Charles Bradfield #ASPWTheNextJourney

TRANSCRIPT. Time stamps include pre-roll chat which is not included here.

Program announcement (00:00):

Welcome to the Next Journey, the Adventure Travel Podcast. With me, Andrew St Pierre White. 

Andrew (02:51.174)

I am Andrew St. Pierre White and with me, my special guest from Auckland, New Zealand, of course, I am in Perth, Western Australia, is my old school chum, Charles Bradfield. Hello Charles.

Charles (03:05.522)

And neighbor, I’m going to say, we used to live next door to each other and have many happy memories of all sorts of adventures that we’ve been on.

Andrew (03:14.642)

And that is the purpose. That was why I thought, you’ve got some amazing adventures. And we went our separate ways with our adventure travel. And I chose one way and you chose another and what you’ve accomplished is pretty amazing, considering you have big family and a very important job. So I wanna share with you some anecdotal stories about our early days.

when we were still kids, dreaming of the kind of traveling that we wanted to do and the kind of adventures we planned and some of those that we did do. And some of them are pretty bonkers if you remember correctly. So before we get started, I’m going to just thank our sponsors. This week it’s Zippo. Did you know that Zippo actually have a line of accessories for adventure travelers?

Now I’ve used zippos for years and years and years. In fact, Charles, you will remember on the boat, I would light the little paraffin stove with my little zippo lighter that I would flick open and it would even lighten a wind. And it was something ritualistic about a zippo. It’s tactile, you hold it, it’s slightly cold in the hand and it has weight. The modern zippos now, you can take out the insert and put in little

Butane burners, lighting campfires in a wind with a butane burner. It’s a no brainer. They even have little firelighters and pouches. And I’m hooked. I’m absolutely. And I was actually referred to them by the new range of kit by Harry from Fire to Fork. Thank you, Harry, for introducing me to these lovely pieces of kit. So thank you, Zippo, for supporting this show.

Go and have a look at their kit. Rice Charles, talking about zippers and lighting little campfires. Let’s talk, I think, about, I went through my hundreds of photographs that we took on our very, very first boating adventure. This was before we built Longfellow. We’ll get to that in a minute. The building of Longfellow. Do you remember our rowboat adventure on Val Dam?

Charles (05:37.47)

to, I do, and that’s actually where it all started. The family bought a rowboat and then a little five horsepower seagull outboard. And we did some amazing adventures. Our biggest one, biggest adventure on that, I’m sure you remember, Dirk, you, me and Jontie. Jontie, my brother, Dirk, our good friend who’s a very, very good photographer.

And we put a spade up in the front of that rowing boat. I think it was a 13 or 14 foot rowing boat. And we had two poles, which we had modified and put into the Rolex. And then put an oar across the top, and we pitched a canvas. We made some masonite tops. And we took, we did a number of adventures, but our biggest adventure was.

epic trip from Frankfurt to Villiers and that was planned to be I think it’s about 150 kilometers now this was on Val Dame and just for our listeners Val Dame, Dame makes it sound small, is actually quite a big piece of water it’s 1200 kilometers of wetted perimeter and it covers

two 1 in 50,000 topographical maps. It’s a very big piece of water. And there are two rivers that lead into that, the Valle River and the Valka River. And our big trip was to go from Frankfurt to Villiers. Now remember, we dropped the boat off and left Dirk and John T to take the boat down the rapids.

to get into the first bit of open water and we drove to Frankfurt. No, to Villiers. We drove to Villiers. We hitchhiked back, we had to drop the vehicle off and then hitchhike back. It was dark by the time we got back. We walked in the darkness down by the side of the river looking for the crew. And that was, I don’t know, was it a week long adventure?

Andrew (07:40.998)

Didn’t we hitchhike?

Charles (08:00.686)

It might have been five or six days. We carried all our kit. We moated sometimes through the night. And sometimes we pulled ashore and slept the night on the shore. I remember the worst night. We had really bad weather. We actually, it was unpleasant. We had planned to spend the night on the boat. But we actually pulled that ashore, and we actually turned the boat upside down on us.

I wonder if you remember that, so that we could get cover.

Andrew (08:33.684)

It would, I do, the boat was very heavy, very, it was really heavy. So I’ve actually got a recording, I’ve just thought of it now, I’ve still got that recording somewhere, if I’ve got it I will play it now, but it’s the full theory.

Charles (08:37.513)

What’s he… Yeah.

Charles (08:47.766)

Yes, I do remember you making a recording.

Andrew (08:51.498)

I remember that recording and it became so silly and we weren’t drunk. We weren’t pissing ourselves up with beer. We weren’t at all. I don’t even think on that trip we took any beer, but we were lying under this boat and you kept on saying, I’m scared of this boat. It’s going to crush my head like a nut or something like that, because there’s this weight on us and we were huddled, the four of us. And and Dirk is very tall. He’s about 14 foot long when he stretches out.

Charles (09:18.914)

Hehehe

Andrew (09:20.898)

And so he was taking up all the space, but it was so funny. And then John, he started singing and then we slept a bit. And then we woke up in the morning and he started singing morning has broken or something like that. And I don’t, he did. I don’t think we slept much that night. Yeah.

Charles (09:22.978)

Yeah.

Charles (09:33.714)

Ah yes, he had a good voice actually, jaunty dude.

Charles (09:39.426)

No, no. I think actually on our adventures, we don’t actually sleep a lot. But that was the very start. I think that was the start of our adventures. You know, and I was thinking, what makes an adventure? It’s gotta be, I was gonna say adventurous. It’s gotta be daring. It’s gotta be out there. It’s gotta be risky. It’s gotta be into the unknown. It’s gotta challenge you. And so that adventure had all those things. Nobody we knew had done it.

