Sam Llewellyn
New boots to mix the concrete to mend the barn to hang the tarp to work on the boat
It is still winter out there, and someone has asked me to put a skeg on a boat. This is a straightforward process, involving making a template, cutting out two bits of plywood, sandwiching them with epoxy leaving a couple of bolts sticking out, fixing the whole works to the bottom of the boat – a Corribee, fin keel version, since you ask – just forward of the rudder, then even more epoxy and a shoe and filling and fairing.
This is supposed to make the Corribee easy to tack tidily, something that even the great Ellen MacArthur confessed to finding difficult.
But the weather is too cold for epoxy to go off in the open-fronted shed where the boat lives. It is therefore necessary to hang tarpaulins down the front of it, so we can get the temperature above freezing, so the epoxy will cure.
But inspection reveals that two of the three poles that hold up the front of the barn, hefty larch trunks about 100 years old, have rotted off at the bottom, so the whole tottering edifice of rusty tin is supported on, blimey, now you come to look at it, a single pole, and a decent puff of wind will bring the whole bang shoot down like the Tower of Babel.
So it is necessary to cut off the bottom of the poles with a chainsaw, find sound timber, and make concrete plinths for them to rest on. Get a few bags of cement and aggregate. Wheel the mixer out the chicken shed. Jam on boots.
Hang on. These boots have lasted three years. They cost £15, and have served me well by land and sea. Now, however, their interior seems to be a bit clammy. The boots, curse it, are leaking.
Mend them, then. This is PBO, after all. But Bostik will not stick, and gaffer tape lacks chic. Some sort of Gorilla stuff looked likely for about ten minutes, but during retrieval of a bucketful of water from the duck pond a new inrush of chilly moisture about the pedal regions suggests that this was not a permanent solution.
All right, then. New boots.
I have of course got some Dubarry fairy boots in prime condition, but given the fact that they now cost the thick end of £250 they are to be saved on the off chance that while cruising we will bump into Princess Anne and need to look salty yet respectable.
So it is down the Farm Supplies, source of nautico-agricultural requisites at keen prices, and ho for a pair of daisy roots apparently designed by the narrow-footed torturers of the Inquisition, but waterproof, which is the main thing.
Back we hobble to the barn. The boat is standing there, looking accusing. It is still too cold for epoxy to pump, let alone cure. Never mind. On with the concrete mixer, in with the aggregate and cement and pondwater, five to one, and make a couple of drum-shaped moulds out of hardboard and disused mizzen halyard.
Splosh around in puddles of concrete. Pour most of it into the moulds. Buzz off for a couple of days. At the end of which there is a pleasing rigidity to the whole structure, though the weather is even colder.
A week passes, with other fish to fry. Out come the tarpaulins, bluish and heavily stained. Nail them to the big timbers, using battens. Soon we are in a bright and lofty enclosure. Suddenly the world is silent, the air motionless except for the quiet breathing of the great blue sheets. The tools are assembled. We are ready to go.
Except that outside, there are birds singing heartily, and the air is warm and pleasant, and the temperature has soared to ten and even 11°, and the daffodils are nodding under the apple trees.
In the shed, though, the tarpaulins are keeping the heat at bay something spectacular, and even uncatalysed epoxy is the consistency of bonfire toffee, and I am sitting on a disused five-gallon drum with my face buried in my hands and my feet buried in my tight cheap boots and wishing they weren’t.
But spring is here, and when we get all those tarps down the epoxy will cure. Except that the arrival of spring means it is time to stop mucking about with skegs in sheds and go to sea. A fixed number of sailing seasons remains, and this is one of them. Out to the mooring, on to the big boat and up with some sails. To the horizon, and beyond!
‘The boots, curse it, are leaking. Mend them, then. This is PBO after all’