Life on Board
Life on Board
Having always been a bit of a people watcher I find it extremely interesting the differing reactions that people have when you tell them that you actually live on board your boat in a marina. The responses range from the shock/horror type. “Oh no, how could you possibly do that?” or plain cold disdain, “Hmm, well I could never bear to live on a boat, I couldn’t be squashed up like sardines in a can!” There’s even a muttered inference that because you don’t sleep four steps away from a gold tapped, pink tiled bathroom that you must be a bit of a grub or worse, a member of the awful species that frequent marina bars…. “The grotty yachtie!” May Allah save us from such horrors!
Admittedly, it does rather seem a fact of life that the further you live from the actual marina club house on your boat, the greater the proportion of wrinkles in your shirts and jeans, but at the end of the day, it is not exactly a hanging offence, is it? All boaties are a bit like that, aren’t we? I have seen some very posh yachtie types that belong to my club that appear to have barely escaped from a wind tunnel with hairstyles to match, but then again a lot of them seem to own open top Mercedes sports cars.
Living on board, in a marina is a bit of a double-edged sword I know. Like everything else in life, there are pluses and minuses, in many differing ways. The minuses can, on certain days, outweigh the pluses by far, but hey, life goes on. What are the minuses? Well, these can vary in horror content depending on whether you are on a swing mooring or marina berth. Let’s get the swing mooring type out of the way first. In fine weather, nothing (they assure me) beats the quiet and solitude and sense of freedom far away from the rowing neighbours and barking dogs. It must be idyllic, I am sure, except for the endless row of power boats that skim past your porthole every two minutes at weekends. However, (I shudder as I write, actually) when the barometer plunges and a southerly buster swings in towards our little spot of heaven on Earth promising black rain clouds and howling gales, my heart truly goes out to them. I have often stood by the porthole, snug in the cabin, on a filthy day watching small flooded dinghies sail past out of the gloom filled with cowering forms and sopping dogs whose eyes are fixed intently on the nearest land borne lamppost. I feel like applauding out loud at their true grit and amazing tenacity. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper out there and I really feel the club should award those solid members with bravery medals and give them free dinners, as most of them are the truest yachties amongst us all. I must admit I’m curious to know how some bosses react when one of their staff walks into work on rainy days looking as if they had been over Niagara Falls whilst being washed down with a fire hose. Saying, “I live on a boat” only seems to make it worse somehow.
But let’s move on to the next hardy species, the ‘marine berth’ dweller. Once again, distance from the shower and toilet come into play but the further away you are the less able you are to hear the warbles and crashes of the resident band whose repetitious refrains of bloody ‘Mustang Sally’ for twelve weeks on end during the summer season are almost too much to bear. Additional nuisances are the giant washes of Riviera owners who roar out of the marina at 15 knots tipping your dinner into your lap, and when the wind is southerly the sound of crashing waves against the stern drowns out all speech. Unless you’ve actually tried to sleep in a washing machine you’ll realise why boaties normally walk around glassy eyed. It’s not just the rum I can assure you. Money too, or the distinct lack of it, dictates your life’s comforts. There’s truly no comparison to the wealthy live aboards on an eighty foot Dyna towering above us mere mortals who live somewhat like hermit crabs in wooden shells under the shadows of their giant exhausts.
However, on a sunny Sunday we all become as one. Out on deck, clustering around the barby (the great aussie leveler twixt rich and poor) with visitors and friends gurgling cheerily into their chardonnay, banging on about how lucky we are to be here, etc etc. and as the greasy scraps go over the side into the boiling gangs of frenzied bream, they croon on about how great it must be to eat fresh fish every day, free of charge. Naturally, we daren’t burst their bubble of fantasy by telling them exactly why they hang around under the boat awaiting the clarion call of the toilet pump, it just wouldn’t be fair. Eat one of them little suckers and you’ll wake up with a crowd around you with tubes out of the places you didn’t know you had! As for the bream, they are remarkably piranha like and will eat anything when their blood is up. I have often wondered what would happen if a