Another alternative to fitting out

Time for fitting out. Or, in the immortal words of JD Sleightholme of this parish, staring miserably at a furry frying pan and ‘trying to disguise from yourself in fitting out, the fact that you never properly laid up.’ It’s a bracing time, especially when the weather begins to smile and the first warm days cause countless boat owners to infuriate the yard staff with a request to ignore their earlier instructions for mid-april and ‘get her in for the weekend.’ But there may come a time in any life when there’s no gallant craft to fit out; when age, invalidity, a dodgy pension or heavier home duties mean that the last boat gets sold. A solemn thought. But it doesn’t mean condemning yourself to golf and knitting. The other week I met a marvellous woman of mature years, an adventurous sailor all her life. She had decided that she is not any longer feeling fit enough to put to sea as intrepidly as before and she hit on a solution to the end of the independent seafaring years. No, not a series of Saga cruises. Something more intrepid.

She bought herself the smallest size of motorhome – a minicamper, just for one – and kitted it out with a bunk, and all the neat retractable devices a small boat would have for cooking and basic washing and the rest. It has her old boat’s brass clock and cushions, to make it feel shippy. You have to be, she said, careful about how much water you carry because of weight and fuel use, but long-distance voyagers are used to that. Altogether, it sounds like a handy enough craft. And cleverly, she is contemplating a club burgee, possibly from an aerial or just neatly painted on the side.

The point is that belonging to an adventurous club, she now plans to cruise around the coast by road revisiting all the harbours she has known for years. And, of course, if any fellow club members or friends from elsewhere happen to be in the harbour, they will be delighted to see her again and willing to provide a trip round the bay or a longer cruise round the headland to some other anchorage with a taxi back to the car park. If there’s nobody there she knows, or can strike up a friendship with, there are always tripper boats, local sailing schools, dinghies and dayboats to hire on a fine day, and the familiar sea in sight.

She also points out that in return for any jaunts on other people’s boats, there will be the advantage that she can offer crews a lift to the nearest Lidl to re-provision their boat more cheaply. Or she could sometimes, when the crew contains some more slightly whiny offspring suffering from cabin fever, whisk them to the Eden Project, Flambards or the nearest funfair without their having to look up bus timetables or spend a fortune on taxis.

I suppose it could be heretical to mention this motoring alternative here, and even more so if I dare to murmur that on some bitter stormy nights, a few of us may envy the cheerful roaming octogenarian in the minicamper. Notably, she retires to a snug billet and dry duvet near the chip shop instead of getting a soaked backside in a soggy dinghy as you go out across the howling black water to a rolling boat and an unwelcome dawn visit from the harbourmaster.

But even as we hold the faith and propose to carry on cruising at all costs, there is something inspiring about this lady’s project. It is a tribute to the spirit of inquisitive, individualistic adventure that we on YM respect. It is about staying on the move, being willing to give up spacious home comforts and endure make-do sanitation and iffy weather and two-burner stoves, just for the sake of something bracing and venturesome and independent.

I rather hope we meet her in some harbour and spot the flag. Maybe it’ll go foreign, and we’ll find her fresh off the Channel ferry, or even the Santander boat. Or maybe it will be spotted on a stony track down to Loch Hourn, parked up cosily between the fish lorries in Aberdeen, or outside a pub in Bantry. I hope we, and others, see the neatly painted burgee on the smart little vehicle, and pipe her aboard with honour.

‘A FEW OF US ENVY THE OCTOGENARIAN IN THE MINICAMPER’