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On the first day at my new job I borrowed Lizzie again and turned up at eight o’clock sharp. There was yet another yacht waiting on the slips. “What do I call you guys?” I asked. “I’m Eric,” said the shorter one, “and this is Johno”. Eric spoke with an Irish accent. He was a stocky man with a round shaved head and dark eyes buried in a tough face. I shook hands with him. He had soft hands, but his knuckles were hard. He wasn’t a boatyard guy. Johno was different; he spoke a bit like the Beatles, Liverpool or something. He was taller than me and thin, with a scarred face and a broken nose. He was wearing industrial boots splashed with paint, and overalls that were a bit too short for him. I guessed he was the one doing most of the work.
Eric said, “Start work on that boat, and put your back into it. Paint it blue above the water line.” “Ok, how many coats?” “Coats? One coat, and get it done fast!” “What about below the waterline?” “Leave it.” I looked at the hull. “What about the damaged bits? Do you want them scraped back and filled?” “No. Just paint over them.” “And no undercoat?” “Just one bloody top coat and get it back in the water as fast as possible.” “Ok, if that’s what you want, you’re the boss.” “Yeh, and don’t you forget it. How much paint will you need?” “One coat, about three litres.” He went to the workshop and brought back a can of topcoat. I got stuck into the job. I hated doing such a lousy job, but that was what I was being paid for. It took me most of the day to roll on one coat and as I was touching it up Eric came round to see what I was doing. “Stop messing around. You’ve finished this one. Go home.” “Ok, the paint should be dry by midday tomorrow.” Eric didn’t say anything, just sort of glowered at me.
When I got back to the harbour I was cornered by Jessie, the tough barge skipper. “Hey Tim, I hear you got a new job over at the old boat yard." "That’s right. How did you know?" "Gossip travels faster than lightning in this town son. So what’s going on over there?” “They’re doing quick and dirty paint jobs. Don’t ask me why.” “Yeh, well, make sure you get paid at the end of the week.” She gave me a friendly slap on the back that made me stagger. When I got home dad and Jack wanted to know all about my day. “I hate doing such a rotten job”, I said. Jack asked, “How much are they paying you?” “Fifteen bucks an hour.” “Only fifteen bucks? A skilled man should get twice that. You’ve let ‘em swindle you.” “If you ever meet Eric and Johno you’ll know why I’m not arguing with ‘em.”
Next day I got to the boatyard at eight o’clock again. The boat I’d painted was gone. The buggers hadn’t even waited for the paint to dry properly. There was another sloop at anchor. “Get that one up on the slips” said Eric, nodding towards the new boat. They’d left the cradle down in the water. “You shouldn’t leave the cradle in the water” I said, “it rusts up the wheels in no time.” Eric scowled at me. I went out to the sloop in Lizzie, pulled up the anchor, and pushed the bow of the sloop into the cradle. ”We’ve missed high tide, but we should still be able to get her into the cradle.” I called across to Eric, “Can you help me pull her in?” Eric came over with a little reluctance. He didn’t seem to fancy getting his feet wet. We managed to rock the yacht into the cradle and wedge her in. “Ok, you can winch her up the slipway now” I said. “That’s your job.” Eric walked away. I shrugged my shoulders and went round to switch on the winch motor. As the yacht rumbled slowly up out of the water I called to Eric “Same finish as yesterday?” “Yes.” “What colour?” “Dark blue” I went round to the workshop and found a full can of Midwatch Blue topcoat. “Midwatch Blue ok Eric?” “That’ll do.”
This yacht was in a worse condition than the one before, but I guess that wasn’t my business any more. I spent most of the day rolling paint right over the defects. Johno came over to see my progress. He seemed to be a bit friendlier than before. “You seem to know how to paint.” “I’ll tell you one thing,” I said, “I hate doing such a rubbishy job. Half this paint will come off in a few weeks, and look at these bubbles under the paint. The fiberglass is delaminating. It needs to be repaired straight away before it gets any worse.” “Doesn’t matter, as long as the paint stays on long enough for us to sell it.” I decided to take the plunge. “How come you’re getting so many boats to paint?” He paused, and then glanced away. “We’ve got people buying boats in South-East Asia. We do ‘em up, and sell ‘em here in Australia where the price is higher.” “Oh, I see,” I said, but I didn’t see, there were too many things didn’t add up, but I kept my mouth shut, and lucky I did, because Johno said “Now stop asking questions and mind your own business.”
