Roger Moroney: Pride only victim as Titanic sinks

There was a fine westerly wind running through these parts yesterday. It smeared the clouds across the sky, so it must have been fair raging up there at 10,000 feet, and it flattened the sea off so that spray from the waves was swept to the horizon rather than the shore.

"If only the Titanic had not gone down," I mused as I returned to town from the seafront.

Indeed, although I pondered the irony of the sinking of the Titanic, in its wake many a life had been spared.

Not all that many in hindsight, maybe a dozen or so. All with fins. For the Titanic was a flotational fishing device known to the seafaring sundry as a kontiki.

It was not the first such device I had built and put to sea off the Napier foreshore in pursuit of marine life which could be turned into (at worst) fish cakes.

Having grown up on the beachfront I and my siblings had become used to seeing little rafts, with little sails, being sent off toward South America.

Some would end their journeys about 500m offshore while some would venture slightly further.

As a boy, I would wander along to sit nearby and watch those responsible pull them in.

One bloke turning what appeared to be the handle of a modified hosereel and another one unclipping the hooks.

Some hooks would still have bait attached ... that clearly crushed the kontiki anglers ... for even the crabs had forsaken them.

A lot of the time they pulled in small sharks.

Dogfish.

They would return them to the sea, even though they appeared to have little life left in them.

Occasionally they would detach a kahawai from the line and smile.

Looked easy enough, so many a year later I decided to build one.

I asked around and was told how to make a collapsible sail using a piece of stocking, a barley sugar and a length of nylon attached to the top of the kontiki's mast.

You'd pass the line through a "U" shaped clasp which was under the waterline, and attach the barley-sugar wrapped in stocking.

When it eventually melted it would allow the line to pass through the clasp, and the mast and sail to fall.

Much easier to haul in a sail-less craft.

I bought 500m of heavy gauge nylon line and 20 hooks and clips.

I got an old rubber inner tube from a car tyre from a local garage and used planks of timber from a pallet to build the thing.

A sheet of vinyl did the trick as a sail. Too easy.

I even gave it a name ... SS Bogey (don't ask).

So my brothers and I put it to sea one westerly battered morning and watched it do everything it should.

It went brilliantly. The sail dropped just minutes after the line had run out and we latched everything down for a haul-in about six hours (and several beers) later.

We got a couple of kahawai. In that first westerly afflicted season 20 years ago we also nabbed a kingfish.

Through the years it got less use as we all had other (arguably better) things to do of a Saturday, and the old angling raft fell into disrepair.

So, about 10 years ago, I rebuilt it completely. Total revamp and redesign.

Better keel and slightly smaller sail area. I also devised a better spool device, using a tough old hosereel.

Looked a picture, and for its maiden voyage that November (as the equinox winds blew in across the mountains and out to sea) we accordingly painted "Titanic" on the side. Fate tempted.

"Bait ready ... fire the bugger out," my brother called as he grasped the first of the squid-clad lures.

I stepped into the small wind-flattened waves and set it a-sail ... and off she went, looking a picture in the morning sun.

And so it came to pass, on its maiden voyage, it overturned about 35 metres out.

Not the victim of an iceberg ... just dodgy design.

We had attached just three lures when it went over.

Tried again the following week after adapting the position of the mast and putting a weight aft on the keel.

It sort of improved things. It got to 60 metres this time before turning turtle.

I couldn't work it out. I'd spent ... minutes ... refining it, and even given it a new name, that of a proud combat naval ship which ruled the seas for many a year.

Then it was pointed out to me that the Nautilus was a submarine.

Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.