Tony Kirby 
Have you ever noticed that people with an obsession, masquerading as a hobby, seem compelled to force this burden on their more fortunate fellow beings?
I work with one of these, his name is Chris, and his particular obsession, sorry hobby, is sailing. He seems quite normal, although Mondays aren’t his best day. He is usually late for work and bears the marks of his curse – rope burns, third degree sunburn, fatigue and something he refers to as “gunnel bum”. This latter is not visible, but is apparent from his gait and reluctance to sit. In spite of all this self inflicted pain he keeps badgering me to join him for a weekend on his small yacht. You would love it, he tells me, “peace and quiet, at one with nature”. He goes on and on, showing me magazines of beautiful people in wondrous places, blue seas, white sands with the odd palm tree for shade. That’s the life he says, sell up and sail away.
Now Roger is a rep. who often calls on our firm, and he is also a would be sailor. As soon as business is done he homes in on Chris, and using another ploy to get people interested, they start with the ‘sail speaks’. By inventing their own language they are trying to coax you subconsciously. What is a vang? Why do they buy their sheets 10 metres long and 12 millimetres thick? You can’t help it can you?
What I have managed to understand is that Roger has been fitting out a boat for seven years, and today is the big day. It’s finished, sat in the water of our local river, tied to a mooring buoy. He asks “Would Chris go with him tonight and show him the way to the sea?” Never one to miss a chance Chris asks “Why don’t you come? You’ll love it, bring the wife. How clever, 2 converts for the price of one! I must have been having a weak moment, because I agreed. “See you at 6” shouts Roger as he dashes off, leaving me wondering what I have done. Will it be safe, with a man who owns a boat and can’t find the sea? Even I could have told him that it’s at the end of the river!
Anyway, after work we get in Chris’s car, collect my wife, Jan, and head for the river. When we arrive Roger is wrestling with a big heap of canvas and wood, which he is trying to drag towards the water. “That’s a folding dinghy” says Chris. At this point Jan decides she doesn’t want to go, her natural buoyancy being akin to that of stones. Chris says that he has one of his kid’s lifejackets in the car and goes to get it. “Its a bit small, but you’ll be OK”, he couldn’t let a near convert get away that easily.
Jan is installed in the little orange number, with whistle attached, and told not to pull the little white cord. Fatal! Never tell my missus something like that! Chris and I started to help manhandle the pile of canvas and wood across the expanse of thick smelly mud. To be honest, I was mostly trying to keep on both of my borrowed, too large wellington boots. Suddenly, behind us, pop and rush of air. Yes, Jan has fiddled with the white cord. The child’s lifejacket has inflated, forcing her arms out to 90° to her body, and her head so far back that she can only stare skywards. She looked like a plane spotting Michelin man. We manoeuvred her over the mud and sat her on the now assembled “dinghy”. The rest of us got in, and Roger rowed us away from shore.
A little way out the river is rushing downstream, “Tides going out” says Chris, “head up a bit”. Roger replies “No we’re alright, I rowed across yesterday, its not very strong”. We’re off, sideways! We run into a big white buoy with a boat attached, the tide pins us against it and our ersatz dinghy leans over and tries to fold itself into something else. Water is now pouring over the sides, and just as it gets ankle deep, we spin round, go under the chain and hit the front of the moored boat. We rattle down the side of the boat, mostly held off by Jan’s outstretched arms, and go off down river.
Roger is flailing the oars like a man possessed. Is there perhaps a university talent scout watching? Chris meanwhile cheerfully informs us that more fatal accidents occur in dinghies than all the rest of yachting put together. From the bit of Jan’s face I can see she’s giving me the look that’s usually reserved for when I want to watch motor sport, whilst her soap is on.
