One Man's Boat: 1979 Pawtucket 35

When Australian yacht designer Peter Cole drew the lines for the Pawtucket 35 in the late 1970s, he paid a lot of attention to the offshore racing rules of the day but, unlike many other designers then who came up with ugly and slow boats that rated well, he also designed the yacht to be fast.

It was this turn of speed and wonderful sea-keeping ability that made the Pawtucket 35 one of the most popular production yachts in the country during the 1980s.

A heap competed in Sydney-Hobart Races over the years, including Moon River II, and there is even one sailing in this year's race. Tasmanian yachtsman Wayne Williams is sailing his Pawtucket 35, Quiros, up to Sydney for the race.

Moon River II was bought 14 years ago by now 70-year-old Cairns resident Malcolm Lorimer. Lorimer bought the yacht in Mackay and sailed her home with his wife. He discovered the yacht was originally launched in Sydney as Saga and sailed in the 1980 Sydney-Hobart Race by her original owner Gary Allenby.

Lorimer wasn't interested in racing but he loved to cruise up and down the Queensland coast and he found Moon River II to be the ideal boat -- strong and seaworthy and easy to sail double handed.

Unfortunately, Lorimer's wife died a couple of years ago and he found sailing single handed wasn't quite the same: "Getting crew wasn't easy either," he told BoatPoint. "People would promise to join you and then pull out at the last minute."

Lorimer decided that long off-shore passages might help him recapture the joy of sailing, so he spent a small fortune doing up Moon River II so she would be self sufficient for weeks at sea.

"I fitted big solar panels on the back davits and got a solid twin-hulled dinghy," he said. "I had the mast out and all the standing and running rigging replaced and I put in an electric fridge and a big battery bank. She also has a gas oven and stove, HF and VHF radios, depth sounder, Navman GPS log and course plotter, a marine toilet with a macerator and a Raymarine autopilot with a Coursemaster 100 as backup."

With the boat fully set up for cruising, he decided to join a race to the islands off New Guinea so he had the boat properly registered as an Australian vessel. "She was just Moon River until then but the registration authorities said there was an old fishing trawler in Sydney called Moon River, so I had to rename my boat as Moon River II," Lorimer explained.

The old mate who planned to join him on the race pulled out at the last minute and, desperate to go, he signed up a travelling American couple who claimed to be experienced off-shore sailors. "The man had a certificate saying he was a registered yacht captain but it turned out to be nonsense," he said. "The first night out we hit a savage storm and were being thumped by four to five metre waves. Both the crew were seriously seasick and because of a diesel leak it was very unpleasant below. We sat up for two nights and in the cold grey light of the second dawn; I assessed the situation and said 'sorry, we’re going back'."

"We crept back into Cairns and found half the fleet had retired, several boats with delaminating hulls. We were the smallest yacht in the fleet and our little Peter Cole design had come through without a problem."

Lorimer said it was "love at first sight" when he originally saw Moon River II and that he has kept her in perfect condition ever since. "Last year I renovated the interior with new covers on all the furniture, new carpets, a new toilet and all the woodwork re-varnished. She is looking very beautiful and I can’t bear to see her sitting unused.

"She is a wonderful cruising boat for a couple but I don’t think she is big enough to be one of the live-aboard boats in North Queensland."