“The very first cruise in the Sioux II, I took my wife Joan, and the three kids, around to Westernport Bay. We had no radio, no life raft, no lifelines, and no motor, and we went out the Port Phillip Heads on the full ebb tide! Just out into Bass Strait, we were caught in a violent South-westerly change, with rain squalls that blotted out the land. I had an aircraft compass that a friend had given me but I hadn’t fitted. There I was at the tiller with the compass between my knees trying to steer a course that would get us past Cape Schanck.

This weeks wooden news from World and the Web.