The Metamorphosis

Sokari was "born" (we actually sent out birth notices when she was launched!)without any decorations. Just like a human baby, the adornments came later. We had ordered off-white paint and didn't check it until the day we were to paint so it came as a great surprise to find that we had been supplied with cream paint. It still looked good but it wasn't the look I was planning on. For a few months we wandered around Moreton Bay, over to Tangalooma and down around the islands - mastless. It was around 6 months before we got around to building the mast at John Gilbert's yard in Doughboy Creek (Brisbane). The thrill of motoring down the river and up to Brisbane's Botanic Gardens with our mast finally standing was really something. The only sail we had was a spinnaker that we had kept from our previous monohull. No main or headsail yet but that stick looked damned good up there above us. We picked up a pretty good second hand main from Rock Bottom and over the next few months we accumulated a few good headsails so finally we were able to sail our baby. My son, Peter, had bought a 30 foot Diamond which had been set up for cruising and he sailed down from Mooloolaba meeting us at Tangalooma then we all sailed back to Brisbane where he stayed for a few years on the piles at The Gardens while he worked in the city. On one of our trips into Moreton Bay we met a lovely couple, Dick and Johanna, on their steel Van de Stadt "Johanna". We became fast friends very quickly - as we do out here on the water - and they made a big fuss over us not having any stripes to break the "blandness of the cream hulls" but we couldn't decide what colour we wanted. We were prepared to wait and headed north in the mid 1990's. On arriving in Gladstone, Dick's words came back to us and we finally decided to get rid of that "blandness" and gave Sokari a distinctive set of stripes in dark green with a narrow strip of gold in between. Before launch we had applied her name on both bows and across the rear beam in gold and these were set off with the green. Eventually we had a boom cover and side covers made in the same colour. We have always been happy with her "look" as she was easily recognisable.
In 1999 we did a trip to Indonesia, crossing the Gulf of Carpentaria in 48 hours. We had been told by boat builders that extending a boat's length by 1 metre should add about 1 knot of speed. While gaining extra speed wasn't so important it would mean a little less time "out there" if conditions were bad, so in 2001 John built swim platforms which he added to the boat up on Admiralty Island in Trinity Inlet, Cairns. On the beach, he initially made a jig which he used to make a mould and built the two extensions in our cockpit. On the beach again, he attached them securely to both sterns. "They'll fall off" was the prophesy of some people. But they were secure and have been on ever since. The boat builders were correct. In virtually identical conditions to our first two trips across the Gulf, we were now doing it in 42 hours. We'd cut 6 hours off the trip. We were rapt. John would sit as we sailed along and stare at our wash. When a wave came from the side it would wash over the extension, then the water would pour off and the sterns would pop up. It wasn't the prettiest look without an outer "wall" on them but they certainly worked well. In 2006 we eventually decided to extend the outside of the hulls back to the end of the platforms and we were really happy at how they looked. By then we were ready for a complete change in the paint scheme as well and agreed to leave the stripes off this time. Because "Sokari" is a falcon-headed Sun God we had a logo made of a stylised falcon and it was affixed towards the aft section of the hulls.