JonDlundyn parker's adventure chapter # 1
November 6th 2006 18:12
Lundyn's Launch
Chapter 1
THE WEAK LINK
The clinker built timber launch cut a swathe through the water as it motored up the mirror calm of the Swansea channel. Fisherman standing on the rock strewn shore with wand like rods in their hands nodded or waved as the launch burbled by leaving a flowing wake of rippling waves behind it. Standing at the varnished rosewood wheel, Lundyn Parker raised a hand in reply. His crewmate Roscoe sat on a bench engrossed in rolling his fifth smoke for the morning. It was rather smelly French tobacco and Lundyn automatically wrinkled his nose as his best friend lit up again. On the spirit stove in the cabin the coffee pot started to gurgle and send out wafts of its aroma. Baked beans simmered in accompaniment to the coffee pot. The men would take their breakfast before crossing the bar of the channel and heading out into the open sea to dive for the now rare coastal black-lipped abalone.
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A blue and white pennant code flag Alpha flew at the top of the stumpy mast of the launch, indicating that there was diver down below. Roscoe was leaning back against the bulkhead, his polished nut-brown skull beaming in the early morning sun. His bare feet were swinging off the end of the bench and his pale blue eyes never left the compressor of the hooka dive system that was keeping Lundyn alive as he scoured the bottom of the ocean for abalone shell. Suddenly the VHF radio crackled to life.
Roscoe bounded to his feet and picked up the microphone, “This is Lively Lady, this is Lively Lady, this is Lively Lady, come in whoever is in need of help.”
The voice crackled back to him. “This is Karen Philips. I am on a cruiser and I can’t wake any of the crew. I think something has happened to them.”
Roscoe replied, “This is Lively Lady. What is your position over?” All this time Roscoe’s eyes still remained on the compressor and his ears remained tuned to its rhythmic hum.
“I don’t know where I am exactly.” There was a long pause and Roscoe knew she was still there with the radio microphone pressel switch still pressed down. “We were anchored during the night and now we are not. We seem to be at sea.”
Alarm bells began to ring in Roscoe’s brain and gently he asked. “This is Lively Lady; Karen, can you see any land?” A wait of a minute or two gave Roscoe time to back out of the cabin and give Lundyn’s message cord the three tugs that meant surface immediately.
Karen’s voice came back distraught. “I can’t see anything. There seems to be low cloud on the horizon but I can’t see any land.”
Roscoe cast his eyes around the coastline of their position and he could see a very faint bit of cloud to the north. “This is the Lively Lady. Karen, where were you anchored last night?”
“I’m not sure, we seemed to be behind a small island. The crew wanted to do some fishing there. I went to sleep and now I can’t wake them and their cabin is locked. We are drifting around and I am getting quite frightened.”
“This is Lively Lady. Karen, stand by and I will see what we can do.” Just then the launch tilted alarmingly and the cabin filled with the deep smell of brine and fish. Lundyn was standing over him glistening with sea water, his mask and regulator off and holding his fins in one hand with a net bag at his feet containing about a dozen black lip abalone.
“What gives Roscoe? Another couple of minutes and we could have had our bag limit.” “Just a sec Lundyn and I’ll explain.”
“Coast Guard Swansea, Coast Guard Swansea, Coast Guard Swansea, This is Lively Lady, this is Lively Lady, this is Lively Lady over… “
“Lively Lady, this is Coast Guard Swansea, over…”
“Coast Guard Swansea did you copy my conversation with Karen? Over.”
“Roger Lively Lady, go to channel 74.”
Lundyn started to peel off his wet suit. Roscoe pressed a button on the radio and the channel changed from the VHF 16 to VHF 74 channel for conversation.
“Lively Lady, Lively Lady, Lively Lady, this is Swansea Coastal Guard”. The conversation that followed was standard procedure. Roscoe was to go back to channel 16 and tell Karen that he was handing the call over to Swansea Coast Guard and they would instigate a rescue operation through Australian Search and Rescue in Canberra. When Roscoe had finished talking to Karen, who was a bit shaken but said she was calming down, he turned to Lundyn.
