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http://www.yachtingmonthly.com/podcastsA winter on dry land offers little escape from domesticity, but sailing and housework are more similar than you think16 http://www.yachtingmonthly.com JANUARY 2016
Up on a ladder with the Christmas decorations, are you? Teetering, hooking, cursing, dropping the tack-
an unwieldy tree around, and working out how many bits of string tied to picture-hooks hammer on the cat? Or dragging
and window-latches will stabilise it against the buffeting storms of children, dogs, cats
leaping for baubles, and squalls of visiting aunts with swishing coats? Or
are you laying out the roll of wrapping-paper which may or may not fully cover
the little one’s tricycle under the tree, deploying a crafty measurer’s eye like the oldest, most revered sailmaker in
Kemp’s loft preparing a racing spinnaker?in this dark time of year, beached between the All good stuff. We’ve got to keep in training
sailing seasons. We must hone the skills that keep awkward, cussed material objects under control. A clothesline, a fl at-pack wardrobe,
a DIY improvement to the airing cupboard: domestic manoeuvring can be regarded as training for the next season afl oat, or at least for
fi tting-out, which will begin when the in-laws go home, the weather improves, and perhaps after a sneaky winter mini-break is achieved.
taking turns on a stepladder to hang some heavy winter curtains across a chilly-looking This parallel occurred to us when we were
French window, which is delightful in summer but becomes a wall of icy, glassy blackness once November cools off. The stretching upwards,
the precarious foothold, and above all the fi ddly, infuriating hooking of plastic hooks into meagre eyelets on the curtain rings reminded
us of something. Ah yes: fi xing sail slides onto the track when they’ve been slid out for a double reef. Or putting the big genoa back on
the forestay. The ladder wasn’t actually rolling from side to side in the pointless, teeth-rattling, better-shake-out-the-reef swell that follows a
heavy wind. But the physical echo was there: aching arms, fi ddly bits, the discovery that an awkward eyelet has not been screwed into the
curtain ring. It defi nitely felt like sailing.it. What is a double duvet cover on a clothesline in the rain but a squaresail whose buntlines and Other parallels crop up, once you think about
clews have come adrift? Come to that, is not the bitter struggle to get a double duvet into its cover not curiously reminiscent of those moments
when the mizzen-staysail gets hoisted upside down? And the cupboard under the stairs – the
one with the awkward bit where you wedged the sewing-machine last time
you used it – is that not a close relation of a meanly sized foc’s’le? It even
that leak from the downpipe. Perhaps we should embrace this sense of smells the same, since
familiarity, and regard all domestic duties as practice for the season. I used to babysit for the late Iris Birtwistle, adoptive mother of three boys
and formidable art dealer, and hers was the fi rst kitchen where I saw a Scotch Airer, one of those handy frameworks which you haul up on blocks,
laden with fl apping pants and shirts, and cleat to the wall. As the laundry rose in sharp jerks of her masterful hand she used to bellow ‘Out of the
way, damn you all! If I can’t go sailing, I can yo-heave-ho in my own kitchen!’Moreover, I can demonstrate that this
principle of parallel tasks works in reverse. Our daughter Rose never took to sailing (‘When will we GET there?’) and abdicated her crew status
in favour of concentrating on horses as soon as she hit her teens. But one day we were packing up the boat, and I asked for a hand with the
mainsail cover. ‘Dunno how this thing works’, she muttered, profoundly uninterested.I had a brainwave. ‘The boom’, I said, ‘Is a long
thin pony, and it needs its rug on.’managed, she got the boom-cover on, clipped up, ‘Ah’ she said, and faster than we’d ever
snug and smart as in the Royal Mews. W‘ How do you stabilise the Christmas tree
storms of children?’against buffeting