LIFE ABOARD Life Aboard By MARIAnne BARTRAM
MARIANNE LIVES ABOARD THE MV TRESHNISH ON THE RIVER DART WITH HER HUSBAND NIGEL
This is preposterous. I mean, it’s a harbour not the Bay of Biscay. What nincompoop said, “Any port in a storm”? - Well, I’d give this one a miss today, matey. Can’t they put doors across the entrance or something? On the day of the worst storm,
I wasn’t feeling well - even by my clapped out standards. It began with me gingerly feeling the raised welt on my forehead caused by one very loud and naturally unexpected thunderclap in the middle of the night (what is wrong with the weather in Dartmouth? - why does it do this?) which resulted in my shooting bolt upright into solid mahogany.
I’d
forgotten for a moment that I was not actually in a bed, like a normal person but wedged in a pitching coffin with another one a mere 8 inches above me. I received such a fierce crack on the noddle that I thought the mast must have come down. CRAsH! now what? The hull shuddered, I winced but feigned outward indiffer- ence for long enough until Hub sighed and said he supposed he would have to go on deck to check. (Well, one of us will. not going to be me..obvi- ously.) In driving wind and rain, you have about two minutes before being soaked through so it’s a choice of full foul weather gear or go out naked. let us all give thanks that he usually chooses the former. (This is merely us “blow ins”– Dartmouth blokes are still in shorts and T shirts until February) He stomped about a bit and dragged things around. When he came back in, I thought he must have fallen overboard. He said he had weeed all over his head. I daresay. All this water gets me a bit like that. Anyway, he was confident
he had fixed it and after a brisk rub down with a copy of the Boating life, he was drying off by the fire. CRAsH! same problem. I sniggered, he swore
and my conscience drove me, reluc- tantly, up on deck. I opened the door and was immediately shot painfully in the face. sandblasted, you might say, by hailstones. Of course – why not? We’ve just about had everything else. Oh well, every cloud etc. - I won’t need to exfoliate for quite some time. The effect was as if thousands of ball bearings had been poured onto the deck and to my alarm, I began to skate erratically towards the prow. en route, my glasses were snatched off and clattered to a brief halt several feet away. In my efforts to grab them before they flew through the cover
to express fear of the elements was pointless and so the most we do is exchange a wry glance. Therefore, I’m ashamed to say I let out a loud gasp when we rolled to 35 degrees
board I opened my shin on the blade of a spare propeller and rang the ship’s bell loudly with my elbow. I ended up crawling inches from a large sheltering gull. It leered at me. I was tempted to wring its greasy neck for it. During the next storm, I was a little concerned to see that Hub’s hat was bobbing rapidly up river as it occurred to me that he may still be wearing it, in which case the manufacturers of our expensive life jackets will be shortly in receipt of a very sharp letter from me. I rushed to the rescue - currently my “man overboard” plan doesn’t amount to much more than bleating “I can’t
see you - Are you O.K.? (I am working on it) and he appeared. Bizarrely, he was promptly blown over backwards. These storms must be affecting me as I honestly haven’t laughed so much since a titled friend rushed up to me at our local agricultural show proudly announcing that she had come first in “Rough Bitches”. (It was her Irish Water spaniel, happily.) Oh dear. A lifebuoy started bashing the rat lines when Hub was still ashore. I couldn’t undo the knots so I took a machete to it (as you do) and then, as per his dratted “pre-storm prep list,” went round the deck lashing up this and that as yet another Hooley was heading our way. When he came back he was quite aghast, asking what on earth had happened and felt that the rigging now resembled some sort of mad cobweb. I had only just received Holy Communion but the lies fairly tumbled out of my mouth and I declared it was a sudden gust. He looked sceptical but a bacon sandwich soon had him smiling. Men are, unlike boats, quite simple to handle, I think, yet equally demanding. He asks me to lash things tightly and then has the audacity to say that it’s to be hoped we won’t need the lifebuoy or boat hook as it would take ten minutes hard work with the ships axe to release either…..Our losses so far then: 3 shackles, a rowing boat, a fender, an inflatable, a damaged engine cover, 2 cleats, 4 ropes, 2 oars, a petrol can, a key flotation device, the leg of my glasses, one woolly hat and my will to live.
When I see people on the news climbing out of their bedroom windows down a ladder into a dinghy on a raging torrent, I assume they are
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