Seal in Dartmouth
Life Aboard- December 2014
Is it boats or me? I don’t seem able to function sensibly ashore any more.
We were choosing coffee and Hub asked me if I fancied a strong, rich Italian. Well, yes, obviously (though he might not feel the same way!). I let out such a loud crack of laughter that people turned round and I felt myself fortunate not to have been promptly escorted from the premises.
However, my relief on returning to the boat is often short-lived …
Carbon monoxide alarms! I have quite enough to terrify me without those chirping away. First you have to count. Three peeps – no problem. Four – it’s in your system, can’t be removed and so you will die. Shortly. Or eventually. It isn’t made clear. We have been told that we have to get it right or we’ll wake up to find ourselves dead – still trying to get my head round that one!
I fume when it comes to fumes. Why is it always in the middle of the night? Can’t see, can’t think straight, staggering about wondering what to do … can’t find my glasses and anyway the blasted leaflet is in Japanese and accompanied by meaningless diagrams.
Worse still is our life raft. Well! If anybody can interpret what’s left of the user instructions painted on it when about to drown then they deserve to survive just about anything. It is all bound to assault you in total darkness and, on reflection, I honestly think I’d prefer to just fling myself in and get it over with rather than endure Hub lecturing me on the correct knot to use for a quick release.
Only consider, if you will, jelly fish – they drift up river, they come back down with no harm done. You’d feel an utter idiot discovered doing exactly that in a harbour on a life raft all due to a faulty alarm. But it may well come to it – never count anything out on the Dart. It makes fools of us all whilst enchanting us. (Clever that - must be female!)
Not being at all lady-like myself, I am free to enjoy the robust humour of sailors! I was in the laundry the other day and I warned one, “If you don’t want a glimpse of my knickers, look away now!” His superb response was, “A fine spinnaker, Madam”.
You know that T.V. programme: One Man and his Dog? Well we have created our own maritime version of it. It’s called One man and his Dory. I shout “Fender!” and Hub’s off! A great send away, retrieve and return. At least twenty five quid saved right there!
Amongst the many joys of boat life is the downside of my senses being constantly on red alert. I can literally hear a pin drop. It can be exhausting filtering out what doesn’t matter (owls hooting, Hub moaning, dogs barking) to what might (pumps protesting) to what certainly does (waves crashing inside the boat).
You also have to consider oxygen levels – not usually an issue ashore but you need continually to ventilate a wooden boat to dry it out. Learning to balance humidity levels, temperature and air is a skill worth achieving to keep her (and us) comfortable. It has been hard fought for. Plus it causes arguments too because it’s open to debate. “What’s that?” “What?” THAT!” “I can’t hear anything” (Mmm - tell me something I don’t know!).
Only the other day, he clipped his big toenail and it flew off as if fired from a gun and yet to me it sounded as if a horseshoe had been flung against the hull. But a very kind lady in church (having to cope with me explaining that I am going or have gone mad) gave me a gift of Spike Milligan’s words: “If things go bump in the night, no need to get into a fright; it’s the hole in each ear that lets in the fear – that and the absence of light”. How true!
Something hovered over us at 2.30am using vast cones of light to strafe me awake via a ventilation hatch. I thought it must be a UFO and whilst that would be quite interesting, per se, I do hope that Aliens will choose more sociable visiting hours than police helicopters appear to see fit. Perhaps I should inform the Chief Constable that, in the – surely? – unlikely event of some “Ne’er do well” escaping onto our boat, we are more than capable of dealing with the matter ourselves, thank you.
Just taping my ankle up, having removed a chunk of it on a hatch bolt. Oh God! Please just let me have a small, white-washed, thatched cottage with a little stream at the bottom of the garden and a few Rhode Island reds, perhaps? A bathroom would be pleasant. I ran it by Hub but he just shook his head and pointed out that I would merely be bored – though, he admits, cleaner.
He fancied fish for supper, but by the time I’d untangled the hooks from my shoe, hat, wrist and deck brush, I nearly ordered a pizza. But! – I persisted and – at last – the Holy Grail of fishing made the error of swimming into my orbit. Oh Yes! A Sea-bass. Hub, however, is a sportsman, so he measured it, declared it too small and put it back. Luckily I later landed some Pollack.
Colin, a good friend of ours, is very practical and helps us out with the many exigencies of boat life. He poked his head out of the engine hatch to inform me, “Nigel isn’t as daft as you think”. (Well, I always knew he couldn’t be.) During a late night with friends, reflecting – after the second bottle – on the debate regarding Admiral Nelson’s last words, as to whether he said “Kiss me, Hardy” or “Kismet, Hardy”, Hub insisted, with a dark look in my direction, that it was much more likely to have been “Clove hitch, Half-wit”.
Whatever can he mean?
First published By The Dart December 2014