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O U R PEO P L E NEVER A DULL MOMENT – LEW ROBINSON QSM BY CAROL FORSYTH T aking challenges as they present themselves is what Lew Robinson has built his seagoing career on. It started with round clothes pegs in the bath then progressed to making canoes out of corrugated iron for "voyaging" in the backwaters of the Wairau River in Blenheim. A move to Wellington's south coast saw him build his first wooden boat and take on the challenge of fishing with nets, pots and lines – school and college was a mere distraction. "I was really keen to go to sea and all set to get a job on the scow Echo, when my father said I wasn't going anywhere until I had a trade behind me," says Lew. He then applied for a boat building apprenticeship with the Wellington Harbour Board. Still 12 months from completion, Lew had visited all the shipping offices and put his name down for any vacancy that might arise for a ship's carpenter. A year later he joined the New Zealand Shipping Company's cargo-passenger liner Rangitoto as carpenter's mate. Lew spent much of his time during the first week dealing with complaints from passengers who couldn't sleep because the joinery in their cabins was creaking. "Cigarette papers were often the best cure," he says. After paying off in Southampton then coasting for nine months, Lew joined the Turakina as carpenter on her maiden voyage e out to New Zealand. With Crusader Line crests fixed to her funnel and stem-head, , Turakina settled down to a regular run up to o Japan via Port Moresby, Rabaul and Lae with h both frozen and general cargo. Occasionally y Lew Robinson they would put into Guam with beef for the he American servicemen. Lew remembers the voyages were largely ly incident free, except for one when northbound for Yokohama and two days out, a nuclear bomb was tested close enough to warrant a warning to all ships and populations to remain in accommodations if it rained. The fallout was expected to go on for two more days and then diminish. "On the second day, in heavy drizzle, the mate and I had to go for'ard to let go an anchor," says Lew. "Now I question whether we are the same today as we were before letting go that anchor." His next adventure was into matrimonial life when Lew came ashore and married his fiancée Ann. Together with their growing family they found time to rebuild an old 28ft launch which, with its single cylinder Lister, "got us over the horizon to the Sounds and back." The launch also prompted enrollment at the Wellington Nautical School and attainment of Restricted-Limit Launch Certificate (later replaced by the Inshore Launch Master). Shortly after, the Robinson family was off on another adventure, this time to Manapouri and the Manapouri–Doubtful Sound Tourist Company. The hydroelectric power project was well underway up at West Arm and the company was contracted to provide manning and support launches and tugs. "They also ran a very, very good tourist operation using two of their own vessels, plus jet boats and older wooden launches." 38 Professional Skipper May/June 2013 After two weeks training on the Endeavour and Resolution, Lew quickly discovered that his best friend was going to be the magnetic compass and in second place the radar. "At 700 feet above sea level fog was often dense, with visibility down to a few metres, and at times would hang around for a week, lifting to two metres off the water around noon. At other times it would remain dense to an altitude of two metres." He recalls it was quite strange seeing nothing of a passing vessel except for the top half of her whip aerial. He also noticed that the compass on each of the 54ft steel hulled boats had not been corrected for heeling error. "This meant the courses (five over 23 miles) you diligently kept in your book were as much as five degrees different between displacement and semi-displacement speeds." He recalls being "on" the night the miners had "holed through" in t tail race tunnel. Many came aboard the und under the influence of alcohol. One had stra strayed into the local rubbish tip and was on as stretcher with a broken leg. The night was bla black, dead calm and the light at the outer end of the Arm was out, as was the radar. "Not a bi big deal until a brawl broke out among the 46 m men in the for'ard accommodation. Various an angles of port/starboard heel set in, which m made the compass unreliable," says Lew. " "And to make matters worse, the man on th the stretcher could be heard above the din. S Stopping from 16 knots, turning the lights o on and offering to stay on the lake all night h had a sobering effect." It occurred to Lew some time later that the tugs didn't have these sort of problems, so he transferred to the ex-Auckland tug Waiomana where he would have a different set of cha challenges. At the time, two 30m barges had been hinged together making one 60m rig working from a loading/ discharge ramp downstream of the tourist center on the lower Waiau River. "The river had a flow rate of 28,000 cubic feet per second, shallows, deeps, a sharp bend and overhanging willow trees, so very much a scene demanding no less than black balls, a diamond, cylinder, commensurate lights and at times more horsepower than the Gray in the engine room could muster." He says. A second 50ft tug Lew operated was the Hustler, which had been laid down as a trawler at Simm's Engineering in Port Chalmers. "Her bilges were relatively soft, making it easy to induce a good degree of heel in her when free running. It was a useful means of reducing air draft when passing under overhead drag wires up in the Arm." Interesting diversions from towing ranged from deer recovery to taking samples by grab from the lakebed at the mouth of every creek, stream, river and waterfall about the entire periphery of the lake. "This work was for an exploration company searching for metals of interest." With signs that the power project was coming to an end, Lew and Ann returned to Wellington as Lew had secured a position as mate on Victoria University's research vessel Tirohia. Once a month they would cross to the Marlborough Sounds gathering