As always with a second-hand boat, you discover you bought a few of someone else’s problems. In this case, one I found was the two seacocks in the heads- that’s the toilet- that needed replacing, so I booked the boat into a marina and ran aground twice on the way there. The trip looked straightforward, but I should have downloaded the local boating map because the way from where the boat is moored to the marina is full of sandbanks. The first time I managed to get her off and thought I could find a way around, and of course I ran aground again. Really stuck, I rang the marina to say I was waiting for the tide to rise, and the boss said he would come and help with his workboat, which has a 100-horsepower outboard. We just managed to free her from the sand trap. I got her to the marina after having nearly run aground again, and on Monday picked her up after having inflicted serious injury to my bank account.
BOAT – Bring Out Another Thousand.
The trip back to her mooring started well, until I had a port marker on my left and, farther away, a starboard marker also on my left. I was going upstream and thought I might be out of the channel, despite being on the correct side of the port marker, so I went below to grab the boating map I’d downloaded. Of course, the boat carried by the rising tide drifted to the other side of the marker and went aground again. Fortunately, the Maritime Services boat spotted me and pulled me back. Then, when I finally made it back to the mooring area, I had to try picking up the mooring on my own, which I’d never done, but managed without problem and on the first attempt.
With the seacocks problem fixed, my next task is to redo the deck anti-slip and generally organise the boat so I can continue working on my second book in a quiet place. The boat is part of the project, as the book will be a dual narrative about sailing ‘Resolute’ to islands off the coast of Western Australia where a Dutch ship was wrecked in the early seventeenth century, and telling the story of what happened to the crew in the following months. I’m avoiding adding to an already long list of salty sea stories and will focus on the psychological dynamics of a marooned crew losing hope of rescue.
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