We took a risk. There weren’t proper maps. We had to navigate by the seat of our pants. Hm?

Andrew (10:17.254)

We had topos, didn’t we? We had topographicals, I remember. We’d run, roll them, and then that’s all we had. I think we had a compass, a very crude compass. I don’t even think it was a prismatic. I just remember sitting it on the map and kind of turning it around and saying, well, we’re heading northeast, which is probably about right, and that was good enough for us, so we just carried on going, you know.

Charles (10:26.952)

Yup.

Charles (10:42.262)

Yeah, that was, that’s our very first adventure. Of course, I must have been 18. You and I would have been 18 at that stage because I drove the family Valiant, one of the most unpleasant motor vehicles, three-speed column shift, manual.

Andrew (10:51.666)

Mm-hmm.

Andrew (10:55.91)

3-speed.

Andrew (11:02.407)

Yes, there’s long benches back and front, there’s long benches and you had to beg your father, please can I borrow the Valiant because it was the only car we had possibly big enough to carry the boat. No, on your Beetle, no, it would have been quite comical on your Beetle, but no.

Charles (11:04.59)

That’s exactly right.

this.

Charles (11:11.67)

Yeah, that’s right. You couldn’t go in the fork seat.

Charles (11:18.739)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I do remember that. And then the other bit was what personally got, now you had a mirror dinghy, but I did not have a dinghy. And I had asked my uncle who lived in Swaziland, that’s Uncle Brian, who is, you know, each one of us have one or two extra father figures who’ve.

coached us and inspired us. He’s my man. He’s the uncle that inspired me with all sorts of things. And I said to him, can you teach me how to sail? And I think at that stage that I knew that your family had a mirror sailing dinghy. And I was really keen and he had a mirror sailing dinghy. And he invited me to go to Swaziland because he was a farmer there. And I drove with my brother in the beetle.

Charles (12:15.639)

down to Swaziland. He said, don’t come to the farm. Meet me at Big Bend Dam, which we did. And the wind was blowing 20, 25 knots. It was a miserable day, frankly. And the dinghy was all set up. The mirror was all set up on the side. And he said to, I said, well, here we are, Brian. He said, well, hop in. I don’t think we even had life jackets, actually. And we got in. And he then…

pushed us off. Off we went. I didn’t know what I was doing. He just pushed us off. And as we left and the wind was blowing offshore, it just gatted us and we just rapidly left the shore. And he shouted, don’t jibe. And I said, what’s a jibe as I pushed the tiller over and the boom came round and banged jaunty on their head. And he said,

Andrew (13:04.934)

Yeah.

Charles (13:13.102)

sit and dive!

Charles (13:18.45)

we tackled and grappled the ropes and you know cuz 25 knots is a bit much for a mirror and not being reefed and we sailed around and made it back and I was hooked that was it I had to have a sailing dinghy that was the start I was it was magic it was this so wind could take you didn’t need fuel it was it was all free

and I something twigged in my head and I from then onwards I always wanted to sail. That was it. I had to have a little sailing dinghy. And so that was the next phase of our adventures. That’s right 11 foot 6. It’s about the same size as the Marat.

Andrew (14:00.762)

and you bought a Sprint.

Andrew (14:05.586)

Alright.

Andrew (14:09.51)

So I remember this very clearly because you said, I’ve got a boat, I’ve got a boat. And I went over and I looked at it and I thought, well, we’ve got to go sailing. I’ve got to grab my mirror and you’ve got to, but trouble is I didn’t really know how to sail. I’d done a bit of it with my dad, but you know, I wasn’t proficient and I saw I had to lie to my father. And I went to him and I said to him, dad, we’re going, can I borrow the mirror? He does, you don’t know how to sail. Charles does. Charles is an expert. Really he’s very, I mean, he’s

been doing it for years, I lied. And I think he had just been on that one thing in Swaziland. So we thought, the two of us thought, well, we know enough. We don’t know a lot, but we know enough. And we went back to Valdam and we found, we, we cast off from the shore and I’ve actually got some footage.

Charles (14:54.126)

two of us went and we just topped the Miradinghi, I think. Or did we take both boats? I sprint in your mirror.

Andrew (15:02.304)

I don’t know, I don’t remember, but maybe it was just the mirror, I’m not sure. But that was when you and I actually learned how to sail. When we were sitting together on the boat and pulling this and pushing that. Oh, look what happens. And we’d learned, we taught ourselves.

Charles (15:16.042)

Yeah, that’s exactly right. And then, of course, those beautiful, fantastic adventures where you and me and you and Jan. Jan used to be an expert sailor with, she had a laser. That’s right, she was very good. But we started doing some epic trips, and they would also be four or five days. We’d pile all our kit.

in the dinghies and then we learned to tie them on because we kept eyes.

Andrew (15:50.914)

Right, we did the same trip that we had done in the rowing boat, but we did it in the two dinghies.

Charles (15:57.634)

That’s exactly right. That’s exactly what we did. And we put our camping kit in and we’d pull off to the shore at night because we didn’t have permission to camp. So we would set camp after dark. So, and then make sure that we struck camp. And I remember John T. with a little paraffin Primus that one of my father’s, I’ve still got it actually, I love it.

It’s such a beautiful piece of metal pump. That’s exactly right. And we used to cook these wonderful meals, holding the paraffin primus in his feet. And he would make them in the pan, and it might be toasted cheeses or whatever it was. And then we’d sail up and hand off a plate. It was just fantastic. It’s just so much fun.

Andrew (16:53.326)

the world’s best touch of Jesus was jaunty on that boat. Nobody’s ever come close.

Charles (16:56.458)

Yeah, he was. No, and he is a master at one pot cooking.

