoed my remarks, and we removed the mainsail from the mast and boom, rolled up the genoa and put it in its sail bag. Back at the club deck, I dropped the two sails in Mick’s boat, so he could recut them during the week. I thanked him for his assistance and advice today; he said that it was all part of the service getting the new sails. On the drive home, we talked about what Mick had said, particularly the ‘VMG’ parts, and how the fastest way to the mark is not necessarily trying to steer directly at it; or as close to it as the wind would allow.

“That’s a lot like most things in life,” Garry said. “You often don’t solve problems by attacking them directly, you look for the ‘path of least resistance’, or ways to make it easier to achieve the results you want.”

“Sounds like someone has eaten a box of fortune cookies!” Georgina said. “The ‘path of least resistance’ indeed!”

“Don’t scoff, it’s unbecoming of you!” Garry protested. “But you know I’m right!”

Actually, I thought Garry was onto something there; in many parts of life, a direct approach often never achieved the expected results, you would always have to look for alternatives to achieve your objectives. I had put that to good use the other month at the Labor Party policy steering committee meeting, when I took a different approach to defeat the proposals that had been put forward. However, what Mick had said about VMG made sense, I could remember enough of vector arithmetic to follow what he was saying. It made sense, you sacrifice sailing a slightly longer distance making up for that with greater boat speed. I was sure someone had calculated the optimum sailing angles for various wind speeds, it formed the basis of the chart he had provided for Lisa.

The next week’s race was a Family Race; on the way up to Clareville, we stopped at Mick’s place to pick up the sails. Whether it was an improvement due to the slight recutting of the sails, or Lisa concentrating on the ‘VMG’ course, but we managed to pass all of the boats that had started ahead of us to get the gun – and the bottle of port as a prize at the post-race barbecue.

“That boat of yours looks real nice,” one of the other members said. “Those Youngs are a nice boat, I’m thinking of getting one for myself. What are they like for overnight cruising?”

Jeff, Jeff Ogg, was his name. A local veterinarian, lived on the Serpentine, overlooking Bilgola Beach.

“Well, last month Lisa and I went up to Lake Macquarie for a few days; the sail up and back was enjoyable, and we spent a few nights tied up at the Lake Macquarie Yacht Club dock. Each day we sailed around, exploring the lake, did some fishing with my cousin and her husband. Very comfortable sleeping on board, having the fridge and freezer, plus the gas stove gives us all the modern conveniences. We could use the shore-based power to save batteries, and keep the fridge and freezer running at night.”

“How many could comfortably sleep on board?” Jeff asked.

“Maybe four people, but if there were kids, even more. There’s two quarter bunks running back underneath the cockpit seats, a couple could sleep in each of those, if they weren’t big, and the two of them are fairly friendly ... There’s reasonable headroom in the cabin, too; I’m five-ten, and I don’t have to duck my head inside. On hot nights, the front hatch can be opened, to get air circulating through the cabin.”

“You need to get one of those solar hot shower devices,” Norm said. “They are a black rubber bag, which you fill with water, and hang off the boom. There’s a shower nozzle sort of thing that you can open, and if you leave the water-filled bag lying in the sun for half an hour, the water’s plenty hot enough.”

“I can just imagine Will scaring all the people around, showering naked in the cockpit!” Lisa said, laughing.

“You only use it naked if there are no other people around,” Wendy said. “Unless you are that way inclined, I mean, I don’t know what Will’s habits are. Maybe he likes being a bit of a show off!”

“No, not me,” I said. “I have far more respect for my fellow mariners that to subject them to the sight of me showering naked in the mornings!”

“I’m sure if you join the cruising group, they will be very appreciative of you not showing off too much!” Jeff said.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Wendy said, laughing. “Most of us enjoy appreciating nature’s beauty.”

“Don’t encourage him, Wendy,” Lisa said. “He’ll somehow ‘forget’ to bring his swimming trunks next time...”

“Now Norm has done that a few times,” Wendy replied. “All accidentally, of course; at least that’s what he said!”

The good-natured teasing continued until it was time to leave; overall I was very pleased with how we had sailed today; whether it was the slight changes Mick had made to the cut of the sails, Lisa’s helming for ‘VMG’, or just better crew work, we sailed better than we had before, and it showed in the results.