“Mate we have a scared lady out there drifting around in a cruiser with no idea where she is or what to do. She says they were anchored off an island last night and the crew went fishing and she went to sleep. This morning she woke up and the vessel was adrift at sea and the crew have locked themselves into their quarters and can’t be woken. Sounds a bit off I reckon!”
Lundyn by now had changed back to a T-shirt, cut off jeans and deck shoes. He replied, “She can’t be far away otherwise we would not be getting her call on the VHF. Let’s get out the chart and see what might have happened.”
The two men spread out a chart of the coast and with a set of dividers and parallel rules worked out some distances. In current radio conditions and with the height of their radio mast they figured the cruiser had to be within a ten nautical mile circle. There had been a light westerly wind blowing through the night but it had died away at daylight to give glassy smooth seas with just the slightest hint of swell. Working out the tides from the choice of two islands where a crew might anchor and fish, they decided that the likeliest spot was Broughton Island just off Port Stevens. To be out of site of land the cruiser would need to be almost twenty miles out to sea perhaps and not far from drifting into the Eastern Australian Current. At a rate of 3 knots this current would carry the cruiser quickly down the coast. From their own position, diving several miles off Red Head in about 25 metres of water they figured they could intersect the course of the cruiser in about three or four hours. Lundyn pointed to a spot on the chart and Roscoe nodded his bullet shaped head, sniffing his nose like a basset hound at the thought of a little action, the smell of a chase! From their own position they worked out a course to steer by their compass and were off. During their proposed three hour run to the search zone, Lundyn busied himself by putting the black-lipped abalone into a tank and attaching a battery run water aerator. He hosed down his dive gear with a hand held, foot pumped, fresh water shower on the rear deck and put on another percolator of coffee.
It was not long before they had a call from Australian Sea Search and Rescue. They wanted to know where they were and was it possible for them to assist in the search? An aircraft was on its way to the search area, which was exactly the same as the two men had decided on. Police vessels from the three local ports had been alerted but it was unlikely the closest one would be in the area for quite some time. A tanker coming down the coast, using the East Coast Current as a free ride, would be in the vicinity in about four or five hours. This time Lundyn took the call as Roscoe steered the launch along their designated course.
“Australian Sea Search and Rescue this is Lively Lady. We are about two and a half hours from the search area and making our way there. Please confirm that the search area is 33 deg 04’ S and 152 deg 24’ E”
“This Australian Sea Search and Rescue, Lively Lady you are spot on the money, you must be local guys?”
Lundyn replied. “Roger Australian Sea Search and Rescue, we will call you when we are in the area. Lively Lady standing by on channel 16”
After two hours Lundyn took over the helm from Roscoe who went and stood on the cabin top to keep look out. He was wearing Polaroid sunglasses to cut down the glare from the sun and he had a pair of powerful binoculars hanging around his neck. His craggy face was set in a determined look. Roscoe was a hard man, a bouncer these days in the local pub. He had a broken up face that only a mother could love, due mainly to his hard tackling and diving in his pro football days. His salt and pepper coloured hair was shaved completely off his head, leaving it gleaming like a brown billiard ball (it kept his receding hair line from being noticed) and added to the tough bouncer image he gave. People might be forgiven for thinking that his knuckles hung lower to the ground than most men’s did. His paws were huge and his knuckles were constantly chipped and scarred from the many fights he had. He had bulky shoulders and impossibly huge biceps and fore arms that added to the ‘gorilla’ image. Thin waisted and lean in the hips, his ex footballer’s legs were his pride. He could still run a strong 100 metres and do battle with louts at the end of it. His image was mainly a front. Like many good footballers he had been well paid during his career and with footy over he had, like many ex stars, invested in a pub. Unlike many, he put in a manager to do the day-to-day stuff. He then worked as the bouncer. This way he could watch the pub better and he could watch his manager as well. The manger had been hired through an agency and had no idea that the efficient gorilla was in fact his boss.
Next: on board "Lively Lady"
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