Andrew (17:02.81)

Yes, absolutely. I remember us planning the trip and we said to each other, as long as we don’t hit a storm here, we’ll be okay. And that was the long reach to Oranjulville. There was a very long stretch.

Charles (17:17.787)

We went to a farm. We often go to a farm, didn’t we? And we would camp on the side of that and then go sailing.

Andrew (17:27.95)

Yes, but I’m talking about that long trip that we did as five or six days on the sailing boat, because I remember us saying, as long as we don’t hit a storm there, we’ll be OK. And we did hit a storm there, was the afternoon thunderstorm. And I remember you capsized. And I remember you writing the boat and there were all these and there were all these. I remember it’s so funny. There were all of these, like 12 ropes hanging into the water. So I came up to you and the wind was howling like this. And you started

Charles (17:31.531)

Yes.

Charles (17:45.986)

ropes.

Charles (17:50.562)

Hehehe

Andrew (17:57.414)

pulling up the ropes, six pack, six pack, one six pack after the other. And I thought, this is a comic moment, just because you probably didn’t even bother tying up the food, but the beers, you were properly, they were properly tied up.

Charles (18:02.358)

Water! Sleeping bag!

Charles (18:16.398)

I don’t think we lost anything actually, I think we actually saved everything.

Andrew (18:20.002)

I don’t think you lost anything at all, but you went completely turtle, you went completely upside down and then came back up. I don’t think I capsized on, I don’t remember, but anyway, I just remember your side of your boat going over, I came up, you came over and you pulled up all the bit. It was a great moment.

Charles (18:38.226)

I do remember that. I remember we pulled ashore and we tried to make a fire to dry ourselves off on that night. And then there was a camp further down the road. There were a bunch of Afrikaners who were, had parked their caravans in a logger. And they asked if they, if we would like to dry our clothes at their fire, which.

We were wet and miserable actually at that stage, and so we accepted. And they were unbelievably polite and nice to us. They dried our clothes, they found out what we brought, they cooked our meal for us, and we had a very, very pleasant evening chatting to them. It was actually a whole adventure in its own right, that little serendipitous meeting of them, and they thought of course we were fruitcakes and they probably weren’t wrong.

Andrew (19:16.002)

Very wonderful. I did it.

Andrew (19:34.61)

It was crazy. So that total distance, what would that sailing distance been? And given that the lake itself is a very odd shape, it’s not long and thin or wide and fat. What would you say the distance we had covered?

Charles (19:34.894)

Thanks for watching.

Charles (19:49.23)

So the distance between the two towns is 150 kms, but I don’t think we actually traveled that. Because we wouldn’t have taken the sailing boats down the rapids, and I seem to think that we terminated the trip a little early before Villiers. We didn’t actually sail down to Villiers because later on, Mark and myself took the dinghy to try.

Andrew (20:03.675)

No.

Charles (20:16.29)

and sell that last portion that we hadn’t sold. And I think, was it Pennant Nine Yacht Club? There was a yacht club that we actually, I remember visiting it and we visited later actually on Longfellow when we sold the yacht. We went up there. I can’t quite remember that.

Andrew (20:40.55)

But this is a good time to introduce Longfellow because we had done the rowing boat, we had done the dinghies, but now we decided, okay, we wanted to do something a little more ambitious. We needed a bigger boat. How to build a bigger boat? You guys were students. I was in my first job. We were probably 19 or 20 years old, but we decided, well, that wasn’t going to stop us. And you found a boat that had been used as a plug for a mold to build Caprice.

Charles (20:59.254)

Sure.

Andrew (21:10.154)

sailing and that was 20 foot, 21 foot bilge keel sailing up. Was it 19? Okay. So it was okay. Only slightly longer than your dinghy. So, um, tell us a bit about that. I don’t remember that. I remember it arriving and seeing it. Okay. Sorry, Charles, just say that, just say that again. I overspoke you.

Charles (21:12.554)

No, it was 19. It was 19 foot. It’s small.

Charles (21:19.318)

Yeah.

Charles (21:25.922)

Well, we have seen this on our lawn in Bryanston, along to a teacher.

Charles (21:34.766)

Sorry, it belonged, it was on a lawn in Branson and we often drove past this teacher’s house and he had to make extra money. He had taken off the bilge keels off it, it was a wooden hard chine vessel and he had molded a center keel and then he’d used this as a plug and it was just rotting and it was pretty rotten, I gotta tell you. And…

we often said to him, don’t you want to sell it? And he wanted some stupid amount of money. And we said, I said, we’re students, man. We can’t. And then one day he phoned up and he said, do you still want the boat? We said, yes. He said, you can have it for 150 Rand if you remove it this week. And so that’s what we did. We borrowed the Valiant, bought this boat home. My parents were f****d.

I couldn’t believe what we brought home that was rotten and I was given um Four months for the project four months Okay, you can have it at home for four months and it must be gone by four months and of course We started to replace rotten stuff and eventually fiberglassed it and had to make the keels and it had nothing We made the mast we made Absolutely everything on that boat and it took four and a half years actually

four and a half years of innovative stuff because the total project cost, including the cost of the hull, and the road trailer was 2000 Rand. We made everything. We welded every piece of steel. Every pulley on that boat was turned on a lathe. Every fitting was either turned on the lathe or welded up with mild steel and then…

either hot-tipped galvanized or electroplated galvanized. We had zinc cyanide, enough to kill half of Johannesburg, actually, at home. And we would electroplate it at night. We even made the paraffin primer stove ourselves. And we made the stove. The outboard, we found a underwater gear on a junk heap, which we took home and fixed up.

