Life Aboard BY mARIAnne BARTRAm
MARIANNE LIVES ABOARD THE mV TRESHNISH ON THE RIVER DART WITH HER HUSBAND NIGEL
A
n unwelcome sight greeted me in the early days. Hub was on the
pontoon, kneeling in seagull mess and crab parts, whilst muttering, “the rabbit comes up out of the hole, goes round the back of the tree and back down the hole.” Apparently that’s how you learn to tie a bowline. What a relief – I thought he’d been drinking sea water
again! When we first bought the boat i Dartmouth FF advert:Layout 1 10/9/12 18:11 Page 2
fearfully queried the strength of the mooring warps. The previous owner, a highly respected mariner, replied, “My dear, they could hold a Corvette!” (hefty warship). I thought he said, “Crevette” (large prawn) and Hub heard “Cravat” (a tie). We gazed at each other
bemused. These days, though, he has quite taken to tying knots in ropes but tends to practice by using his left knee as a bollard, resulting in some heavy falls. Wine is involved. I, on the other hand, have made only little progress and still think a request to tail off a halyard verges on the indecent. The maintenance continues and I believe she is beginning to look a little smarter. But …what on earth is happening to me? I used to call for a bottle and a corkscrew – now, it’s a bottlescrew and caulk. Gulls use my head as a head. I look as if I have been dragged out of a skip, I am tatty. Hub is as bad, forever with his nose buried in “ You and your MFV re-build” weekly or underlining sentences in “Geriatric? You can still Storm the Horn” and similar. I had a nerve storm the other
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day when I glanced up and spotted a mushroom. Really, I may just as well live in a cave – after all, if mushrooms, why not ferns? But then a shaft of sunlight appeared, glanced off the hardwood, made the brass gleam, and danced about to the rocking of the boat. I suddenly felt ridiculously happy! and sufficiently moved to unearth some Second World War bunting I’d found in a locker - because – at last, it’s the Regatta! An armada of assorted vessels
bore down on us until I wondered how they would all fit in... their names amuse me, even the provocative ones, which make me gnash my teeth, such as “Loose Change” or clever ones like “Titus Aduxas”.(get it ?) We were five abreast this year and there was the usual “to-do” about coming alongside. One crew threw me a rope; I gave it an
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