Looking forward to liberty
This strange, frustrating lockdown has torpedoed the fitting-out season – unless you were cunning enough to have the boat on the driveway or wintering within ‘permitted exercise’ distance, with authority turning a blind eye. As for early cruises, that sunshine was tormenting, as were those brisk north-easterly winds. I hear of a couple of sneaky expeditions just as the interdict hit, in which desperate owners managed to hammer up- or down-channel for the very good reason that the boat was stuck in a yard or marina sucking up fees by the night, while there was a prepaid mooring waiting. But some will have been utterly trapped, so all condolences to the owners. Unless the yard or marina had a compassionate heart. There must be some, somewhere?
More on my mind and that of various correspondents was the matter of hoping it would end by high summer and therefore the struggle to be fit enough for the boat after an idle winter. Gym-bunnies can stop here for a quick scoff and get back on their treadmill, but for many, the ordinary sedentary office-and-commutertrain world saps the seafaring muscle-power. In my case there was an extra-idle winter on chemotherapy before it. So come the domestic lockdown, how on earth could one get cruising-fit?
With a garden washing line, some activities were pleasingly reminiscent of the old days of liberty. There is a certain enjoyable No2-jib machismo in controlling rebellious bedding in a gusty Force 6 with a mouthful of pegs. No rocking deck, of course, but still there’s some nifty stepping and concentration needed to keep an eye on your feet in case the dog has left a souvenir. He always chooses that corner under the washing line. And when the wind suddenly gets inside a kingsize duvet cover it bellies like any foretopsail, while a nearby tree branch can create a bracing spinnaker-wrap.
But the real challenge is physical flexibility. Walking and running are little use in this regard: when, on a boat, do you put one foot before the other in that boringly repetitive way? What’s needed is big leg-reach, up ladders and over guardwires, usually carrying bags of shopping or sailbags, sometimes crossing four yachts and a trawler which has complicated things by straining two feet away from the quay on slimy lines.
So lunges, dance moves and a spirited daily can-can become necessary training exercises. If there’s an inflatable stashed in the garage you can blow it up, ideally leaving the sides really squashy, wait for a windy afternoon and practise getting into it out of the bathroom window. When thoroughly at ease with this, do it again in full oilskins with someone playing a hose on you, rig a taut rope in the way, and take a heavy can of water with you to simulate diesel refuelling in Western Ireland.
The ability to fold up one’s legs like a grasshopper is not one which the non-yoga community bothers with out of season. If you have a slightly duff knee and usually ignore it, your comeuppance occurs on our boat when you try to get into the quarterbunk cabin.
It is narrow and comfortable enough to sleep in, legs facing aft, but impossible to enter without both knees bent up to the chin. And if one didn’t sign up to the damn TV yoga class in winter, the result is a sudden agonising cramp in one leg at least, causing you to bang your head on the bookshelf fiddle and dislodge a shower of Patrick O’brians into your helpless groin. Some of them may be hardbacks.
So, assuming that by now we are gradually reclaiming the freedom of the seas for cautiously distanced and sanitised cruising, it is the well-prepared who will be happiest.
Well, the least bruised anyway.
Practise getting into a half-inflated dinghy out of the bathroom window