Charles (23:55.81)

fixed up an old Briggs and Stratton four-stroke lawnmower engine, which we attached to this. So we had a four-stroke outboard that we had made. That was pretty advanced. You didn’t get four-stroke outboards in those days. And that was great. We did nothing else but build that boat. Everybody who came to visit knew that we were.

on the bones of our ass, so to speak. You guys would come around with beers and your dirty clothes and initially the boat was upside down as we sorted out the hole and then we turned it over the right way. My dad made a lean-to. Do you remember casting a concrete floor of that lean-to? 63 meters of flooring.

Andrew (24:48.77)

I don’t remember that, no.

Charles (24:51.878)

It was part of a deal. My dad said, if you can still keep the boat here, I’ll make a lean-to for it. But you’ve got to, which he would later turn into a workshop. And so we cast an industrial floor, which I hand-mixed that concrete with. I’ve not forgotten how hard that was, 60 square meters of floor. And that became the place. And with the lean-to, that allowed us to jig up the pulleys to turn the boat over.

We made tools to, and ads that my uncle made for me so that I could carve out the wooden bits for the kills because they all had negative shapes on them, which I couldn’t use the plane for. And we made everything. We, my brother and I went to old houses that they were breaking down and liberated the Moranti frames from the door frames which we took home and hand cut.

in with a with a handsaw because we didn’t even have a jigsaw and then we were able to laminate those into beams and replace the beams inside because in fact effectively the boat was rotten we replaced everything and made up this new boat and

Andrew (26:11.347)

How long does that process to build it from delivery to art?

Charles (26:14.69)

Four and a half years. It was four and a half years. I know. I was at uni, I missed many lectures building. It’s a bad, a bad student actually.

Andrew (26:27.762)

remember the beers. So we would work really hard. We would spend the whole Saturday just really, just getting stuff done. And then because we had a reward and the reward was Sleepy Hollow Hotel and the bar at Sleepy Hollow was our reward. It was like this whip, this silent whip that got us going. That’s why it took us four years. Maybe it actually slowed us down. I don’t know.

Charles (26:29.899)

Yeah.

Charles (26:40.43)

That’s right.

Charles (26:51.262)

Oh, I’ve discovered that actually boat building’s a slow process. Nothing happens fast when you build a boat. But it taught me a lot of lessons. One of them is you don’t want to build a boat. Go buy a boat and go sailing. It takes too long to build the damn thing. But it gave me lots of insight. And I was inspired by my uncle. There’s a coronary, a side story to this, because my uncle told me about a guy that he had met.

Andrew (26:57.475)

Hmm.

Charles (27:20.79)

and called Johnny Ray. I don’t know him, New Zealander. He’d met him in New Zealand. And he was a man that built his own boat during the depression after the First World War. And actually ended up sailing it. And then a lady by the name of Louis, was it Jenny Louis? Can’t remember her first name. And her son sailed that same boat around the world. And that boat.

was handmade and he made everything on that boat. And his little view to me, because I said to him, I want a yacht, but I can’t afford a yacht. And he said, if you’re prepared to do it, you don’t need stainless steel fittings. You can make everything. There’s nothing that you can’t do. And that was the inspiration to get up and just make everything. And so for 2000 Rand, which…

today would be $2,000. It’s not a lot of money. We completed a whole boat. That includes Moss, sails, trailer, the works burger on that boat. And we did all sorts of innovative things. We used the sails from the Flying Dutchman, which was over rigged for the boat. But it meant, because it’s an Olympic class sailing dinghy,

we bought a full suit of cells for 70 Rand. Full suit of cells. We went into Hewlett’s Aluminium and went to talk to them about masts and we’d taken pictures of the boat and the guys at Hewlett’s in Johannesburg, which is an enormous company, looked at my brother and I could see that we were clearly not made of money. He said to me, look, I’m gonna give you a sample.

I said, oh, well, that would be great. We can work on a sample. That will be great. And it was a full size mast. He said, put that on the car and don’t turn around. Yeah, it was fantastic. It was fantastic.

Andrew (29:24.21)

Oh, nice. Oh, nice. Because the boom was the boom was a laser mast. It was it was a used overused discarded laser mast that had a bend in it. But yeah, it was fine, a bit of a bend in it. So what?

Charles (29:31.146)

Yes, yes it was.

Charles (29:37.974)

Yes, that’s quite right.

Yeah, yeah. So those were the lessons. And of course, I didn’t have any formal education apart from the push off that my uncle had given us. And then all the experience that you and I had sailing the dinghies. And to this day, I’m still self-taught. It’s what I’ve read. And so I’ve joined the, there’s two classes of sailors. There’s wise sailors.

and experienced sailors. And I’m in the second class. I’m only wise because I’ve made all the mistakes. There isn’t any mistake that I haven’t made. And so I’m now an experienced sailor. I’m not a wise sailor. If I was a wise sailor, I would have gone on sailing courses and I would have learned and avoided most of the pitfalls that I’ve encountered in my life. But that’s been part of the adventure.

Andrew (30:41.23)

I remember very clearly that day, that celebrated day after four years of launching Longfellow. We called it Longfellow. We all liked Neil Diamond and we called it Longfellow Serenades. We called it Longfellow and we launched it on Valdam. You insisted on reversing. Now you said, oh, don’t worry, I know how to reverse. Well, turns out with a trailer, turns out you didn’t. Nobody did. None of us.

Charles (30:50.975)

It’s right.

Andrew (31:10.93)

worry, but you wanted to do it. And I said, Well, fine, you go and make a fool of yourself. Because it’s either you’re going to make a fool of yourself, or I’m going to make

Charles (31:17.238)

Yeah, I think I had the water halfway up your front door of your Range Rover.

Andrew (31:22.446)

Oh, it filled up with water. The rain drove a filled up with water, but we got the boat in. We got the boat in, we floated it off the trailer and then we stacked it full of beers. And then we did our first trip, our first, I think we did two or three, you know, early trips, test trips and then fiddling and adding a few things. And then, of course, a year or so after the maiden voyage, we decided to do that same Frankfurt to Villiers trip. But this time we had to.

