Dave Selby is the proud owner of a 5.48m (18ft) Sailfish, which he keeps
on a swinging mooring on the picturesque Blackwater estuary in EssexLISTEN ONLINEHear Dave Selby’s
podcasts on the PBO
website http://www.pbo.co.ukDave Selby
Mad about the boat
H
ave you ever
been rear-ended
by a car? That’s
what just
happened to
me... in my
boat. There wasn’t actually a car
involved, but something quite a
lot bigger. I really don’t know
where it came from, but all of
a sudden this bloomin’ great
pontoon came out of nowhere
and drove right up my backside.
That’s my version, and
fortunately there were witnesses.
Unfortunately, they’re proving
rather infl exible, and so is my
neck on account of my near-
mortal whiplash injury in which
even the most disreputable
no-win-no-fee lawyers are
exhibiting no interest
whatsoever. It’s scandalous.
I just can’t get any traction,
which is ironic, cos one even
said my neck was made of brass.
In fact, it was just like one of
those incidents in supermarket
car parks, which in a way are
just like marinas. They’re both
full of hazards and obstacles and
totally unpredictable behaviour.
Plus, boats in marinas have all
the handling
poise of a
three-wheeled
supermarket
trolley. The main difference is
that when something goes
wrong in a car park, people
look the other way. That
doesn’t happen in marinas.
Here, for the benefi t of South
Coast sailors, I should explain
that I use the term ‘marina’ in
the authentic Essex east-coast
sense of a boatyard with a tap.
My normal practice when
leaving my rather snug mud
berth is to spend several hours
making a plan, dithering over
the endless permutations
of tides, eddies, water, wind
direction and wind speed. It’s
different every time. Then I go
to boatyard manager Adi, who
points out the fl aws in my plan
and tells me what to do. Other
berth-holders have come to
recognise the signs of my
imminent departure and
generally take the opportunity
to air their mattresses by lashing
them to their stanchions on the
side of their boat nearest to me.
It also happened that Adi and
his dispiriting work ethic were
both on holiday. Power tools
slumbered, open tins of varnish
dried in the sun, no one was
splicing ropes. We’d lost focus,
and a lot of decadent tea
drinking was going on. And
without Adi’s wise counsel I was
left to my own devices. I had a
plan. I’d recently seen our local
marine engineer, a demon
boat-handler, reverse out a
tricky long-keeler, and as the
berths opposite were empty that
encouraged notions of doing
the same, rather than warping
my boat round.
It’s well known that the onlything harder than going
forwards in a boat is going
backwards, and mine is trickier
than most, as you need the
limbs of an octopus. My
outboard has no reverse gear,
so it involves holding the tiller
fi rmly with one hand and
swivelling the outboard with the
other. Then you need a third
hand to fumble for the throttle
lever, which by now is out of
view and outboard of
everything else, a long arm’sstretch on the far side of the
engine right next to the choke
lever, which feels exactly the
same, and as left has become
right it’s even more confusing.
Finally, there’s a gear lever
which is also now on the other
side of the engine. Basically, it
can’t be done.
Nevertheless, it was going well
at fi rst. Then it wasn’t. With
each input I was getting nearer
the sharp end of the downriver
fi nger pontoons. I was
committed, and my options had
evaporated. In a last-ditch effort
to save the situation before I
ended up long-ways between
two fi nger
pontoons,
I started
spinning the
engine round between forward
and reverse while it was still in
gear. This is something you’re
not supposed to do. Next, I
fumbled to take it out of gear,
but someone had moved the
lever, so I scrambled for the
throttle but found the choke
instead. It was round about then
that the pontoon rammed me
up the chuff, which is the
traditional East Coast nautical
terminology for what South-
Coasters call stern.That night in the beautiful
solitude of Pye Fleet I reviewed
my options. Most appealing at
fi rst was to never go back to
Maldon to face the shame,
and stay in Pye Fleet ’til my
date-expired Pot Noodles ran
out. In sober refl ection, I realised
I simply couldn’t face that many
Pot Noodles. Option B was to
bribe all the berth-holders to
keep schtum so Adi never got to
fi nd out what goes on while he’s
on holiday. I liked that plan, but
it had a fl aw. The scuff on my
boat’s bum was a give-away. In
haste, I called local boat painter
Cally and begged her to touch
it up super-pronto.
But like most of my plans, it
didn’t work. The very second
Adi stepped off his boat after his
holiday, he said: ‘I hear you had
a bit of a run-in with a pontoon’.
All of a sudden everybody
started picking up power tools,
varnishing and splicing ropes.
Our focus was back.Berth control
for men
Dave Selby describes the tortuous
boat-handling processes which led to
him being rear-ended by a pontoon
I use the term ‘marina’ in the authentic
Essex sense of a boatyard with a tap