Messing about in Boats Finale - Delinquent's Demise

Delinquent the Magnificent

The long weekend journey to Jurien Bay, which turned into a very long week saga, was the last major journey Delinquent made.
Personal circumstances, like a looming divorce, acquiring and settling in with a new partner, put sailing on the back burner for a while.
Delinquent was mainly used for short day sails and as a dockside entertainment venue. We had some very jolly good cockpit parties on balmy summer evenings.
One short aside: sailors are a very superstitious lot. They, for example, believe that women aboard a sailing ship / boat are a bad omen. This belief started during the days of the tall ships. Sometimes I am convinced these old boys were right! I once took my daughter, newly acquired step-daughter and one of her girlfriends to Rottnest for a day trip. Very embarrassing episode that was! If you are interested to read the details click this link: Rottnest Adventure.
As is often the case, establishing an instant new family, buying a 'new' house and getting the newly acquired kids (teenagers) through the final years of schooling soon took its toll on our finances. It is a well known fact that a boat basically is a hole in the water that one pours ones money into!

Scallywag No 1 - The Pom

Scallywag No 2 - The Irish Lad

Things like pen fees and routine maintenance eat constant holes in ones pocket. To economise we even hired two backpackers (actually one was the wife's cousin) to do the antifouling for us. Much cheaper than paying the shipyard and the lads could sleep aboard as well as enjoying the nightlife of Fremantle.These two lads were real scallywags! They had stayed with us for a couple of weeks, picking up casual work like counting the number of toilets in commercial buildings along Scarborough Beach Road. Strangest things one can earn some money from. They then went fruit picking in the South-West before scraping barnacles and applying new anti-fouling to Delinquent. As you can see from the photos they couldn't resist having a laugh whilst doing it.

Then, one late autumn day in 1995 the unanimous decision (the new wife and I were the unanimous deciders - kids don't get a say) was made to put Delinquent up for sale.
We advertised it in the local newspaper 'The West Australian', scheduled to be advertised the following Saturday, and sat back to see if we got any bites.
Lo and behold on the Sunday we got a call from a chap in Sydney that was extremely keen, to say the least. He enquired about the ocean going capabilities of the boat, its general state of repair and maintenance and what was included in the package. I answered his questions as honestly as I could and told him some charts of WA waters would be thrown in with the deal. He never quivered about the price. He just asked whether she was ready to take out to sea. I assured him she was, provided he fuelled her up and provisioned her.
Done deal, he would call me back later to tell me when he would be flying to Perth. Bowl me over with a feather duster he rang in the afternoon advising he would be arriving the next day on a Qantas flight at about 4 PM, could I please pick him up at the airport and take him to the boat.
The family started to get a bit nervous, conjuring up any sort of scenario of what could happen. Never mind, I went to the airport and met the guy. He arrived with a little boy, about five or six years old, in tow. The chap seemed to be pleasant enough, but I wanted assurances that the boy was his son. He produced passport confirming (I hoped) their identity and relationship - same surname, which is really easy if both are called Smith.
Anyway, loaded them and their two overnight bags (a bit light on I thought for a sea voyage) in my trusty old Peugeot and headed for Hillarys. The chap asked to detour to a supermarket to lay in some provisions. Sure, no problem. What he came out with was a bit suspect to me, but then we all have different tastes in food and ideas of nourishment.

The Dinghy in it's usual position

When we got to the boat I showed him the ins and outs and he seemed very happy with the package and said he would buy it. One minor problem was that the dinghy was not on board. It was at home, someone had borrowed it to go crabbing at Mandurah just south of Perth.
We shook hands on the deal, he showed me the cash and I agreed to race home, 30 km away, to get the dinghy and put it on the boat that night. The trusty Peugeot Diesel hummed its way along the highway and the recently acquired step-son helped me load the dinghy on the roof racks. My by then second wife got the unmitigated hibie-jibies about the deal being done very clandestine and in the dark of night. The wife, upon being briefly told what was supposed to happen, got very suspicious about the deal and told me she had a very 'bad' feeling about it all - as always she was going to be proved to be right.
Back I went to the marina, got the chap and we lugged the ruddy dinghy to the boat. At that time there was some 'clown' parked in the car park who had his headlights on illuminating the whole scene.
I showed the chap how to stow and secure it properly, took the plastic bag with the cash and took my leave.
Little did I know that the good lady wife had called her brother to 'shadow' me, the amount of money had her scared witless, was it for real or was it all a set-up and I would get mugged. It was the brother in law who had parked his car dockside and illuminated the scene of the 'crime'.
Leaving the dockside car park I wondered who was following me. Going up the road to the freeway the car kept tailing me, eventually it turned off and I breathed a sigh of relief. It turned out the brother-in-law had been covering me just in case.
Once home I put the bag on the kitchen table and we started counting the notes - three times over! There were a lot of fifty Dollar notes - at least it was for us. We put it under the mattress and had a very restless nights sleep.
Next morning we couldn't wait for the bank to open! We were there at their door anxious for opening time. Then, cool as a cucumber, I went up to the teller and said: "I wish to make a small deposit." She looked at the plastic bag and said: "I'll have to take into the back area and put it through the machine to count it."
When she came back and confirmed the amount another sigh of relief. Then she wanted to know where the money came from! Like I was a drug dealer or something. I just told her I sold my boat. "Some boat, eh?" she said. But, at last it was done and dusted.
Nothing of the sort, though! Got a call from the chap on the Friday asking if I would take the boat back and give him his money back. He'd made it as far a Mindarie Keys, about an hours sail north of Hillarys.
Told him no way, I'd spent the money. He gave me a sob story about how his wife had found out about his plans to take the little boy away from her, the boy got terribly seasick (should have stood him under tree) and he himself didn't like the sailing caper either.
The best I could offer him was to retrieve the boat from Mindarie, sail it back to Hillarys and put it up for sale through a boat broker on his behalf. He seemed to be happy with that arrangement, paid the berthing fees for the next few days and I never saw him again.
The brother in law and I went up on the Sunday to sail poor Delinquent back to Hillarys. The state the boat was in - shocking. Stuff everywhere and water in the bilge up to the floorboards. The chap obviously had no idea how to handle a boat or look after it. We pumped her out, tidied up, made sure everything was ship-shape as much as possible and had a pleasant sail back to Hillarys.
The broker eventually sold the boat, with much to and fro, after about four months.
Next thing was, a few months after that, the wife came home from work very upset, telling me: "Just heard on the radio a yacht has sunk in the Swan River under suspicious circumstances. From the description I'm sure it is Delinquent!"

The Trees - The Cure

We never heard or saw anything of the poor girl after that.
Bought nice acreage and a weatherboard home in the never-nevers for the money to make true on my seasickness cure. The step-son, upon seeing the property for the first time, looking over the rolling hills declared: "Not the end of the earth - but you sure can see it from here" - AND that is where we are living now - Popanyinning.