A boat should t like a
glove, but give it time
T
here is a vivid new scar on my
right hand. It is a glowering purple
against the white scars of my
younger days. These include one
from a freshly sharpened Green
River knife, which sliced me when
I decided to leave it in a deck beam
instead of sheathing it, and my 15-
year-old hand slid off the teak handle, which was still
covered in stone oil, and on to the blade with as much
grip. There’s another from a marlinspike point, which
I drove into my teenage palm while trying to unlay a stiff
mooring wire. Another from a foldable pocket knife which
slid into my fi nger when, on a cold
morning, before I was old enough to
have the key to the door, I cut through
a ratline more easily than expected.
Scars are for youth, when your digits
are exposed unthinkingly to the job at
hand, when you probe impatiently to
get the problem solved, when you are
still enrolled in the school of hard knocks.
It is often said that sailing is so rewarding because you
are always learning: you learn something new each time
you drop the mooring. Which is all very well, but there
comes a time when you ‘should have learned by now.’
So, after more than 50 years’ sailing experience,
how did my wound come about? Well, it was after
taking delivery of my new-to-me 97-year-old boat.
The 25ft gaff cutter Betty II has sailed from the Norfolk
Broads to the Solent and across the North Sea to Holland,
Belgium and France for more than 90 years without the
loss of a single soul and without the benefi t of guardrails.
But a few years ago, her last owner had a set of galvanised
guardrails, plus a push pit, custom made and fi tted to
the decks. This was to prevent his grandchildren going
overboard. Fair enough, but since I’ve been sailing the
boat, these guardrails have managed to catch my leg,
trip me over and indirectly cause me to lay open the
palm of my right hand until the tissue was hanging out.
It was lift-out day and I had the boat’s centreplate fully
hauled up, ready to steer her on to the travel hoist strops.
Unfortunately, the hoist operator wasn’t ready for me
as I began my approach and I had to abort the attempt,
motor round in a circle in the creek and make another
run. In doing so, I misjudged the boat’s turning capability
without the benefi t of the centreplate, and nudged one
of the club jetties. That wasn’t before I’d endeavoured to
fend off with my bare hands; the right hand was impaled
on the hook of a bungee cord I’d wrapped round one
of the guardrails to mark the point for the lift-out strop.
I believe in keeping things basic and if you sail alone,
which I frequently do, I like a boat to be as simple as
practicable. A boat must fi t like
a glove. What is a precautionary
fence to stop children falling into
the sea for one sailor is to another
a tripwire which will achieve
exactly that result for an adult.
So now the guardrails have gone.
So too have the bungee cords
which, in my opinion, belong in a caravan, not on a boat.
Next on my ditch list was the sprayhood. Again, in
over 90 years, the boat has sailed without one. One man’s
sanctuary is another’s slammer. I found that downwind,
it meant all vision forward was via a myopic fi lm of
plastic while upwind, with a few reefs pulled down, it
snagged the boom in stays. Okay, it’s nice to have a hood
over the companionway at anchor when it’s raining but
to be honest, if I’ve not turned in, I’ll be in the pub.
I’m still going through the boat, adjusting her to
my own idiosyncrasies. I have unscrewed, snapped off,
or otherwise removed plastic-dipped coathangers, ring
hooks and eye bolts from frames, beams and coachroof
sides. The poor old girl was suffering a sort of Homebase
acupuncture. Betty II appears, to my eyes anyway, as
a butterfl y emerging from a chrysalis of junk evolution.
Her boot top seems to me to have curved into a smile...
At least it did before I burnt off some 10 layers of paint.
But that’s another alteration entirely.‘One man’s
sanctuary is
another’s slammer’
COLUMNDICK
DURHAM