Life Aboard BY MARIANNE BARTRAM
MARIANNE LIvES ABoARD THE MV TRESHNISH oN THE RIvER DART WITH HER HUSBAND NIgEL
Wooden boxes. Perfect storage for absolutely anything on wooden boats. We have around eighteen not all of which are the desirable mahogany, oak or pine – but not even the cheapest has allowed a book to be spoiled or clothes mildewed ... You can buy them for next to nothing if you rummage about in various emporiums (our favourite enjoys the unequalled name of “Riro D. Mooney’s Fine Junk Yard”) and then restore them. I bought an old cutlery box for
five pounds the other day, prized off its feet, stripped off the beading, ripped out the felt and set about sanding it. Predictably the sander’s motor exploded with a loud bang and a shower of sparks – I hardly blinked as life afloat has inured me to mayhem. Investing in a new one and including the petrol to drive to the supplier meant I may as well have paid fifty pounds in the first place, so I laboured on by hand until I had no fingernails left but the box was ready to take several coats of stain. It took three days in all and
I was quite pleased with the result. But in the end none of it mattered because having applied the final coat of clear varnish Hub laid a magazine on it. this, when removed, neatly lifted most of the surface back to bare wood as if I had not done a thing. I said some terrible things. old age, whilst a privilege, has few advantages we find but it does bring its share of black humour. Hub was reading the times and suddenly sensing a loss of vision in his left eye declared that he was having another stroke. I glanced up
and saw that a lens had fallen out of his glasses. once I had stopped laughing I was able to point this out to him and he thought I was very callous. Also, though not related, his trousers fell down in Paignton (of all places). statins have turned my muscles
into noodles and at night I fancy I hear the hooves of the four horsemen of our mental and physical apocalypse clip-clopping along the pontoon ... As for me, everybody has been telling me how
Predictably the sander’s motor exploded with a loud bang and a shower of sparks – I hardly
blinked as life afloat has inured me to mayhem.
well I look which, as we all know, is a euphemism for “fat” so I found the courage to unearth the scales and – what? sea water must have seeped into them. I appear to weigh more than our car. so there you have it. I can’t drink, now I can’t eat either. Just as I thought my day couldn’t
get any worse, a stream of water poured onto my head. this is by no means unusual but it occurred to me that it hadn’t rained for several days. I can only conclude that somewhere there is a reservoir lurking which is filling up and slopping over when full or the boat rocks. If I leave it long enough it will
cause rot but short of tearing the boat apart with my bare hands I don’t know how to find it (or what I am supposed to do with it if I did). Anyway, it’s probably one of many, a network of little rivulets and the odd lake. It’s rain water that causes the
real damage – salt water helpfully pickles your boat ... What if, I asked Hub, I were to tie a lump of horse lick to the mast introducing said salt? He begged me not to be so silly. (Not on the basis of the theory itself, you understand, but my assumption that our mast could support so much weight!) Just as you think you have a fair idea of what might happen and are ready for it, the boat gives you a swift reminder that this is far from the case. For example, in a house you wouldn’t put on some boots and find your umbrella prior to hoovering and neither did I. I should have, though. In the (admittedly shameful) amount of time the Hoover was stashed away on an overhead shelf, it had completely filled with rain from a leak we didn’t even know we had. there must have been at least 10 litres in it and what didn’t go down my back splashed a trail all through the boat as I tried to wrestle it onto the deck. there wasn’t much left to empty when I shook it out but I was exhausted and collapsed onto a nearby hatch. Well, of course, I ought to have glanced down first
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