Yesterday I went to a friend’s before she was awake. I let myself in and quieted her dogs but not soon enough to stop them waking her.
“I knew it was you.”
The little dog had barked.
“She only barks for you.”
I took them out for a half hour while my friend got up, then we talked while she had a bath, the door left half open so we could hear each other, like people in a daring 1950s film.
We were going for breakfast, but we talked so much that we ended up going for lunch, then somehow it was half past four and time for my friend to do some work. I took the dogs out on the river path that leads to the sea. Deep in the woods on the promontory we found a plank laid over a ditch that we crossed over, into a place where no-one had walked since the floods.
We had big floods here last winter, the water even coming into the place my friend works, half a kilometre from the river. The ground was smooth in this place, with no footprints of deer or people. There were rabbits though, that the dogs hunted as a pair, one diving into the bushes while the other ran around the other side of the little copse to catch the rabbits as they ran out.
Technically I suppose it’s called hunting with dogs and illegal, but I didn’t make them do it and they didn’t stop when I called them. They didn’t catch any either. If there were really any rabbits there rather than just their smell I didn’t see any.
We walked for about an hour and a half until my friend texted me to see where we were. We were here. Ten minutes away. Five if we hurry. And no need. She was fine. Just seeing how we were. We were here.
I went down to the boat again today to make a start on the renovations. I’m also trying to take my mind off the small and potentially fatal issue of how I’m going to get the boat around to Aldeburgh Yacht Club, which doesn’t sound too threatening in and of itself, but it means going out of the mouth of the Deben and into Orford Haven.
The entrance to the River Deben is protected by a shifting shingle bar that often has less than one metre over it at LW springs. The bar is dangerous in heavy seas and especially in strong onshore winds.
That’s the going out bit. About four miles north at Hollesley you have much the same thing, but in reverse.
The bar at the entrance to the river is formed by a shifting bank of shingle. Depths are subject to frequent change. Up to date local information should always be obtained before making an entrance. Broken water on the bar often looks frightening but is to be expected. Entrance should never be attempted in bad weather, especially during onshore winds.
This stuff can actually kill you. Either way, the boat isn’t going to make itself look nice so I thought I’d better make a start and get sanding down. I can’t find where my extension lead is, so I had to do it by hand. It didn’t take as long as I thought it would. I went around the whole boat with a scraper first, to get rid of any obviously flaking paint or varnish. There wasn’t much.
I got a phone call from a job agency about Tuesday, confirming. They were going to send me some background information too.
Then I made a start on the decks. Knee pads helped a lot, new protective gloves too. I got another phone call, from someone who made me smile and my heart lift. After we’d talked and got in that silly muddle about ringing off, each saying goodbye about three times like teenagers, although we really, truly aren’t, after I’d made the promise I always make to myself when that person rings me, if this job works out, I got back to sanding the afterdeck again.
After. About an hour and a half after.
I worked on this for about two hours, although with thinking breaks and phone calls and a trip to the shops for work gloves I was there for about three and a bit hours all told. The wind was coming up and it looked like rain with lights going on in the car-park by the station when I left. It was cold. I didn’t realise how cold I was until I walked past my car, not thinking. Careful.
I got fish and chips as it’s Friday and went home to eat them. Opening my email the agency has sent background information about the job I’m being interviewed for on Tuesday. I ache from sanding and bending and kneeling; I’m not used to this. The company has also sent a test. Literally. They sent it at 17:23 on a Friday. They want it by 23:00 Sunday, which seems remarkably precise, so they can have it for first thing Monday and review it for the interview. Part of me says they’re joking. I don’t even work for them yet and they want me to start on something through the weekend when they’ve known about this for two days. I can’t do it tomorrow because I’m helping someone demonstrate how to smoke fish, and although that sounds a bit optional I said I’d do it, so it isn’t. That’s important to me. Sunday. I’ll have to do it on Sunday and not go and work on the boat. I’m also supposed to be going to London on Sunday because I have to go and follow a tour guide around all of Monday, starting 0830 in Wembley.
I like jobs where you can see what you’ve actually done. The left half of the picture for example. Starboard side if you insist.
But it’ll get done. Things do. And I want this job so I can keep the promise I made when I rang off on the phone. And anyway, the boat is getting done. The paint is all ordered and on its way and if the varnish isn’t because I want to use Tonkinoise instead, although what that is will have to be left until another day because I’m tired now, then all of that can be done when it’s actually in the water. And I can decide whether to get absolutely all the old varnish off or just re-varnish over the top of it later as well.