The first Saturday in November was when Fifa, George and Harry were calling around for our rehearsal, to see how the songs for the next album were progressing, and to discuss possible times for recording and the summer touring schedule. We were all there, including Rose, Mike and Karen. Touring would be a new experience for Rose, and she was looking forward to playing in different towns and cities around the State.

We played through the new songs for them; George felt they ‘showed potential’, and with a bit more work, they would be ready to get down on tape. They liked the ‘theme’ that we had come up with, and what Lisa and Georgina had done with a potential album cover. Georgina had made a drawing of the kitchen at Banksia Lodge, and she had put in caricatures of each of us working in the kitchen; several were at the stove, stirring some cooking pots, other were preparing food at the counter, and the rest were at the table, serving food onto plates. The album title and our name were made from cooking utensils; knives, forks, spoons, round letters, like an ‘O’ were formed from saucepans and plates. The next step was for Lisa to take an actual photo of the same scene, with each of us in the same position, doing the same tasks as in Georgina’s drawing.

“I like that,” Fifa said. “Simple, attractive, and in the theme of the album. Having a photo of the identical scene, say, for the back cover would be a fun addition. Now, let’s talk about touring, what are people’s availability over the January / February time period?”

After some discussion, the consensus was that we could all handle a few weeks – three at the most – in January, touring around NSW; maybe Wollongong, Canberra and up the north coast. We would have much the same rig and facilities as last summer; the large stage, riggers to set everything up and pull it down, the tour bus, and the same mobile sleeping quarters as before. Fifa would work out actual dates, but she tentatively suggested Wollongong, Canberra, Newcastle, Coffs Harbour, Grafton and Murwillumbah. She made sure we would have at least two days between each location, two nights at least in each town, three in the large cities, like Wollongong and Canberra.

“What we also need to do is come up with a name, a theme for the tour,” she said. “Now, how soon do you think we can start on the album? What’s your feeling about it, George?”

“Hmmm ... I think we’re still a good month away from the songs being ready,” he said. “Maybe February? You can polish things up on the road; by the end of the tour they should be just about right. Will that work? Can we use the studio here to record it? That way we don’t have to worry about time in our main studio in the city. Would that work for all of you?”

“If we could schedule the bulk of the recording sessions in the evenings and weekends, that would work for me,” Phil said. “If I’m taking January off, then I wouldn’t really be able to take a few weeks off in February.”

Most of the others agreed with Phil, they would be back at work. I would probably have to put in some time at Uni; next year would be the start of the new ‘Computer Science Engineering’ course, and there was going to be a lot of effort coordinating the new subjects. We had done albums that way before, recording in our studio; and it had worked out fairly well. All that was required now was to make sure our gig schedule through to the New Year was clearly understood by everyone, Fifa, Mary Beth and Peter Jonas had booked regular Friday and Saturday nights at the usual venues. Mary Beth updated the main calendar on the white board; putting details of where we would be playing, the time we would need to arrive at the venue, and how equipment would be transported. It looked like everything was under control for the summer; all we had to do was turn up to the venues, play and get the new songs ready to the state where they would be suitable for recording.

With the logistics under control, George and Harry turned their attention to the new songs; we played through each one for them, they made some comments and suggestions on the arrangement, tempo, even suggesting we change the key of some of them. By the time the session finished, the new songs were sounding much better, we had balanced the arrangements so that everyone had a chance to feature in at least one song. We were spreading the vocal load out between myself, Rose, Allison, and Mandy; Traci and Fiona performed backing vocals on all songs. I was glad that I wasn’t taking the lead vocals on all of the songs; some of them were pretty ‘full on’, and I was worried that a heavy summer of gigs and touring would put too much strain on my voice. I wanted to make sure that when February came, and we were recording, my voice was still in pretty good shape; and, of course, I would be back lecturing in March, so I would not be able to do that if my vocal cords had failed.

It was the second last day of the semester; I was at my desk reviewing the final tutorial assessments for the full time Computing I class when my phone rang. I answered, it was my old ALP colleague, Peter Baldwin.

“Will! Comrade, how’s life going?” he asked. “It’s been a while, mate.”