Charles (31:38.582)

Yeah.

Andrew (31:50.93)

sail all the way up to Frankfurt, go all the way back to Ilias and then come all the way back to our launch point. That was one of the greatest adventures of my life, that trip.

Charles (31:56.136)

Yeah.

Charles (32:02.094)

fantastic because we sailed at night, we sailed day and night. We we had a paraffin lamp, a hurricane lamp, do you remember that, which was used a reflector from a heater, a parabolic reflector, which we stripped on the front. And we had some magic sails in the evening as we just ghosted down the river with just a wisp of breeze.

Andrew (32:12.56)

at the

the front.

Charles (32:31.63)

That was some magic days.

Andrew (32:33.174)

I used to also then, even then capture stories. Then I was doing it on Super 8 and there’s a shot of my, I had a company, BMW 518 and we’re offloading beers. This is 12 feet high. And we then, we set off. And I remember there was one occasion where we would go night day, night day, night day, cause the wind wasn’t particularly favorable. So we had to get distance, sail at night, which was treacherous.

not treacherous, dangerous, but difficult on Valhalla because of the mud banks. So you had to be quite accurate in sailing in the middle of the channels. And if you didn’t, you would wander and then get caught in a mud blank. And this thing had bilge keels. For those of you who don’t know what a bilge keel is, these are two keels on the side, as opposed to a center keel down the middle. But it means that if you run aground, the boat stays stable. So you don’t actually, sometimes if you’re going very slowly, you don’t know if you’ve run aground.

And there was one occasion where I had been sailing with John T. And we had sailed.

Charles (33:37.896)

It was you and I that had been sailing, and then we left Johnty and Mark to do the next shift. We’d make dinner.

Andrew (33:40.95)

That’s right, Frontier Mark, you and I said, okay, that’s right. We, yes, that is right. And then I remember lying in this sleeping bag and I could see the opening. I could see the stars and everything. And there’s Mark and Mark and John’s pulling the thing and trimming it and chatting and pulling it and it’s beautiful. I mean, it’s a wonderful scene. It’s an idyllic scene. So I remember after quite a long time, the star constellation that I’d been studying hadn’t moved one bit.

They had been gently tweaking the boat that had actually run firmly aground and was dead still in the water. And we just think it was the funniest thing in the world because they tried so hard. Really focused, you know, taking it very seriously.

Charles (34:21.922)

we spent how many hours on a sandbank just to film.

Charles (34:29.101)

The boat was awesome from that point of view because she would sail in less than two foot of water. So we were able to go where nobody else’s yacht could go. And that even helped us rescue another boat that had got caught, I don’t know if you remember, a vivacity that had got caught near Ruruta Eiland on a mud bank. And we came up to…

Andrew (34:34.619)

Yes.

Charles (34:56.77)

helped them and we towed them off that mud bank. And then I can remember the guy saying, how come your outboard sounds like a lawnmower? And I said, because it is. And they felt quite humiliated to have been towed off a mud bank by this funny looking boat lawnmower for an outboard. That was one of our little highlights.

Andrew (35:08.59)

It is.

Andrew (35:17.83)

with a lone member.

Charles (35:24.854)

just because it was a bulge killer. And we could go anywhere we liked. And so we didn’t take a dinghy. We always just pulled her into shore and jumped off. Yeah.

Andrew (35:33.042)

right? Yeah, we figured the dinghy would slow us down too much. So we just didn’t bother. And I remember pulling off at someplace there was a there was a camp at a camp and there was some public toilets and we this is a very funny moment where on the on again filming on the super eight you hand the you hand the shovel into my head put the have on and just know

Charles (35:37.026)

Yeah.

Charles (35:56.186)

There weren’t public toilets. There was no public toilets. That’s the point. We pulled in.

Andrew (36:00.402)

But they were little shacks, they were little shacks when they were long drops. They were full of wasps. I remember they were full of wasps. Yeah.

Charles (36:03.842)

No? Why then? Because I remember the piles of old wood, broken old trees, and I think that we went behind those trees to do.

Andrew (36:13.114)

Mm.

Andrew (36:16.858)

Yeah, you’re right. The memory is fading, but I remember you thrusting this. I’ve got a bit of clip footage, I’ll put it in here. But for the podcast, it’s a little bit difficult because it’s quite visual. But anyway, you say to me, there you go, my boy, go and donate your daily six inches. And this was the theme of the trip, of course, with young boys, you know. It got very, very silly. Hmm.

Charles (36:35.466)

That’s right, I do remember that.

Charles (36:44.816)

Yeah. It was a great trip. And that was the start of many good trips for me from a sailing point of view. Because of course, you went on to four by four, and Mark also four by four trips. And Johnty went off into running his business. And of course, you went on to four by four. Yeah.

Andrew (36:59.11)

Yes.

Yeah. But girls got in the way because I remember very clearly we would go out with the with sailing boat because I had a laser. Of course, we had the long fellow and we would we would set ourselves and say, okay, Sunday, who’s going to we’re going sailing, are we going sailing? And eventually it was no, because girls started getting in the way. And then I thought, and I think you were the you were the worst of them. Well, you were the start of it. You were the first one to say, I’m not going sailing this Sunday. What’s the matter with you?

Charles (37:20.194)

Thank you.

Charles (37:30.422)

Yeah.

Andrew (37:30.486)

you know, are you ill? No, actually, she’s quite nice. So I’d rather spend time with her than you, which was completely understandable. But it was an I decided one day, I called you guys up and you were all doing other things, you weren’t going to go sailing. And then I took up flying gliders. So that was my cause because for drive was also something that I obviously did. But

Charles (37:37.614)

I know.

