A Life Aboard: December 2015

Gulls. Don’t get me started. 

It’s a love/hate relationship with these iconic birds that litter up or enhance the sea we love depending on your view point. They enliven the tabloids for pecking a pensioner’s bonce open or swooping up and away with little doglets. I am unrepentant in stating that people should be more vigilant. As should I have been when one swiped my crab sandwich (£4.50) mere inches from my ever gaping maw.

They let loose all over your car and boat – some say it’s lucky – well, not for the hapless twerp who has to scrape it off, usually me…Proper sailors feel them to be the souls of deceased mariners. All I know is that they land on your deck with such a crash in order to beat a mussel to shreds that you think a block has failed and the rigging is down. They scatter crab parts over the pontoons and heaps of ordure that you skid on. They remind me of WW2 fighter pilots “O.K chaps, this is White Feather Leader One. Tourists with chips at 5 o’clock; we’re going in. Wait until you see the whites of their eyes and let’s have a clean swoop and getaway.”

They make fools of us all as we tie plastic owls to our decks, expensive fake spinning raptors, tin foil, nodding dogs and other nonsenses to our boats which they completely ignore. So, which category do you join – take a pot shot at them or place rescued  chicks in your bath? Feed them and risk a fine or be found heartless if you don’t.

The thing is that they seem to embody the spirit of those who live on and around the Dart. Cunning, determined, clever, touching, adventurous and at one with the elements. Like me, they scream their heads off at the slightest excuse. You have to love them but just don’t feed the little so and so’s – there are plenty of fish in the sea for them – otherwise they will literally take the biscuit – your biscuit. I have to admit that on balance, I approve of them. If only because they won’t care either way!

We both love living off the grid. Our last rebellion – but the NHS continues to stalk me. I am still hooting with laughter at a letter copied to me by my cardiologist who writes, “Marianne’s alcohol intake is considered to be excessive but unfortunately shows no sign of abating”. Nonsense. If he wants to know about excessive, what about a fellow live-aboard (of whom I am fond) who was dancing in a pub with a shipwright – yes, I know, but this is Dartmouth - and when a lady complained they were spattering their beer over her pointed out, “But the maritime forecast warned you to expect scattered showers.”

Hospitals? Don’t get me started on them either. Give me just about anything else… they kept asking me why I didn’t have a “nice nightie”. Imagine, you are on deck in a force 10 – you might end up with some remaining strips of – presumably pink – flannelette streaming from around your neck like tell tales, with the remaining shreds hanging off the trees in Coronation Park. Well, what with that and your hair looking like a fur ball the cat puked up – I think not! You may recall my mentioning the yacht taxi skipper Jan, who in shouldering the responsibility of safely delivering our sorry old carcasses aboard, politely bemoans the lack of a cleat on our starboard gunwale. Hah! Found a brass one at last. Only £12 at the boat boot sale. Sadly, we need a shipwright to fit it safely, so make that £120 (mate’s rates and cash only!).

Perhaps I should come out of retirement. Why not apply for a job as ship’s cook on a trawler. At my age there will be no fear of lustful distractions to a busy crew, I can cook and my language is equal to if not worse than that of any trawler man. Let us face it, in all honesty I can point out that I am now used to the vileness of proximity to men in unacceptably small spaces and the squalor of fish guts if needs be.

There is a slight snag though. Heart attacks, force 12’s, Hub – not much fazes me really but I am somewhat unnerved by fishermen. They have never been anything other than lovely to us but I can’t forget that they are earning a living and the rest of us, bobbing about, are basically in their way. And they are seriously tough. Even Carlos, who survives shifts at the Royal Castle with their rightfully testing standards, declared that his two weeks on a crabber were the hardest work he had ever done in his life. They are the living history of the river. (I am of the generation when the men were men and the women were glad of it!)

Actually, I desire a crab pot. When I was a young, pert, lissom blonde, obtaining one would have been easy - as an old crone the matter becomes harder! Talking of Boat Boot sales, do go to one, if only for the indescribable joy of stalking your friends and popping in an extra pound when they think they have sealed a deal.

We spent some days ashore and Hub becomes at once wonderful (he is revising Latin – how stylish!) and yet equally absurd. Is he an Idiot savant? I, with my convalescence and the food festival in mind, asked him to buy me something “unusual yet easy to prepare”. He re-boarded somewhat later and handed me a tin of pasta pieces shaped in the form of “Thomas the Tank Engine”.

When I looked blankly at him and eventually revealed that words, for once, failed me, he pointed out triumphantly that that was precisely the basis upon which he had rejected the alphabet version. As well for him. I could have picked out the letters for a choice word or two. I do not know how I carry on sometimes.  But somebody once said that there are only 2 rules in life.

Rule 1: never, ever give up. Rule 2 : never forget Rule 1. So happy days despite it all - or is it because of it all? I would request answers on a postcard but even I have figured out that a letterbox on the hull of a boat is not the best idea I ever had … well, that and the picture windows …

FIrst published By the Dart December 2015 Issue