The next boat looms up. “Grab it, grab it, that’s the one” wheezes Roger. It rushes past just out of reach. Roger ups his stroke rate to warp factor 9 as he frantically tries to row the big pile of canvas and wood, 4 adults, a gently hissing lifejacket and about 50 gallons of seawater sloshing against the tide. Very, very slowly we creep up to the stern, and Chris manages to grab a handy little ladder, thrusts a rope into my hands, and says “Tie that on quick, use a bowline, I’ll have to deflate Jan before she can get up the ladder”. I went up the ladder, couldn’t see a bowline, so I tied the rope to a cleat with a knot I’d learnt in the cubs, a round turn and 2 grannies or something. I turned back to the others, and they were drifting away, but it was easier for Roger as only 3 people on board, even if he wasn’t too impressed with me when I stated this. Chris bounded up the ladder and tied the rope on again, muttering about rabbits going behind trees. I wasn’t really listening, it was far more interesting watching Roger trying to pry loose Jan’s white knuckle grip on his dinghy. I tried telling her that being on the yacht was far safer than where she was, but she didn’t move until Chris said that the dinghy must be leaking, as there was a lot more water in her and she must be sinking. Roger was nearly knocked overboard in her panic to abandon the heap.
Strike one, the two landlubbers on board! Mind you, Roger was looking very worn out, it must have been worth it, for two converts, because the moment he came on board he changed instantly. All excited, pointing out various bits of string and varnished wood, winches, and chintzy cushions in the bit he called the cockpit. Then he took out a sliding hatch and proudly showed us the inside. All the smells of new varnish and paint mingled with glues and resin, a solvent abusers idea of heaven. “I’ll show you around properly later, we must get going, I want to see the entrance in daylight”. Chris replied that as there was not much wind we had better motor out, hopefully catching a land breeze further out.
Roger started twiddling and turning things on while Chris tied the waterlogged dinghy to the bouy rope. The engine started and Roger emerged from the bowels of the yacht looking all expectant. He then shouted to Chris to drop the bouy. He let go of the line, and we slowly turned through 180° and headed down river, just shaving, by a coat of varnish, past the boat moored behind us.
To keep out of the way, Jan and I went up to the pointy end and sat down. I was starting to see the attraction, the gentle, somehow relaxing vibration of the engine, the chuckle as our proud bow sliced through the dying sun sparkled water, the cry of a seagull as it drifted lazily overhead, the angry voices in the cockpit ……….
“No, no, I always go down through the moorings”. “That’s the channel over there, I can see the buoys”. “The buoys are dodgy because of the sandbanks, everyone goes through the moorings.” “ Don’t be silly, they are main channel markers, they must be right.” “Please yourself then, why ask me along if you don’t want to listen.”
Which is how, when the noise started, as we were just passing close to this great big red buoy, Roger asks “What’s that noise?” Chris replies “Don’t know, sounds like an alarm, what instruments have you got switched on?” The front of the boat went down, the stern went up and we stopped dead. Everything that is except Roger, he had been standing up holding the tiller, but slid forward, went through the hatch and fell down the stairs. Chris jumped up and wrenched the tiller hard over and slammed the throttle hard astern, muttering something about 10 years in this mumble river, never mumble gone aground. The noise stopped, and Roger popped out of the hatch saying “depth sounder alarm”. Chris responds with “We are well aground, what did you have it set at?” “Four and a half feet, what the boat draws of course.” Replies Roger. Chris stares off into the distance, shaking his head.
Suddenly Roger starts dancing around, “a boat, a boat, I’ll summon assistance” and disappears back below. Meanwhile, Chris undoes the rope holding the main boom and swings it out over the side, climbs onto it and shimmies his way to the end. “Quick, get out here you two” he shouts to Jan and I.” I’m just thinking, no way, when up pops Roger with a very ancient loud hailer, I could see his mouth moving but nothing happened, he keeps on messing with switches until “AHOY THERE” comes out at about 300 decibels. Roger seemed the most surprised, as he jumped back, dropping the loud hailer over the side. This though seemed to cheer Chris up somewhat.
