Laid up ashore
Stuck in hospital during a pandemic when all around is in disarray, thoughts turn to the boat
Iwas in hospital while the world changed. I’d been waiting for an operation since October. I reckoned even a delay until January would have me back on my feet for late spring. In mid-January, word came that it would be ‘hopefully March’.
My main worry was Karima’s spring antifouling. The colder water keeps our hulls pretty clean, but this would be three seasons – one too many. I wanted to get it done before the op: a haul-out and pressure wash in February was looking like the best bet even if I only had the energy to paint in short bursts, as weather permitted. Maybe I could push it to early March? Only if my surgery was scheduled for late March.
I couldn’t leave it until after the op: I had a horrid feeling that even hauling up a mainsail might be too much for a stomach with a railway line scar, let alone all the kerfuffle of mast up, rigging, getting the sails back on and sorting out bagfuls of washed ropes. I counted six months of recovery time on my fingers and made that September. Maybe I’d have to leave the mast down all summer.
Well, if I had to... I’d surely be able to potter out under engine. We could go on picnic trips, and then in September when I was well again, I could get her out and do a thorough antifouling job.
The engine was my other worry. My big cancer operation in 2012, which left me unable even to get on board for six months, was what killed my old Volvo Penta. I wasn’t having my new Beta 14 go the same way. I wrote a very careful list of how to start and run it (1. Turn the red battery dial by the hatch to 2 .... ) so that my non-sailing husband, Philip, could do that, at least. We’d do a supervised try before I went in.
All my plans went awry in late February. I got my date – 13 March – and was just contemplating a rapid lift-out when I became acutely unwell and had to turn myself in at the A&E in Lerwick. The world was still normal then.
I had the abscess lanced in Lerwick, then was flown down to Aberdeen for the proper operation, which wiped me out completely.
There was no wifi in the hospital, and no newspapers. I got some news from my daughter in London: the kids are off school; we’re working from home; the supermarket shelves are empty. Philip, staying in Aberdeen to be with me, reported all restaurants closed, lines on the supermarket floors and people wearing masks. When the hospital closed to visitors he had to go home.
Meanwhile, I tottered gently round the ward, then round the corridors, trying to guess how far I’d got: the front gate, the end of the garden, the marina path, along the pontoon, on board Karima...
A month from when I’d gone in, the air ambulance took me home. Naturally I went straight to check on Karima from my writing-room window. She looked OK through the binoculars, with fenders in place and the previously mended window apparently holding.
As for walking down to her, my wobbling legs told me that was several weeks away.
Three days later we drove the short distance to the marina and I tottered along the deserted pontoon and clambered aboard. The engine started in a puff of blue smoke and was running happily by the time I’d aired the cabin and Philip had mopped out the bilges (‘Your bailer’s heavier than a half-filled kettle’ he said firmly.) To kill two birds with one stone, we brought all the ropes and sail covers from our conservatory and stowed them back aboard.
Even if I wasn’t well enough to actually go out, I thought, looking over my boat, I could at least walk down in May and wield a varnish brush.
No. That very afternoon’s post brought a stern letter from the chief medical officer, telling me that as a high-risk person I was to self-isolate for 12 weeks and even my most conservative estimate (from 13 March) made that 5 June. By then too I’d read the most recent news and realised that it was up to all of us to obey the rules. No walks to the marina; no pottering about on board until the world returns to normal – but I hope by the time you read this we can at least start thinking about ordering cranes and getting back on the water.
Fingers crossed!
‘No walks to the marina; no pottering about on board until the world returns to normal’