Andrew (37:57.502)

you went off and you actually got very serious with your sailing. So I know you’ve had some incredible adventures and I think it would be a good idea probably to…

Charles (38:02.939)

Thanks for watching!

Charles (38:07.598)

Wait one moment, I’m going to just…

Andrew (38:09.262)

No problem. Ahem.

Charles (38:12.059)

Um.

Charles (38:15.594)

I’m gonna call back. All right, sorry.

Andrew (38:20.901)

And yeah, I took up gliding and then you went on your own sailing adventure.

mainly after you had moved from South Africa to New Zealand. So I know you’ve had some amazing things, but you have another big story that I think we’re gonna leave for another podcast that I wanna share with our audience, an incredible adventure and a credible story. But can you take me up to that point? What was your, how did your ocean sailing evolve once you had left South Africa?

Charles (38:59.382)

So I came to New Zealand, and I wasn’t a specialist in ethetist. I was a GP and ethetist. And New Zealand doesn’t like GP and ethetists. And I couldn’t get the kind of job I wanted. So I joined the training circuit and spent five years, read my primary exams and my final exams, worked quite hard, actually. And I’ve got to say that I’m a very good person.

Andrew (39:03.986)

Thanks for watching!

Charles (39:26.358)

And by the time I did my final exams, I already had five children. It was one of the toughest times of my life. We didn’t have a boat. I used to go out on weekends and go for a walk to a place which in Auckland is North Head and which would look over the Gulf, the Hauraki Gulf, and look at the boats and promise myself that one day I would have a boat. And there’s a long story as to how we got our boat, but I was lent a boat for a year,

45 foot, 47 foot, steel hull, 27 ton, ocean going, very old Dutch sailing vessel. From a complete stranger, he’d heard of me and he had asked if I would look after the boat as he went to Australia. And I’d only spoken to him on the phone. He had attempted to sell me the boat. I said, I look, I…

If I bought the boat, I couldn’t afford to maintain it. I don’t have enough money to maintain a vessel of this size. And he said, look, if you will just look after it for me and show people around if they’re interested to buy it, you may have free use of the boat. And we then had some marvelous adventures. Our first sail was a night sail out of Auckland up to Kawa Island.

And that’s pretty daunting without proper navigation equipment. That was just with a prismatic compass and some charts. And that was with a friend and my family and kids. And we went to Kawa Island and then off to Great Barrier Island. So that’s an adventurous trip for a family for their first sailing trip. And that started a whole new phase for us. So we had that boat for a year.

I did manage to have a big accident where I bumped into another vessel. That was a very humiliating thing because this 27-ton steel hull boat had a tiny little scratch on the prow and demolished the other vessel that I bumped into. I had a reputation in that marina. When I came in and the weather was unfavorable.

Charles (41:41.442)

the Marina residents would turn out to come and help me get my boat into the Marina rather than have me sail in on my own. Say I found that very humiliating. But anyway, that was the start. I eventually sailed that boat to Australia for the owner. And not only did I sail it to Australia, but I then got off the boat and went to a job interview and they got me a job in Australia.

I still remember at the job interview when they asked me how was the flight and I said, oh, no, I didn’t fly I sailed here You’re right. Of course. No, no I did it was so that was and it and I didn’t realize it at the time. But if you if you have an adventure spirit, it helps you with job interviews People always you get a bit of kudos for having that kind of background

And we had a wonderful year as a family, living and working in Brisbane. And then we bought a Lotus 9.2. And that was our family sailing vessel. We had six kids, we sailed up and down, we would take a month holiday. Now a Lotus is 9.2 meters. It’s not very big, it’s just under 30 foot. And we would pile all eight of us and go away for a month.

And we just had adventure after adventure. It was fantastic until eventually my eldest son said one day, I’m just not going with you again. It’s just too cramped on board. And then we bought, we sold that boat and we bought a Chico, a Chico 40 foot. And that is the subject of another adventure which involved our first offshore sailing trip. And I will talk to you.

later about that because that adventure has the many little iterations, which I haven’t even told you, Andrew. But that adventure has finally had its final chapter. And I’ll explain that the next time that we have a chat.

Andrew (43:54.378)

Okay, I’m looking forward to that because I know it was a big it was a it was a we had heard about it when it was happening and it was we had we were kind of we were terrified for you guys because you know the sporadic information and you were in danger and etc so we’re gonna leave that for another so make sure you subscribe to the next Journey Podcast because we will I yes it was it’s

Charles (44:08.534)

Yes.

Charles (44:12.718)

It involves us nearly losing our lives and losing the boat at sea and so a very, very big dynamic adventure with lots of issues. And the… I received an email which at the end of our little chat here, Andrew, and I’ll get it for the podcast. I will read it out to you. I’ll read it. It sounds like a phishing email. I’ll read it to you.

Andrew (44:24.198)

Yeah.

Andrew (44:41.51)

Okay.

Charles (44:43.382)

And that’s the culmination of this whole thing. It’s sealed this whole chapter on the adventures of 2009. But yeah, it was quite fun. It’s been quite good. I’ll read it to you anyway. Just give me half a tick. I’ll find it.

Andrew (44:52.219)

Yeah.

Andrew (44:57.63)

Okay, fantastic story.

Andrew (45:04.599)

I can decide whether to put it in this episode or the next episode. We can decide what we do with that.

Charles (45:08.758)

Well, all right. Le Glorious Le… You’re…

Charles (45:23.307)

Alright.

Andrew (45:32.904)

I’m sorry.

Charles (45:34.274)

trying to pull this off the server. Hmm. You’d think that would be easy.