“It sure has, party meetings at the Lane Cove branch aren’t quite the same as they were at the Rose,” I said.

“Well, that’s what I want to talk to you about. A bunch of us in leadership position in the Left faction want you to join us, something that is way overdue in my opinion. It’s a pretty informal gathering, but we meet every few weeks at the Rose in Erko; where we also hold the branch meetings. The next meeting is Tuesday night next week, starting around 7:30, do you think you’d be able to make it? We would love to have your contributions.”

“Yeah, I can make that, this week is the final week of lectures, and I won’t have to give my usual Tuesday evening lectures. Is there anything I need to bring, or do? I would have thought I would have needed to be voted in, or something like that.”

“Just bring yourself, and your ideas,” he said. “As I said, it’s pretty informal, there’s no voting for committee members, we just invite people who we think would be good to have with us; people who we know are smart, have good ideas, people who we know are committed to the party and the aims of the faction. People like you, for example; after how you blew away those regressive policy proposals at the Federal Policy Steering Committee meeting the other month, I’ve been getting lots of calls to work out how to get you deeper involved in behind the scenes activities.”

“Well, all sounds good to me; I’ll be there, should be fun. Thanks for the invite, Mate.”

I made a note in my diary about the meeting, then went back to reviewing the assessments. Michelle knocked on my door, apologising for interrupting me.

“I’ve got the schedule for the exam grading,” she said. “Unless there are any problems, we should have everything done by the first day or two of December.”

“I guess it’s going to be all hands on deck for those two weeks,” I said. “Like it is during most exam times.”

The racing this Sunday was the second heat of the Blue Water Shield; we improved our position from the previous heat, this time coming second, which on top of our first place in last week’s Quartet Bowl race made us quite happy. Lisa was getting the hang of helming for maximum VMG; we also changed our downwind strategy so that even if the direct course to a mark was dead downwind, we would sail a few degrees to one side or another, even putting in a gybe halfway gave us much better speed – and avoided the risk of an involuntary crash gybe if we happened to be sailing by the lee. Never a good thing to let that happen, that’s how things broke, or people got injured. Besides, it never hurt to get more practice at doing gybes; Peter and Ritchie were doing a great job on the foredeck.

Tuesday evening saw me back around my old haunts in Erskineville. Before I parked near the ‘Rose of Australia’ pub for the meeting, I drove around the streets, stopping in Charles Street, in front of the first place that Lori and I lived in. The place – and Costa’s place next door – had fresh paint on the cement render, a nice soft green colour. It appeared that the corrugated iron over the front veranda had been replaced, and the wrought iron of the gate and at the top of the low front fence had been replaced. I then drove down Flora Street, past the little park that was opposite where our terraces had been, but since the buildings had been torn down, and a new apartment building put up in its place, I didn’t linger. I’m sure the new apartments were quite nice inside, but they didn’t have the same charm as Gresham Terrace – the original version - had.

I drove around the suburb again, and parked in George Street, about thirty metres down from the Rose. I headed upstairs to the back room, and saw Peter, Anthony and a few others.

“Will Morris! Long time no see, how are you, Comrade?” Peter’s voice boomed out across the room. “Want a beer? Come and sit down, I’ll introduce you to the others.”

Anthony Albanese, Frank Walker, and Jeff Shaw I knew well, there was a woman who looked familiar, Katherine Drake, who had been the union delegate for the Public Service Association when I worked for the State Government. The remainder I knew by sight or by name, but it appeared that everyone at least knew of me.

“I invited Will along to join us,” Peter said. “After he blew away the regressive policies that the right faction were trying to foist on the party the other month in Canberra, I felt we really needed him working with us here.”

“Welcome, Will, it’s great to have you with us,” Jeff said.

The others introduced themselves to me, and after some casual chatting, Peter called the meeting to order.

“For Will’s benefit, we don’t run things in a formal manner,” he said. “There’s no strict agenda, no minutes kept, no moving of motions or voting on resolutions. Mainly, it’s just sharing of information that each person has picked up, discussing things we can do to move our faction forward, things like that. Now, I don’t have to stress that what we discuss here – and even who is present – we keep to ourselves. Some of us have ‘inside access’ to the right faction and the Liberals, and we don’t want that source of intelligence jeopardized. Now, Katherine has some information on things that the State branch of the Liberals are planning ... Katherine?”

