The third of a 4-part series chronicling the last 6 months of restoration of the Fife Cutter Moonbeam IV. (Click here for Part I and Part II)
The one thing you realise in a place like Burma is nothing seems to work like anywhere else in the world. Blacky, our adopted mascot, was a stray mongrel that the lads had very much taken in as a good omen and part of the crew. He would usually sleep outside the crew house at night and would diligently come to work each day, praying that the Chef would drop the odd bit of pungent fish or other offensive scraps that were under preparation for the local crew lunch. There were many dogs in the compound but there was something about Blacky.
Usually, while we slept there would be the on-going sound of barks and banter between our canine residents until one night… everything fell silent. We woke the next morning to an eerily quiet shipyard. No dogs, no barks. We walked to Moonbeam’s compound to find Blacky lying on the floor in pain. Unbeknown to us the previous night the dog control folk had dispersed chunks of meat packed with poison that had attracted the attention of every four legged animal in the area, including poor Peter Wood’s (Building Sunshine at the time) prized puppy. The dogs had been cleared away after the poison had taken effect and it seemed it was only Blacky that remained. Our team called in a local Doctor Dolittle who treated Blacky with his local remedies and the team nursed him back to good health within days. It might seem off the point somewhat but looking back on it Blacky was never going to die at the first hurdle, much like Moonbeam IV. They were both here to stay and the Burmese team were going to make sure of it!
As we became ever closer to departure date we employed a few more crew. Kate, Morgan’s girlfriend, had been with us from the beginning in Burma and was completing her studies. However, towards the end she became involved and helped out where necessary and brought a lovely essence of calm to the mayhem. We also employed nipper Jake from the UK, who had just finished University and arrived looking slightly mesmerised, but thankfully with a whole lot of enthusiasm and positivity. He had sailed a lot through his youth on Zenith, a pretty gaff cutter from 1936. His main memory of those first days are up in the anchor locker cutting and gluing the rubber liner down, dripping with sweat, while his colleagues were all back home getting ‘hammered’!
With the hull now in good working order we started focusing on deck. In 1926 Moonbeam had been converted to the towering Marconi rig to keep in line with the modern competition, including the Big Class yachts like Britannia and Lulworth. It had been decided to go with this rig and, as the final coats of varnish went on and the brackets were finished and positioned, we started dressing her for the big day.
Interrupted by Thingyan, the Burmese New Year Water Festival we had no choice but to get involved! Unlike anything I have seen before or since it goes on for 4 days and the Capital, Rangoon, comes to a standstill and celebrates. The act of pouring water on somebody is traditionally a show of blessings and good wishes, washing away your sins and setting you up for the next 12 months. It is also entirely welcome as it is the hottest period of the year. They certainly go to town with it and set up temporary water-spraying stations, known as pandals, that double up as dance floors. Those who line the staging are armed with water pistols, huge syringes made of bamboo, and, if you’re the lucky one, a high-pressured fire hose!
Jumbled queues of packed vehicles wait patiently to get completely annihilated by 100’s of jets so that they feel blessed. We arrived in the back of a truck from the Savoy Hotel and were armed with super-soakers and 5 x 200 litre barrels of icy water. We got wet! But what was most heartening was to see the locals out in their droves, smiling faces everywhere having fun for 4 days, and for that short time it seemed the dictatorship stepped aside. We continued working on board but even just going off to the local market to pick up some Chinese-discarded screws resulted in you being drowned. When an old lady comes up to you at the retro traffic lights and asks with knowing, polite eyes if she can slowly pour water over you what can you say? She just wants to offer you her blessing!
With Thingyan over we were onto the rig. Tommy Nielsen came over to finish off some wire splices and help with stepping the mast. Steering the topmast into the empty bracket at the top of the mainmast required some serious coordination but the crane driver stepped up to the mark and delivered. John and Françoise were delighted to see Moonbeam looking so majestic even with so much still to do. The days continued with hundreds of jobs getting ticked off. Now that we had the rig we positioned the essential blocks and running rigging, carefully located and drilled holes in the deck for sheeting positions and deck fittings, leathered the ends of the whisker poles and other chafe-prone areas. Down below there was finally more French polish than bare rosewood. Cabins were completed and linen started to go into place. Somehow everything seemed to be coming together.
The last days in Myanmar Shipyard were busy to say the least. Apart from the obvious (stowing everything on board, packing up the crew house, paying the last remaining bills) we went out with John and Françoise for our irregular Peking Duck night in a local Chinese with embarrassingly laughable cabaret. As was our tradition this was followed by a night-cap in the Savoy with story-telling ex-pats before dodging the traffic back to the shipyard. We had the obligatory crew party where everybody proudly wore their Moonbeam t-shirts and we all sat down to a Burmese meal together.
As our departure neared you could feel the sense of excitement among the crew. For me there was also a pronounced uncomfortable feeling of leaving this local team of workers behind, a team that had given their all for this alien yacht-restoration concept, and a team that we were unlikely to ever see again. That accompanied by the hardships that they lived with, the overpowering dictatorship and the hopeless unknown for the future. But the team seemed not to think for the future, instead very much for the job in hand. There was never a case of ‘let’s show the outside world what great craftsmen we are’ but more of a ‘let’s complete this job to the best of our ability and be incredibly proud of the result’…. And so they should be! In support of their workmanship twelve years later the spars still stand tall and the wonderful interior joinery looks as good as new. Against the odds the Myanmar lads pulled it off without argument or hesitation.
Blacky, I like to think, is still patrolling the shipyard and keeping all further restorations in good shape!
The final part of the Myanmar Mission will be posted on the 1st September and takes us down the Irrawaddy, through the pirate ridden Malacca Straits, via Indonesia and Australia before we end up at the 31st America’s Cup.
