Boats.

Lets talk about boats , but where to begin ?.

This section of the blog is about boats, that much should be obvious and maybe i should just leave it there , instead though i thought i’d just knock out a few lines about how my strange obsession started.

Well, i can trace it back to one childhood holiday : one time and one place although i couldn’t tell you what year it was.  It was summer, that’s for certain and that we were on holiday in Weymouth on England’s south coast….just about as good a seaside holiday town as you will find anywhere and with a great sandy beach, beach front hotels and back street boarding houses : and a harbour…..with boats !.

I was obviously old enough to be left to my own devices some of the time and i definitely used some of that time in just wandering up and down the dockside looking at all the boats- fishing boats for the most part with their intricate mess of industrial fishing gear detail .  One day i had a big surprise when one of the French Navy sail training ships was in port : all spotless varnish, shining bronze and scrubbed wooden decks….but a sheer complexity of spars and rigging that i didn’t understand but that took my eye. I remember a crewman working aloft….and wanting to climb up there and see it all up close !.

Strangely i have no memory of yachts or any other sailing boats at that time and i didn’t until many years later and when i quite accidentally landed a job in Dickie’s boatyard in Bangor, North Wales….since closed and land all sold off.

I can still see the threads of that start today : iv’e never been drawn towards the sleek and perfect, the J class and so called superyachts just leave me cold, i know that today i strongly dislike the same-y same garbage that the sailing industry churns out, year after year : instead iv’e always liked the somewhat clunky and oddball but also the purposeful and functional.   This week i happened to walk through the little village near the boatyard where i keep my current boat, on the muddy foreshore was this scruffy little working boat just crying out for a rig, a pair of oars, some gear and a bit of love ….so…

And yes…..i loathe and detest Jet-Ski’s and their drivers !