Dave Selby is the proud owner of a 5.48m (18ft)
Sailfish, which he keeps on a swinging mooring
Mad about the boat on the picturesque Blackwater estuary in EssexDave Selby
I
’ve become that thing I loathe more
than any other, and I’ve got to say I
really enjoy it. I’m a valet sailor.
You know the type: the visiting
yachtsman who’s visited your club so
often he gets miffed if someone else sits
on his favourite bar stool; the bar staff
know what he drinks without needing to
ask; he’s well turned out in top-brand
oilies that smell of shop rather than diesel;
his deck shoes are two-tone, rather than
polka-dot splattered with antifouling; and
his pockets are deep, so deep he can’t
reach his wallet; and every time he visits
he picks up another membership
application form. The committee live in
hope. He is the stalwart of the club scene,
never owned a boat but sailed the world:
a member of the OPYC, the Other
People’s Yacht Club. The freeloader.
I’m not that bad, but have developed a
keen aptitude for freeloading, in particular
on my chums Mark and Quiet Dave’s
Jaguar 24. I’m not altogether sure why
they tolerate me, other than the fact I’ve
got charts, several certificates and ahandheld back-bearing compass. In fact
that doesn’t really explain it, as they’ve
never asked me to do anything involving
any of those items. I think it must by my
dividers – they’re great for opening cans.
The three of us spent most of last
summer in joyous acrimony re-enacting
Last of the Summer Wine on water.
Occasionally it tipped over into MenBehaving Badly, or more like Men
Behaving Sadly, but there’s something
about three men in a boat that seems
fundamentally right. The bickering is of a
far higher order than when sailing alone,
when all you have to confront is the
internal monologue of your own
inadequacy, fears and doubts. With two
on board you can blame each other,
which is satisfying to an extent but limited
and rather circular, as it usually results in a
draw. But with three on board there’s
simply no possibility of agreement, asThe last of the
summer whine
Nothing beats a bit of bickering, either in the
yacht club or aboard with your sailing buddies
power constantly ebbs to and fro, always
two against one or one against two, like
Lord of the Flies, with three dominant beta
males vying for primacy.
I tried sailing with a woman once, who
asked about my ‘facilities’. The fact is that
my Sailfish, despite resembling a Portaloo,
doesn’t actually have one. I responded
with a grand sweep of my arms describing
the encircling sea, then said “Voila.” That
relationship quickly went down the pan.
By contrast with my Sailfish, Mark and
Quiet Dave’s Jaguar 24 actually has a
separate heads compartment which may
well have a loo in it under the spare sails,
tarpaulins, spare outboard, outboard
spares, left-footed galoshes, angle-
grinder, plastic sextant, Walker trailing log,
folding work-bench, anchors of most type,
an anchor ball and snooker cue. We
haven’t looked, but there might actually be
a women in there too. It’s a great facility;
on that we three are agreed.
For in some strange way, me, Mark and
Dave are a kind of unit. We each know our
place, which is usually where the other
person’s sitting. Mark’s generally in
charge of crashing into pontoons and lock
gates and helming whenever there’s a fair
breeze and sunshine; I’m allowed to helm
once we’ve gone aground; and Quiet
Dave enjoys his solitude, so we leave him
alone to steer whenever it’s blowing a gale
and raining, or raining with no wind at all.
He never complains.
Ours is best described as a relationship
of hostile co-dependency, and never are
things more hostile than when it comes to
making tea, rowing about whose turn it is,
who washed the cups last, whose cup is
whose, how many sugars and the correct
amount of milk. Normally, as the kettle –
either overfilled or underfilled – comes to a
boil, so do we. But at sea, especially when
you’re aground staring at an inviting pub,
tea cures all.And there’s another thing that bonds us
together. We’re all of an age where we
have ‘niggles’ with backs not bending,
legs bending too much and other bits.
Between the three of us we have all the
working parts of a single human being.‘There’s something about three men in a
boat that seems fundamentally right’‘A perfect end to
a perfect day...’Q For more of Dave
Selby’s hilarious
columns, buy online
at bloomsbury.com