Ginger's swashbuckling adventure

Swashbucklers takes aboard 2000 litres of diesel from the trawler Savannah off the New Zealand coast.

Ginger Gibbs is something of a legendary character around the Auckland waterfront. Stories about his exploits on and off the water abound. Some have no doubt been embellished a bit over the years, but his friends are quick to point out that the gnarly seaman lives up to his reputation.

The Ginger legend stepped up to another level last month when he and three other adventurers broke the Sydney-Auckland record for a transtasman crossing. It was previously held by an ocean liner. They did it in Swashbucklers, a standard 12.5m Rayglass Protector powerboat.

Gibbs had carefully chosen his crew of Adam Wicks (Rayglass), Paul Ricks (Volvo Penta) and Daniel Hedges (Team New Zealand). Wicks is a 20-year Auckland Volunteer Coastguard veteran who drives Protectors constantly. Ricks was the motor man and Hedges, another Coastguard stalwart and familiar with Protectors, is also an electronics expert who set up the plotters for the trip. Gibbs says this input was invaluable.

As it turned out the quartet made the crossing in 40 hours 31 minutes 26 seconds, taking seven hours off the record of 47h 30m set by the liner Oriana 45 years ago.

For Gibbs the trip was the culmination of a three-year dream. The fisherman, all-round adventurer and now successful restaurant owner did not undertake the project lightly.

First he had to ensure that his record would be monitored and confirmed by the UIM (Union International Motonautique), the body that officially supervises powerboat racing and record attempts around the world. He also extended the distance by deciding to cross from the Sydney Harbour Bridge to the Auckland Harbour Bridge. The Oriana was timed only to Rangitoto Light.

Then he had to select the right boat and power plant. Rayglass says the 12m Protector was beefed up a bit as a sort of "Ginger-proofing" exercise and some modifications were made to the underwater running plank by adding a section of vee to make the hull softer riding in the big seas expected.

He opted for standard Volvo Penta D6 diesels coupled to Volvo DPS legs. Many of the experts said this was the wrong choice and even Volvo Penta were not keen to see him running the engines at 90 per cent of their power for more than 30 hours.

Gibbs: "We trialled the engines on Auckland Harbour and although some people said we should be running jets or surface drives, we had faith in the engines and the beefed up Volvo twin prop drives. On the trip they did the business and lasted the distance without any problems."

For the four record-breakers the critical aspect of the trip was refuelling. Gibbs had arranged with his brother Craig to have his 20m trawler Savannah on station off the west coast. On the way to the rendezvous Swashbucklers had used more fuel than estimated and Savannah moved 50 nautical miles further west to decrease the margin of error.

"We were running really low on fuel as we battled our way to the Savannah," says Gibbs. "As we came close around 8am we had only 50 litres of fuel left when we spotted a big factory ship, then saw Savannah close by. We took 2000 litres of fuel aboard in seven minutes and were on our way again. At that stage I felt we could be in Auckland on schedule at midday on the last day of the International Boat Show.

"Then 100nm off Cape Reinga a big wave wiped off the radar arch and all the navigation domes. With no GPS, radar or GPS-compass the crew had to manually steer the boat until Adam and Daniel jury-rigged another auto-compass."

From then on it was anything but plain sailing as Swashbucklers encountered seriously unfavourable elements on the last leg into Auckland. They missed the boat show fanfare, arriving at 2.45am, but a big band of supporters waited in the Viaduct to welcome them back. Mission accomplished.

* Barry Thompson's full story on the Gibbs record attempt is in the April-May issue of Propeller magazine.