Marianne Bartram
A Life Aboard: May 2014
Time to sort out the fishing tackle. Sigh. Do I really want to go through it all again? Don’t get me wrong, fishing is a passion of mine and I like to cook but last year we caught 62 pollack, 147 mackerel and 1 herring. (I left it in a bucket of sea water and it got snapped up by a Herring Gull. The clue is in the name).
Mackerel gaze at you reproachfully with their big sad eyes before they shoot you in the head with grey poo. We strongly believe you should eat what you catch, so… Mackerel pate. Mackerel. Mackerel and Pollack sandwiches. Mackerel terrine. Mackerel with chips and a side of Pollack salsa. Mackerel en croute with a Pollack tapenade. I could heave just thinking about it, really.
And take the insolence of your average grey mullet. They loll around your hull, two feet long, just begging for it. You fly at them with a net, they give you one contemptuous sneer and are gone in a silvery flash. I read later that you have to faff about with crumbs of bread. Can’t be bothered. It annoys me. I want to catch interesting things like sting rays, basking sharks, octopus. Mackerel (and Pollack) just commit suicide, basically, and where is the sport in that?
I seem to be living on a floating tool shed.
This is what Hub does – he thinks writing a job down on a list and buying yet more tools amounts to actually completing the job. He decided once to become a horologist. He filled the house with crates of piffling, fluff ridden watch and clock parts, bought a Myford lathe, subscribed to “You and Your Clock” and “Clocks are Us” monthly, set up a website and had business cards printed. He went on a course. A stiff card arrived inviting us to a black tie dinner as he was now apparently a “founder member” of the Clockmakers’ Society.
After 4 years (and about ten grand down) I ventured to ask him tentatively if he had actually mended a clock yet or had a customer. He was offended and informed me that the trouble with me is that I am just too impatient. You will wonder what this has to do with Dartmouth; I will tell you.
There is time, and there is Dartmouth time. Don’t even think to chase anybody up for at least two years and even then they will be highly affronted.
I found an antique chair in the aft cabin that needed reseating. At first I thought rats must have nested in it and vigorously tore it apart thinking I could sort it out myself. Wrong. I still had a chair, yes, but now just a sad rusting spring where a seat had been and even artistically placing a cushion didn’t seem to impress Hub who made the most awful fuss and said I had completely ruined it and why must I always meddle when I don’t know what I am doing. We had a robust exchange of opinions – mine being that, at least I try as opposed to not even seeing it and are men’s eyeballs only painted on etc., so I bolted into the local upholsterers to somewhat hysterically demand that the whole boat must be re-done. Instantly. He looked at me in great suspicion but reached out for a notepad, found a pencil, asked for the name of the boat and wrote it carefully down. He ventured to say that it couldn’t be done until after Christmas. Christmas came and went. The following Christmas, I returned to the shop. I asked which Christmas he had meant. He referred himself to the now somewhat riffled notebook, licked the stub of his pencil, sighed a bit, turned over a few pages and triumphantly pointed out the name of our boat. “See? You are on the list.” But we did end up with a chair restored to perfection by a very fine craftsman.
Making a mint is possible in Dartmouth, but not in the usual way. Forget art galleries and clothing shops; you can make life much easier for yourself.If you happen to have acquired a few bits of rusting corrugated iron, leaning roughly in the shape of a shed you can torture the whole populace as they will all want to rent it and will form a queue.
Better still, if you have a semi ruin with no planning permission just call it a garage! You will be much sought after and can name your price. No need to advertise either as word gets round here. Sprain your ankle in Kingswear, set off in your dinghy and by the time you have arrived in Dartmouth five minutes later, somebody will ask you if it’s painful and laugh their heads off.
Life and livelihoods lost apart, Dartmouth mariners tend to find catastrophe somewhat amusing.
They remind me of the Yanomani - an Amazon tribe who if, say, one of them falls from his hammock onto the fire and is subsequently bitten by a poisonous snake, the whole tribe guffaw for at least a month. It is like that here. They implore you to make sure they are looking when you fall in so they can enjoy a good smirk. I recall taking the River Taxi on a lumpy sea and stupidly asking the skipper if he thought we would make it across. He fairly shook with mirth and finally managed to splutter gleefully “Well, my half will, my lovely!” The river Dart is as dangerous as it is beautiful and when you are leaving your boat to go ashore, usually on a daily basis, it’s as well to remind yourself that it only has to be lucky once so it behoves you to respect it. I
am still amused though by the tale of a sailor who went ashore on Christmas Eve to buy his dinner for the next day and partook of the local ale so determinedly that on returning to his boat via his dory, he toppled overboard. He let his sprouts, parsnips and potatoes drift away but demonstrated in my opinion an excellent sense of priority by grabbing the bottle of whisky and the turkey – shoving the one into the others bum and reboarding. Lunch sorted and no need for any salt either. You can’t help but smile… Having said that, the Harbour Master says he takes a dim view of drinking and sailing and rightly so. Sadly it caused a lot of mariners to laugh so much they had to go to the local pub to recover. He has an unenviable task!
We are all still licking our wounds after the tempests. Our hull has been clouted with tree trunks and even our own rowing boat when one of the painters snapped but I knew it would hold. When we had my state of the art electronic flushing head fitted (I can’t be doing with all this peeing and pumping malarkey you get with sea heads) they had to drill out a piece of the hull. It’s about two inches thick and I keep it on display as a mere glance at it is reassuring. Simon – he of the fuel barge – is a perfect example of your Dart mariners. He tried to get to the barge in the fiercest storm and was blown flat onto the pontoon. This was fortunate as if he had been in the wheelhouse, he would have had his head sliced off! The fuel barge is naturally maintained to the highest possible standards but the ferocity of the wind caused a window to blow in which created a vortex and it flew around taking out more windows as it went.
On reflection, though, he is so tough that he would probably have just jammed his head back on, raised a fist to the skies, sworn vigorously and eaten a Devon pasty. We keep an eye on him because he knows the river like the back of his hand. If he can’t get across, nobody can.
Another of my local heroes, when asked why he wasn’t displaying his mooring permit, retorted that he had no intention whatsoever of messing up his fine varnish with stickers and had chosen rather to have it tattooed on the cheeks of his – well, you get my drift!- and began to undo his belt to demonstrate. I nearly choked.
Hub has just come up and asked me if I am still scribbling nonsense. Must go; there seems to be a block that needs knocking off…
First published By The Dart May 2014