Andrew (45:44.934)

They’ve decided to cut the grass outside my house. So I’m hearing this lawn mowers, the council. They always time it perfectly.

Charles (45:51.694)

I actually can’t hear them. Your microphone’s fantastic, because I can’t actually hear it. Isn’t it weird that it’s not allowing me to pull the title? I’ll just shift you over just to the one side here and let me open up another mail program and see if I can find it on this.

Andrew (45:57.392)

Oh good.

Charles (46:21.262)

It’s quite weird that it’s not.

Andrew (46:25.075)

It relates to your rescue, yes?

Charles (46:29.598)

It does relate to the rescue. And here goes, Andrew. I get this email. Good morning, Charles. I’m Lieutenant Commander Matthews Weingart, current and last commanding officer of the French Navy ship, Le Glorious. It’s a pleasure to write you this email to inform you of a unique opportunity to possibly meet in Namir next month. So I got that just in May. And…

In fact, I lied to you, 17th of April this year. And then it goes on and says, “‘As you may not know, the patrol boat, La Glorious, “‘is to be retired from active duty on the 9th of May. “‘And on this occasion, the patrol boat will carry out “‘one last trip at sea on Sunday, May the 7th in the morning. “‘This boat which has been sailing the South Pacific “‘for the last 30 years is not unknown to you.’

since she participated in the rescue of your family in 2009. In souvenir of this extraordinary achievement, it would be a pleasure to have you on board on this last journey of La Glorious around Noumea. It’s a French Navy tradition to have a last patrol of a boat on the eve to be retired from active duty. Some of the previous commanding officers of La Glorious are expected to be present on this day, including Commander Numa Dubek, who was commanding in 2009.

be a great opportunity to gather your family and Numa on board La Glorious. Warm regards Lieutenant Commander Matthews Weingart. And I did actually attend that my family couldn’t make it, they were visiting family overseas, but I actually got somebody to do a log come for me last minute and went there and had a fantastic time.

Charles (48:24.814)

the original commanding officer and one crew member, Joshua, who was the chef on board, happened to be again on that boat. And so he remembered from that time. And this rescue is actually recorded in the log books of the boat, et cetera, and in fact, in their.

They produced for every commanding officer a color book of all the adventures that the boat had been on. And there’s a few pages devoted to the rescue and us and mentioned as a family. So it was quite a big deal. And they had on board that boat, they had the head of security for French New Caledonia, who was a two-star general, who is a…

He’s a legionnaire, so you know, the little square cap, et cetera, and a four-star general, it’s not general, admiral from the French fleet in the Pacific, both of whom knew my story and actually spoke very good English and chatted to me. And I was the guest of honor on board and it was fantastic. I had a wonderful trip and was treated really nicely. And then a lunch.

And then as only the Navy can do, and then a lovely cocktail party in the evening. It’s exhausted by the end of it. But anyway, it was a fantastic trip. And that kind of culminated the closure of this adventure, because we’ve been on other family adventures since then. But this whole thing is closed. That little sequence of events have all closed. So it’s pretty awesome, actually.

Andrew (50:05.161)

Hmm.

Andrew (50:16.002)

Yes, it’s closed. Yes. That’s wonderful. I had a lump in my throat just listening to that letter being read. It was kind of, I was like, wow, you know, it’s like, but I understand what you say, it’s closure. It’s the chapter and it’s.

Charles (50:22.318)

Thank you.

Charles (50:31.01)

Yeah it is, it was the final chapter of that book.

Andrew (50:36.366)

So we will get together soon and I want to hear that story first hand from you. We spoke when I visited you in 19, we spoke very briefly about it and I thought there must be more. So such a nice opportunity to chat to you again now about our…

Charles (50:53.014)

Yeah, lots of things happened. The skip of that boat, because we’ve got another boat. We subsequently, other boat we’ve sailed to Fiji and Vanuatu and New Caledonia, circumnavigated New Zealand, been down to Stewart Island, been down to the Auckland, sub-Antarctic Islands, the New Zealand sub-Antarctic Islands. So I’ve done quite a few adventures subsequent to that.

Andrew (50:58.341)

Yeah.

Charles (51:23.318)

But when I went to Vanuatu, I sent my family home and I had to sail the boat to Nyumea and leave it there for two months to come back and work and then come back and finish our adventures and then sail the boat back to New Zealand. Numa Dubek, the commanding officer, he flew to Vanuatu and sailed the boat back with me as a…

if you like, a voting confidence in me as a skipper. It was quite an amazing thing to have him show that confidence. I had been, you know, on his boat and had confidence in him, and he flew over and crewed on my boat as I sailed. And he said, I would like to show you my New Mir. He was then the military attache for New Mir at that time.

So anyway, part of that story, that adventure, it all pieces together.

Andrew (52:24.218)

Wonderful story.

Andrew (52:32.842)

I’d like to wrap this up with your circumnavigation of New Zealand with your son, just the two of you. And I remember following you on the little plotter, because I use one of those on my wild expeditions, the little yellow brick plotter. And I was following you live to see where you were. And it was a race, wasn’t it? Tell me about that. And tell me about that. And tell me about the interaction between you and your son.

Charles (52:44.994)

Yeah.

Charles (52:53.982)

Yes it was, a two handed round you win a yacht race.

Andrew (53:01.762)

and the relationship between you and your son in that very demanding environment, give me some insights into that.

Charles (53:09.674)

tell you what that was that was that was truly amazing firstly um the previous race to that was around North Island and they wouldn’t allow my son to enter because he wasn’t 18 he was 16 at the time and they had said to him it’s there’s a very high chance of death and we would wouldn’t like a young man to see his father die and so

The race committee wouldn’t actually allow him. They had a special meeting and they wouldn’t actually bend the rules to allow him to race. So he was just 18 and he was able, and he was the youngest person to do that race. And that’s a very prestigious race. It’s being done by very few people. And it’s a very, very demanding race. It was done in four legs.

