LIBBY PURVES
Warmth conundrum
When the winter gales rattle rain against the window panes, does anyone else wake up in a warm bed, creep through the cold air to the bathroom, and think, ‘Hell, do I really want to go sailing again?’
There is a parallel, it occurs to me, with that moment in the summer months when you slip down the last two stairs onto your coccyx and, in a rare flash of selfawareness, realise that you don’t really want ever to go ski-ing again. Because falling down is no longer the hilarious fun it was when you were younger.
Similarly, in the months before the first warm spring zephyrs drive us mad with desire for our boats, the crueller nights bring on the shudders. There’s nothing like tiles crashing off the roof to make you remember certain anchor-chain anxieties and unattractive foredeck expeditions.
The shudders wear off, of course, but are a useful spur to reflecting on equipment and preparations for the real sailing season. Not least the perennial question, too rarely discussed: how to get warm on a boat?
Creeping back to the duvet on one of those winter nights, I lay and reflected on this. Paul has been to farther extremities – south and north, watch out for his Iceland book Goodbye Mr Puffin – but I have had my share of bone-chilling boating, both in northern waters and on the February days when we used to wrap up the new baby in an Arctic papoose and, insanely, head down to an East Coast mooring for ‘a bit of maintenance’ with frozen fingers.
So what are the essentials? Layers of clothes, naturally. Once it was depressing woollen underwear, then silk, now it’s Uniqlo heattech. With maybe more silk on top. Then something closely woven. Then something fleecy. Then something water- and wind-proof. And a headover pulled up to the nose. And several hats.
Well, we all know that: this is the age of tech clothing. But what one remembers on night excursions is that at some point aboard you have to peel all this stuff off.
A modern boat, especially with a thin GRP structure, can be a real freezer: once on a sailing course we woke up to find the one lying nearest the icy windward hull had piled onto his sleeping-bag not only all his clothes and most of ours but also the galley fire-blanket. Through it all you could still see him shivering.
Some favour winceyette pajamas, but if you’re a nightdress or sarong type that doesn’t work psychologically. Some just leave on a base layer or two then get sweaty in the sleeping-bag – ‘four-season’ from your local rip-off camping shop.
We actually gave up sleeping bags, having discovered that a base sheet and a thick duvet are both warmer and quicker to get out of – actually you can even get dressed under a duvet.
But no self-extrication from a bag has ever been as tricky as on another, long-ago, Yachtmaster course. The instructor handed out cotton ‘liners’ with strict instructions to use them inside our bags.
Halfway through the week we made him admit where he got those narrow tubes with the suspiciously narrowing foot. Surplus stock from the local undertaker: shrouds. A warm bed is key. But beyond that comes the question of heating the saloon itself at anchor, so that at least the night starts warm.
We have been through every variation of boat heater over the years. There was the weird catalytic thing – like a small bomb to trip over – which you absolutely don’t leave on overnight. There was the battery-depleting hot air blower, though it did get socks nice and dry if you hung them over your head during supper, dropping occasionally into the soup. There was the diesel one which leaked into the upholstery, and the coke burner which made the foc’sle smell like a colliery.
Now, installed between lockdowns, there is a very pretty little wood stove whose advantage is that if you bank it down nicely the saloon might stay nice and cosy till about 0100.
Wish us luck. Because despite it all, we’re pining to go…
This is the age of tech clothing. But at some point you have to peel all this stuff off