Sometimes there comes to the dog pound a sad old dog that has
been abused just once too often in its life for it to be rehabilitated and put
into a new family. It is likely large and may have, despite its previous
neglect, a beautiful coat and, from a distance, soulful eyes, but this is not
enough. Sometimes the pound workers will spend hours implacably trying to gain
its trust. Sometimes they will even let it go to live with a patient dog-loving
single man or a couple without children. But these efforts never work. The
dog’s very nature has been scared beyond hope of salvation. It predictably ends
up back at the pound, inevitably ends up being put down.
This is how I think of The Boat. I had hoped to fall in love
with her. From a distance (of 3000 miles) I could sense the beauty of her soul.
I was sure we were bound to become lovers. But now, after months of effort, I
am ready to abandon the struggle. It is time to give up, to accept that I
cannot salvage her, and that I have no other option than to ‘take her back to
the pound’. She is an older boat, I don’t have a problem with that, but her
interior layout, which was not good to start with, and which has become worse
with changes made to her over the years by various owners, is positively ghastly,
and her exterior deck and cockpit even worse.
For example, only one person can comfortably sit in the salon
at a time. Anyone else who wants to sit must ask the first to get up and then
do an awkward squeeze into a spot from which they are immediately trapped. This
effort is so great that it makes using the salon – by more than one at a time –
too much effort, so we don’t gather there to chat, or play cards, or even each
do our own thing side by side in silence, which tends to isolate our crew
members.
For example, my bunk is tiny. Its ceiling so low that I cannot
sit up in it, and it is open, all the time, to the nav-room and the salon, so
even as I am sleeping the sound of the radar warning bell and light of the nav
computer are a few feet away from me without even a curtain between. And, on
top of that, people, by which I mean crew on watch or going onto watch or
coming off of watch or the captain at any time of day or night, walk by less
than a foot from my head, their mere presence disrupting my sleep. And if it is
raining out or splashing I get dripped on. And this is the second best place to
sleep on the boat after the captain’s cabin!
For example, the cockpit is also too cramped. It is big enough
but has been laid out so that there is not a single comfortable place to sit, winches
and wooden cleats are forever poking into your lower back. You cannot stand up
anywhere without being hunched over. Moving about is a challenge even for those
with a contortionist’s inclination, it is difficult and awkward and requires
patience and practice and a lot of walking while simultaneously stooped and
twisted, which is a pain while at anchor and worse while at sea. My legs and
feet are covered in bruises, the small of my back continually sore. And it does
not have a dodger, cannot have one made due to the design and placement of the
masts, so even in gentle conditions getting sprayed occasionally with salt
water is inevitable, and in windy conditions sheets of salt water continually
assault you, and, also for the majority of the day when you are outside there
is no direct protection from the sun, and, worst yet, the cockpit cushions are
always covered in a disgusting salty layer of salty goop. Also, it must be
mentioned, the lines from the main mast are not led back. Putting up the main
sails, or reefing them, or taking them down, involves leaving the safety of the
cockpit and going far forward on slippery footing to do simple tasks that with
any modern boat would not require you to put yourself in any danger of being splashed
let alone swept off board.
And I could go on and on and on about the terrible galley
layout, the miniscule head that always has liquid – water I often hope – on the
floor, the numerous low doorways that we are all forever banging our heads on, the
fact that the boat is infested with both cockroaches and bedbugs, and, somewhat
ironically, the swaths of totally wasted open space in various parts of the
interior…
Also everything keeps breaking down. Our engine broke last
leg, was fixed, but is now leaking great gobs of oil and as BOTH the oil
pressure gauge AND the low oil pressure alarm are broken as well the engine is,
one again, effectively useless. We have broken TWO preventers in the last
month, have had TWO electrical fires, have had TWO fridge breakdowns, have had
the head need repairing TWICE, we continually get things like the topping lift
tangled with the antenna just because of poor vertical layout, do not have a
working sink in the galley, have had lines and wires and floor panels and doors
and all sorts of other things break all over the place…. Each time HS sticks
his head outside it seems that we hear the inevitable, ‘Oh shit!’ which
generally means that, yet again, something else has broken.
I wanted to love her. I did. But she is like that old sad dog,
too far gone, beyond hope of future renovations to salvage her, not good for
anything except being put down. (After, I must point out, she has safely
crossed the ocean this one last time with me aboard!)