The first leg was Auckland to Maunganui, which is just towards the top of the North Island. And then this massive leg from the top all the way down the west coast, all the way down to Stewart Island. And that was an epic trip. Now, two-handed sailing, there’s not much company with that because one of you is sleeping and the other one is on the helm managing the boat. It’s hard, hard work.

And we had two big storms, which nearly had a loss of boat and nearly lost two lives on that boat. They were able to self-rescue and that is a whole other story for them. And then there was a second storm, which turned out to be, when I say storm, not a gale, a proper meteorological storm with winds of 70 knots as we were going down the South Island. We had a day before that torn our whole mainsail.

full length down the mainsail. And we both sat on deck. I still remember in our underpants, we had put up a tri-sail during that little storm that we had. The winds were only about 35, 40 knots. And then we were sailing with the tri-sail up and the main headsail. And we hand-stitched our main. It took us.

Charles (55:32.678)

nearly eight and a half hours of continuous stitching to stitch up the main sail so we had a sail again that we could continue sailing with and then we hit this big storm and we were third boat in. We were ridiculed because our boat is not a real racing boat it’s actually a cruising boat and we were ridiculed by a number of other racing boats for undertaking this race with the vessel that we were in.

And I can still remember because we had to wait five days for the rest of the crew to come in. They got, they sought shelter elsewhere and then before continuing the race. And I can remember a few of those skippers coming to me and actually apologizing and said, we take back everything that we said about you. It was pretty awesome actually.

Andrew (56:27.057)

That’s not.

Charles (56:27.294)

And my son got a special prize for being the youngest crew member to have ever done that race. And you can imagine, so that’s one month of sailing. Firstly, you make quite a bond between you and the other teams. And of course, Matthew and I, who’s my second elder son, we cemented a very, very powerful relationship.

Totally, because here’s the, you’re totally codependent. Your life depends on the courage and competency of that other person. And 17 knots is not to be trifled with. That’s an unusual bit of weather. And I have to admit, it’s the first time in my life that I’ve ever thought, oh, I could be at work. And maybe that might be better. It’s the first time in my life where I’ve actually thought, yeah, work’s not such a bad thing.

Andrew (57:25.27)

It sounds like the adage in flying, never be in an airplane wishing you were on the ground. And it’s happened to me twice and it’s not a nice place to be. It’s just, yeah, work is actually okay. Yeah.

Charles (57:25.3)

Yeah.

Charles (57:36.93)

No it’s not.

Charles (57:40.638)

Yeah, and of course this is where your ultimate learnings of self-reliance actually come from because you can’t get off, you can’t stop. You have to solve those problems. Whatever problems come your way, you have to solve them.

Andrew (57:51.218)

Hmm. Yeah. It’s a it’s a complete focused thing that I’ve that I found in those situations. I would every cell of your body and your brain and everything, you’re focused, clear. The world almost slows down for me slightly in that certain things do this. What if I do this? If I do this and that, OK, if I do that, I guess that’s better because

And you but you do it really fast, but you do it. And then you and then you act and then you and it’s afterwards only then afterwards does the adrenaline pumping come in and say, hell, that was close. And I won’t be doing that again, because that was stupid. But you’re talking about wise and experience. Where do you get the wisdom from?

Charles (58:41.206)

Right? Yeah. Well, it’s the first time I like that I’ve ever put up a tricell in anger. I’ve never had to do that. You read lots of stories about people putting up tricells. Let’s take the mane down, strap the boom down, and you put up this little triangular cell off the mast, and it’s a third of the size of your mane. And it’s…

Andrew (58:50.47)

What do you mean? What?

Andrew (58:55.63)

Yeah.

Andrew (59:00.465)

Yes.

Andrew (59:03.682)

Yes. And it just allows you to keep steerage, doesn’t it?

Charles (59:08.598)

Well, no, our boat was doing 10 knots. Let me tell you, we’re going hell for this. Yeah. But it does, it gives you steerage and control over the vessel. So if you don’t flounder. No, but we were moving. We were really moving. Yeah.

Andrew (59:13.718)

On a handkerchief. Yeah.

Andrew (59:19.847)

Mm.

Andrew (59:26.226)

Ciao, ciao,

Charles (59:29.162)

exciting stuff and the auto helm wouldn’t work under those conditions. We both remained on deck fully clothed and we could only manage the helm 30 minutes on and then 30 minutes off because it was hard work steering and managing the waves and preventing us off from being broached. It was just hard work and it was all survival. It was all about surviving.

Andrew (59:49.257)

Mm.

Andrew (59:53.774)

Wow. Well, everybody, thank you, Charles. I’m going to wrap it up now talking about survival. The next time you come on, you’re going to talk about a survival, an epic survival story. And we’ll bring you on again. Charles and Auckland, thank you so much for your time. It’s been a pleasure and actually remembering some of those times that we had on Longfellow and on the rowing boat.

Brilliant introduction to my adventure story. It was fantastic chatting about it.

Charles (01:00:26.654)

Yeah, it was the start for all of us actually. All of us went on to have adventures. They weren’t all in the same direction, but we’ve all managed to make sure that adventure is part of our lexicon. Yeah.

Andrew (01:00:40.514)

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening and thank you so much for those watching for your time today. Thank you. All right, Charles, that’s fantastic. Thank you so much. That really was brilliant. I thought it was fantastic. I hope the, I won’t know if everything has worked perfectly until 10 minutes time when I start downloading the files, but I’m hoping it’s, all right.

Charles (01:00:51.266)

You’re welcome. Thank you, Andrew. Cheers, mate. Have a good day.