Assuming I survive the trip round to Aldeburgh. If I don’t then it won’t matter anyway but that’s going to be fine. The fish will get smoked. The test will get done. The sound edits for a demo I was supposed to finish today will get done soon, possibly on Sunday on the train. That would work. The interview….I will just have to do my best. Today’s results made the job worth doing. Tomorrows – well, tomorrow is another day. Today is all you ever have. My day has been a happy one. I made somebody else smile too. I could hear it in her voice.
Looking aft. As we salty sailor boys have it. As it were.
I went down to see the boat today. My boat. The boat that is mine. I took some water and bread and cheese. I’m taking some apples tomorrow because frankly, that all got a bit unduly Spartan but never mind. I opened all the hatches and got some air running through the boat and got everything that was damp out in the wind where it could dry out while I took stock of things.
I was just working out the tasks, what’s going to need doing first. I’ve given myself ten days to get her clean and tidy and in the water, which should be a reasonable time-frame. Should be. Except no sooner had I sat down in the sun with the main hatch open, sitting on the step so I could see out but protected from the wind by the coachroof in a really nice, comfortable spot I can see myself using a lot, the phone rang. Of course I had my phone with me. Everyone does. Even around here, where phones don’t always work.
I’d thought the boat needed a cooker and a sink, but when I had a good look around there was already a sink there, under a chopping board that disguised it. There’s a twin-burner paraffin stove with an oven in the boatyard shop. I’ll measure the space tomorrow.
Urgent stuff to do? I need to make a little wooden box out of ply to cover an unsightly hole you can see on the right hand side of the top picture, where the depth gauge display has been cut into the wood not very neatly. Some bolts need trimming so they don’t stick out, because it’s ugly when they do. There’s a bit of wet rot that needs stopping before it goes any further, but that’s what wet rot glue is for. Mostly it just needs sanding, a new coat of anti-foul to keep the weeds off, new paint to cover the few scratches where someone got a bit too enthusiastic about mooring and varnish to replace the old varnish.
Yacht varnish is a total waste of time, in my experience, so I’m not going to do it. Instead, I’m going to use stuff called Tonkinoise which the French Navy used to use out east, as we say in Woodbridge. It’s not varnish. It goes deep into the wood rather than sitting on top of it, so it doesn’t flake off again every single year. Unlike varnish.
Mind your head. I think this is the reason these classic little yachts are out of fashion. They were designed for sailing, not an aerobics trampoline class.
So sanding tomorrow, but I’d better order the anti-foul and the paint and the Tonkinoise first as that’s going to take a few days to arrive.
I can’t decide whether to use a power sander or not. Somehow it seems a bit like cheating, but there’s quite a bit of hull to sand so maybe I’ll do the decks and the exposed wood by hand and everything else with a sander.
Either way it’s going to be a long day and there’s some other stuff to do, because the phone ringing meant I have an interview for a big job in London on Tuesday and I’ll deal with how I’m going to get there and/or where I’m going to live when they offer it to me. Along with the big fat cheque every month that they’re talking about, which is why I’m talking to them.
But meanwhile, there’s this lovely little boat to fettle.
I looked at boats to buy back in 2000. Somehow that was 15 years ago. It just flies by when you’re having fun. I was a different person then, with different dreams and expectations.
I wanted a house in Oxford, or maybe just outside it on the London side. I’d sold the house in Stow. I was trying to get an internet business off the ground but thanks to an accountant who didn’t do email and a vulture capitalist who thought I was going to give him half of the thing in return for working for him in deed, word and fact, that didn’t happen. Microsoft do the thing it did now. At least I got to be friendly with a six foot blond lesbian coder with a rubber dress. Not everybody can say that.
But the boat thing…we visited boat yards all over the East Coast. Stood on docks looking at horrible plastic boats with fins sticking out of them, stubbed toes on bits of things that nobody even knew what they were any more, so much so that in one of those yards up a creek in Essex someone now thinks they’ve found Darwin’s little ship, the one he sailed on to write the Origin of Species.
I wanted a wooden boat and I had about £10,000 to spend. It didn’t happen for all kinds of reasons then, but time goes on for the lucky ones. Yesterday I bought one. I didn’t pay anything like that. I first saw this lovely little boat in October or thereabouts. I’ve been going to this boatyard for years, thinking one day I might buy a boat there. Finally it’s happened. I’m just about to go down and see what needs to be done to get her ready for the water again.
I’ll just put a pen and a thermos flask in my bag and I’ll let you know.
We had big floods here last winter, the water even coming into the place my friend works, half a kilometre from the river. The ground was smooth in this place, with no footprints of deer or people. There were rabbits though, that the dogs hunted as a pair, one diving into the bushes while the other ran around the other side of the little copse to catch the rabbits as they ran out.
