Aussies Go Full ‘Mad Max’ for Yacht Recovery

Seven years have passed since Hurricane Dorian grounded their 89-foot motoryacht on an isolated, hardscrabble shore along the Bight of Abaco. Loose Cannon has been covering an Australian couple’s stubborn campaign to refloat Anna Marie since the beginning.

And by doing so, became the biggest cheerleader for this “epic self-salvage effort.” Yet, we were having our doubts. Those doing the proverbial heavy lifting—Geoff Bradley and Jenny Kelly—are both in the 60s, and Bradley had been limping around on bad hips.

So, Loose Cannon’s most recent approach to them was hedged in terms of “have you two given up yet because it’s okay if you have, etc.?”

Oh, me of little faith. Once we connected, I learned that they had been amused by my doubts, considering that they had entered a new phase of progress and—knock on aluminum—imminent fruition. For one thing, surgeons back in Australia had replaced both of Bradley’s hips, and he is feeling fine, he says.

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For another, from our perch in North Florida we had failed to fully grasp the Aussies’ motivation. I had been skeptical of Bradley’s assertion that life on an isolated Great Abaco waterfront was actually enjoyable. But then he told me that they had a working icemaker. Geez!

Moreover, Bradley and Kelly seem to find their boat “project” personally satisfying. Channeling their inner Archimedes, they have tried one trick after another to successfully move 44 tons of metal over the length of a football field. “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth,” Archimedes said back in the 2nd century B.C.—a time of pulleys and levers and that big screw of his.

Going back through the Anna Marie archives, you can see the pictures—wheels, anchors, jacks blocks and tackle, rollers, skates and a single industrial-duty electric winch, which as Bradley pointed out to me, has more purchase than a tugboat when pulling to a secure anchor and maximized by block and tackle. Twenty-five tons of pulling power, Bradley says.

Tipping Point

Their latest engineering inspiration came after seeing the boat move a couple feet sideways when an overextended jack fell over. Unlike the usual pulling-and-dragging technique, the ground gained had been frictionless. What if the same technique were employed on purpose, except longitudinally and in the desired direction of travel?

Thus was born the “Mad Max Stand.” The process: Jack up the boat, insert stand, apply winch power, stand tips over, boat advances two or more feet, recover stand. Repeat. Bradley explains it in this video.

“King tides” are the highest of tides. They are exceptionally high “spring tides,” which happen at new and full moon when the Earth, Moon and Sun are aligned at perigee and perihelion, enhanced when the Earth is closest to the Sun around in early January of each year.

King tides for the Abacos are predicted for around Thanksgiving and again around Christmas. Interestingly, the term “king tides” is kinda new, having been coined around 2009…in Australia of all places.

“So, if we had that king tide, instead of moving, you know, four inches one day and two inches another and 11 another and 14 another, we’d probably move the distance of the winch, which could be as much as 25 feet,” Bradley says. “That’d change the whole outlook.”

Meanwhile, Bradley has reinforced the narrative that life on a shipwreck can be good. He mentioned that all the coral-rock spoils from years of excavating a path have been deposited in the water near the stern of the boat. Adding this “structure” has created reef-like conditions—and attracted fish to within casting distance of the swim platform.

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