“Thanks, Peter,” she said. “Okay, you all know Howard, as opposition leader, is doubling down on his socially conservative and pro-market conservative economic policies. There’s going to be a showdown in Federal Liberal politics between the ‘dries’ – the Howard supporters – and the ‘wets’, the more middle of the road group, led by Peacock. He’s going to push for a purge of the moderates from the opposition front bench, and a realignment of party policy, pushing for a free-market reform, and support of socially conservative ideas. Support for the ‘traditional family structure’, the abandoning of multiculturalism in favour of what he calls a ‘shared Australian identity’. He wants to reduce the rate of migration, particularly from Asia, and they are working on a new policy, called ‘One Australia’. It’s pretty much a sop to the nationalists and racists; he’s hoping to pull those people into the Liberal base.”

“They won’t promote it as being for those reasons, of course,” Anthony added. “They will dress it up as ‘getting back to the traditional Australia values’. They are coming up with a new set of ‘core Liberal Party values’, here’s a copy of what they are proposing.”

He circulated a copy of a minute on official Liberal Party letterhead, the title was ‘New Core Values’. I read the material.

Talk about double speak.

“Well, talk about weasel words,” I said. “If that’s the way they are planning on going, they will be easy to shoot down.”

“We would love to hear your thoughts, Will. How do you think we can best defeat them, while at the same time fending off more neo-conservative moves from our own right faction?” Peter asked.

“Well, what we have to do is let the liberals move to the extreme right, let them take their ‘economic rationalist’, neo-conservative approach. They will make themselves look unattractive to the electorate; people will see that they are a bunch of right-wing fanatics, and their views don’t represent Australian values. Particularly if they get rid of some of the more moderate voices in the party. All we need to do is remind the country that Australians have the core values of mateship, helping our fellow citizens, and making sure everyone gets a ‘fair go’. What they are really saying, what is hidden behind those seemingly innocuous words, is ‘we want to let private industry run amok, maximising their profits at your expense’. We only have to show what has happened to the living standards of ordinary, working people in the UK and USA under similar policies.”

“So you think we should let them run with those policies?” Katherine asked.

“Yeah, often the best way to beat things like that is just to let them try to run with their ideas. Give them enough rope to hang themselves, and then point out the fallacies or contradictions in their arguments. Like that line ‘minimizes interference in our daily lives’, that all sounds good, unless someone wants to adopt a ‘non-traditional’ lifestyle. Like the way Howard opposes any thought of ‘civil unions’, he only wants benefits to go to traditionally married, heterosexual couples. He wants to force his personal moral code onto everyone; so that’s perfectly fine for government to interfere in people’s daily lives.

“The same with their plans to remove some ‘red tape’, will that remove consumer protections, allowing companies to rip people off with no fear of any legal implications? What about environmental protections? Will we no longer enjoy fresh water, or air that is safe to breathe? Safe medical procedures, or will we have re-run of the thalidomide issue? It’s quite easy to shoot down their policies, but we have to let them become fully committed to them, then we have them backed in a corner.”

We talked more about the proposed Liberal policy shift, and then discussion turned to state politics, and how Unsworth only just won what should have been a safe Labor seat to allow him to move to the lower house, and how Neville’s old seat was lost to the Liberals.

“It’s not boding well for the state election in 1988,” I said. “That Nick Greiner is a cunning politician, we will be in a pretty tough fight.”

“Well, we will just have to make sure Barry doesn’t screw up,” Peter said. “He’s still got some sound people on his front bench...”

We then spent the next hour or so discussing state issues, until Anthony said he had heard something from his contacts in Queensland.

“I know this sounds crazy, but there are some pretty strong and reliable rumours from Queensland that Joh Bjelke-Petersen will try to run for Prime Minister, to counter the Federal government’s ‘push towards socialism’. There’s a bunch of Queensland-based business types – the so called ‘White Shoe Brigade’ – who are behind it. He will be proposing a 25% flat tax regime, will pledge to dismantle things like Medicare, and introduce a Queensland-style free enterprise system to the whole nation.”