"NESTING-TIME."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 233, 3 October 1933, Page 3

"NESTING-TIME."

WATERFRONT SCENE.

PREPARING PLEASURE CRAFT,

A TYPICAL AFTERNOON.

If one might strain at a metaphor, it is "nesting-time'' among the boating fraternity in Auckland, for in the same way as aquatic birds fuss about their young which are shortly to take the water, so at present those who own or are interested in Auckland's pleasure craft are busy with their charges preparing tliem also to take the water.

As yet only an occasional yacht is to be seen 011 the harbour. By the end of this month there will be many, for, unoflieially at any rate, the yachting season opens after Labour Day, and for boat-owners it has now become a race with time to have their boats ready. For them the week-ends are full. Saturday afternoons and Sundays, too, see them doing the hundred and one jobs by which efficiency is judged.

The scene above is at Judge's Bay, and that bay is typical of others. The foreshore is crowded with all manner of craft, from the 14-footer to the lordly keeler; but those who own the former seem to find as much to do as those who own the keeler.

There always seems to be someone about, clad in football jersey and shorts, barefoot, with the oldest of old caps 011 head, the inevitable pot of paint in one hand, and a brush in the other —for, whatever else remains Undone, the craft must be painted. One sees these painters, who would doubtless scorn to paint a cupboard at home, lying in all sorts of queer positions, across the boat, under the boat, in the boat, their intentness and care reflected in their pursedup mouths and wrinkled foreheads, doing the finest of line paint work. Reminiscences.

Then there are those who are scraping the spars, a slow, painstaking job; others who are overhauling and setting up rigging—and that is what runs away with the money —while every now and again, a dirty, greasy figure emerges from the bowels of the craft and informs his companions that he can't tell what is wrong with the cylinder. But by Labour Day it is a safe guess that that particular engine will be running sweetly.

Then comes "smoko," when every one of the crew drops all tools and' repairs to somewhere in the sun for a rest. It is then that they talk and reminiscences flow and rcflow. Labour Day seems long, long ahead, the sun-filled bays of the gulf very far distant, and the office 011 the. Monday depressingly near at hand.

The bay is a scene of activity after that. The passer-by hears snatches of song, snatches of language that is not song, the sound of steel on steel, the song of the hammer, the violin sound of the running pulley. Groups of young men perhaps are standing off to admire their work. Perhaps they are joined by the crew of a neighbouring boat. Then both crews admire, adjourning jointly to solve some problem in yet another boat.

And the work goes on. Soon, on the appropriate high tide, cradles will edge painfully down the ekids —for boatmen set their charges in cradles —and many keels will thankfully again kiss the water. Then, and only then, will the summer for hundreds of Auckland's young men havo really begun.