Chandlery Blues

George Gifford / Electra

It is not uncommon to hear some folk refer sneeringly to the inability of yachties to pass a chandlery without going in or at least hovering in the doorway looking disturbed. We make a joke of it, but few readers will be aware of the real depth of the problem in the contemporary cruising society – who of you even know that the condition was recognized by medical science as early as the late 18^th century and has been assigned the name chandlerious compulsives commonus, elevating it above the run-of-the-mill obsession? Few will know that Captain Bligh was an early-identified sufferer of CCC (as the disease is commonly known). What he was really unhappy about when the crew mutinied was having to leave behind on Bounty the Hand Engraved Clock/Barometer and Ornamental Ships Bell, mounted on a polished mahogany shield, that he found in Mr. Lees Chandlery in Batavia on the way South.

Fewer still could even give a toss for those miserable souls burdened by the condition. Before you flip through to the next article, consider for a moment that whilst alcoholics and obsessive gamblers can call on extensive government and community support, those with CCC flounder about on their own without as much as a statutory notice behind the chandlery cash register offering a helpline.

It is time for the writer to come out of the locker, so to speak, and admit to CCC. I have tried all the recognized treatments without real success, form extended shock treatment with a 12volt Remco AGM Non-Spillable AGM battery (available from good chandleries), to be keel hauled by being dragged slowly from the opposite side of our boat by means of a Rescue Buoy (available from the same retailer). My shrink has had to resort to the last card in his therapy pack, the well known but perhaps socially unacceptable compulsive transfer treatment, by which the obsession is mitigated in the individual by transfer to others, something like the pin-in-doll method that Voodoo practitioners have used successfully for centuries.

This is how it works. I have listed below all the chandleries that I found on my way through to the Whitsundays this year, with just sufficient information to let you know the chandlery exists, a basic location and a stock rating, but not enough to identify exactly where it is. The reader will be compelled to actually find out more, hopefully by a visit because this is where the bad karma transfer actually takes place.

I have done some trials with some club members and it seems to work. For example, after I bought mew batteries in Mooloolaba for our boat I told Peter Cowie, and within 4 hours he had bought two new batteries himself. Within 4 hours! I felt better straight away. Peter subsequently bought a new anchor and I had my first full nights sleep for months.

As a rating yardstick for the chandlery list I have used the amazing Muir Marine Chandlery in Manly, Brisbane. The place has just about everything. I was reduced to un-intelligible mumbling, just like good old Toad in The Wind in The Willows when he saw his first motor car. Fortunately Diana was able to push me back to the marina with me perched on my new pair of Active Dinghy Wheels and waving the HIT Commercial Quality Rigging Wire Cutters around my head. A policeman tried to take the latter away from me but I managed to hold him off with a Pains Wessex white smoke flare and my Muir Anodised Aluminium Telescopic Boat Hook until we got back on the boat and made good our escape.

Taken from Coastal Cruising Club of Australia December 2005

 – by request from Muirs Marine.