The boat is now leaning over quite badly, not just because of Chris’s acrobatics, the water was swirling all around us, and Jan is worriedly looking from side to side, pulling the little white cord. Unfortunately the jacket has run out of puff, and as Chris returns from the boom he explains that they only work once. He continues “Don’t bother Jan, there’s not enough water to worry about, half an hour and everywhere will be dry all around us.” He was right, 30 minutes later the water was all gone. We slid over the side of the yacht and stood on hard, wet sand, all nice and wavy. Jan didn’t kneel down an kiss it, not quite. “ That’s it then, we are here till half one” chirps up Chris. Great, there is surprising little to do on a sandbank in the middle of a river, so Jan and I went for a little walk, it was getting dark but we knew where the boat was because we could hear Chris and Roger arguing about someone that sounded like Colonel Regs who said we should put an anchor light up, to which Chris replied it wasn’t necessary if your boat was on its side 100 metres from the water. In the end a little white light came on, just above the sand. Perhaps a “we are stuck in sand” light.
Whatever, it worked, within minutes a little wheezy old engine could be heard, then a red and green light and a boat bumped into the sand. Over the side came an enormous pair of waders, which as they got nearer we could see belonged to a little wheezy old man, wearing a woolly hat bearing the remains of many years of grease and fish detritus, below which was a big bushy grey and yellow beard, with an evil smelling cigarette sticking out of one side. “Saw your light, like, wondered if you ‘ad trouble, like” he wheezes. “Can you get me to land” pleads Jan. “Aww lady is it? Well the bass be running, like, but I’m sure us can spare 15 minutes for a lady, like” he replies with a toothless leer. “Harold, get over here and help the lady, like”. Harold approached, six foot thirteen inches high and barely wide enough to sustain life, with a great shock of red-haired, topped with a woolly hat. He was obviously an apprentice as you could still see some wool in the hat, which was supported by a pair of ears that would need reefing in anything more than a force 4. He sidled up to Jan, staring resolutely at the sand, and waved an arm towards their boat. She needed no more prompting. “Well, anymore for anymore, like? Bass is running, time is money, like?” Roger asked if he took credit cards. Chris gave me the keys to his car saying “ You go as well, take the car, I’ll have to stay and help lay an anchor, then pick up the mooring. On your way home drop into my Brenda and tell her what’s happening. I never told her I’d be late home.” I said a quick goodbye to Roger “Must do it again some time.”
I followed waders over to where Harold was making sure that as much of his body as possible connected with Jan as he helped her aboard. The journey ashore was quite uncomfortable, the boat was filled bits of ropes, smelly nets, rusty chain and anchors, and the engine vibrated so much you couldn’t see straight anyway. Soon there is a bump, “Tides out, can’t get no closer, like, you’ll have to walk the rest, like.” Jan couldn’t wait, wrong side Jan, who is now up to her knees in black oozy mud. “ Calm down, I’ll give you a piggyback.” I slid over the side, hung onto the boat, while Harold and waders grabbed Jan, Harold seeming to get the best bits again. With lots of grunting and sucking noises they managed to get her up on to my back, minus her flip-flops, and I was off. Fast I thought was the way to do it, difficult though, bent over trying to hold onto your too large wellies and having a near hysterical spouse on your back. I really thought we would make it, but then I hit a really oozy bit, my trailing foot stuck, I lost my grip on the welly, my foot came out and I fell forward. Jan used me as a sort of starting block, pushing me right in, and skimmed over the mud and found the hard bit. She then just stood, and worse, she laughed. I had mud in every orifice, and it tasted even worse. Just to make things even better, the pub over the road chose then to throw out its 40 odd half cut holiday makers, who just stood and stared at us.
No, I think we are still safe. No yachting obsession yet, any slight stirrings will be crushed later on. I’ve still got to face Chris’s Brenda.
Tony Kirby