Next day the boat I’d painted midwatch blue the day before was still there, and now there was a girl in the yard. “This is Maria", said Johno, "she’s helping us clean up the cabins.” “Hi Maria. I’m Tim” “Hi Tim.” She smiled at me. She was a slim, dark complexioned girl, a bit taller than me and about my age. She had black eyes, long black hair pulled back, a row of white teeth when she smiled and a short red dress that showed a lot of her legs. I fetched a ladder from the workshop and helped her climb up into the cockpit, turning my head away so I wouldn’t see up her dress. Johno came over. “We’ve been having trouble with the engine in this boat,” he said. “Want me to take a look?" I said. “Think you can fix it?" "Probably.” The yacht had an inboard engine. I climbed up into the cockpit and unscrewed the engine hatch. It was a conventional marine engine, very neglected. I called down to Johno “Can I have the keys please?” He threw them up to me. I tried the starter; the engine coughed a few times and stopped. I started to check a few things, then I looked in the fuel tank. “There’s dirt in the fuel,” I called to Johno. “It’ll take me an hour or two to clean it all out." "Go ahead”
I fetched my tool kit from Lizzie and started pulling off the fuel lines and the fuel pump, cleaning out as I went. Maria was cleaning and polishing the fittings in the cabin. “You certainly seem to know what you’re doing Tim.” “Well I’ve done this job a few times before. I love doing this kind of work. I love machinery. When I was a kid a train came through town pulled by a historic old steam loco, and the stationmaster showed me a book with pictures of how the cylinders and all the valves and stuff worked. That’s what really started me off. Until forty years ago all the trains on our line were pulled by steam locomotives. Wish I’d been around then, with all the hissing of steam and the steam whistles and the smell of hot oil! It’s funny but when children’s books tell stories about trains they still talk about the old steam trains, even though most kids have never seen one. I guess diesel and electric trains are just boring steel boxes on wheels. The nice thing about boats is they’re all different and they all have their own personality.” “Must be great having an interest like yours," said Maria.” “So where do you fit in here? Are you just an employee?” She glanced at me shyly. “No, I’m Eric’s girl friend”
Johno came over “Stop chatting. Get on with your work.” Maria made a face from inside the cabin. “I’ll be finished in about half an hour,” I said to him, “but I’ll need some clean fuel to refill the engine. Shall I go over the marina and get some?” “No, I’ll fetch it. You keep working. Don’t want to pay you good money for sitting on your bum in a boat.” He took off in their runabout. I kept on working, reassembling the fuel system. Maria climbed out of the yacht and went into the cottage that was part of the boat yard. There was something kept niggling in my mind, something seemed familiar about the way this yacht was built. The same yacht fittings are traded all round the world, so at a quick glance you can’t tell where a yacht was built. I looked over the transom at the boat’s name. The name was so new you could smell the fresh paint. I looked at the maker’s name on the cabin bulkhead. It gave the name of a boatyard in Singapore. While no one was around I slipped into the cabin, took off a seat cushion and lifted the lid of the locker underneath. There on the underside of the plywood was the trademark of a timber yard in West Australia. This boat wasn’t built in Singap
ore at all, it was built here in Australia, probably somewhere around Perth. When Johno came back I filled the fuel tank and pressed the starter button. After a few coughs the engine came to life and started running smoothly. “There you are” I called to Johno, “engine’s all fixed.” “Good. No more work for you today. You can go home.”
Next day as soon as I turned up Eric came over and said “We’ve decided to add a doghouse over the companionway on that boat. Do you know about boat building?” “Sure” I said, “have you got the timber?” “It’s stacked up in the shed.” The companionway on a yacht is a set of steps from the cabin up into the cockpit. Usually the cabin overhead is cut away so you don’t bang your head as you come up the steps, but some bigger yachts instead have a raised bit of the overhead over the steps, high enough to give head room. It’s called a doghouse, and I always think that’s what it looks like, a dog kennel stuck on the back of the cabin trunk.
I was pretty excited about doing this job. I’d often repaired yachts but I’d never modified one before. I looked in the shed. There was some lengths of meranti and some sheets of marine plywood. Meranti isn’t the best timber for the job, but it’s easy to work with, and there were some tools there I could use. I climbed up into the cockpit, took some measurements, and sketched out a plan on a piece of paper I found. I showed it to Johno. “This is what I reckon.” Johno glanced at it. “Looks all right. Get on with it.” I worked fast all day making a framework and fixing it in place. I found some primer in the shed and brushed on a coat. By now it was getting late. “ I’ll have to knock off now” I called to Johno, “I’ll finish it tomorrow.” “No, I’ll finish it. No work for you tomorrow.” As I walked across to the jetty he called after me “We’ll let you know when we need you again.”
I didn’t go home with dad and Jack that evening; I had a date with my girlfriend Rosie. I picked her up from the supermarket where she works and we hurried round to the fish co-op before they closed, to get some fish and chips, juicy flathead tails deep fried in batter. It was getting dark, and a mob of lorikeets were rocketing in to roost in the palm trees, screeching and pushing and shoving for the best places. We walked along the riverfront a bit, and we sat on a rock as it got dark, eating the fish with our fingers. I told Rosie about Maria turning up at the boatyard. “What does she look like?” I described here as best I could. “She sounds really beautiful.” “Yeh, I suppose so, if you like Spanish-looking girls” People sometimes say I’m a bit slow, but even I could see a loaded question coming. “She is pretty Rosie, but in a different way to you. You attract me much more than she does.” “You aren’t going to ask her for a date then?” “I‘ve already got a girl friend, and in any case she’s Eric’s girlfriend. Any bloke asking her for a date would be as good as cutting his own throat.”