THAT Guy !

If you have been around boats or boatyards for a few years it’s likely that you have met THAT guy – you know, the really irritating one who wanders around other people’s boats from dawn to dusk, while they are trying to get jobs done, while endlessly giving them his opinion about everything that they are doing right or wrong…..or what matey down the line of boats is (In his opinion) doing wrong.

Now don’t get me wrong, THAT guy does actually own a boat and does actually turn up nearly every day to work on it…..or more likely turns up and does a few minutes actual work, usually something that isn’t a priority to get done, and then gives up to go and bother some other boat owner with his opinions. Of course, THAT guy has owned and read all of the important books, get all of the magazines and naturally is himself a highly experienced sailor although he never actually goes to sea now after that unfortunate incident just off the breakwater which resulted in a large insurance claim.

The modern equivalent of TG seems to be the ‘ top contributor’ who has to comment and be seen to be always right, on every contentious post on any social media page about sailing : as a kinda-sorta internet content provider the TG has often been the bane of my life.

The last time I regularly came across THAT guy (TG for short) he would turn up, do a few minutes scraping of the hull of an old wooden Folkboat which, in my view, needed some new frames, it’s engine and rudder rebuilding and would then spend most of the day in the boatyard’s cafe spouting forth with this or that ‘fact’ (usually straight from one of the sailing magazines). I was there several years on and off and in all that time of sailing summer and winter he was still scraping the old wooden Folkboat of even older paint. Last time I saw TG’s Folkboat it was being lifted onto a low-loader after it had been, allegedly, sold for a very small sum.

There are of course several variants of ‘THAT guy’ and I sometimes wonder if it’s a ‘guy’ thing and I must admit that I find the thought disconcerting – a bit like when I was at work one time and a work colleague was bemoaning the existence of somebody similar in a completely different setting. Anything that involves a whole load of middle aged and middle class men having to work together at some task or activity always seems to promote the rule makers and drivers of endless boring committee meetings – maybe most councils have this as a central feature ?.

As I remember it one TG i met (and unfortunately had as a passenger/crewman on a boat that I worked on) I later found was infamous with the local brokerages for his endless search for the ‘perfect boat’ and would spend hours being shown around boats that seemed to match what he wanted – but only to reject each and every one of them for some marginal defect.

THIS guy….TG’s bastard twin.

You’re possibly aware of THAT guy – maybe even have an example lurking around your boatyard, I guess though that more boaters are more familiar with ‘THIS guy’ (TG’s bastard offspring brother). THIS guy is the guy who dutifully turns up to work on his boat and does in fact work on his boat but like TG never seems to get finished and get on the water, instead, if you ask him, he has several important changes to make to his boat, or more often, more kit to buy and fit.

For THIS guy the work on the boat is a complete hobby in it’s own right – perhaps his main reason to get out from under his wife’s feet and that arrangement suits them both just fine.

One that I met, back in the day, admitted to just wanting a boat as a project and that he had no great desire to go to sea with it, instead he would turn up at the yard with his lunch box full of wife-made sandwiches and a flask of coffee, do some work and then settle down in the cabin with Hornblower or Patrick o Brien. It took most of a season to persuade him that it was ok to boil a kettle on the yacht’s gas hob and for him to keep tea, coffee and biscuits on board.

The punchline……this the kind of post that I don’t normally write because i’m not a comic and don’t do jokes well – however, it was obviously going somewhere and I didn’t know exactly where until I left it for a few days so……

Luckily for everyone else my boatyard is now the space at the end of the drive where I have the workshop, the boat and it’s shelter so this actual guy doesn’t have to put up with any other TG aside from myself !. After my stroke i’m more like the last version of THIS guy that I met one time except that when I need a coffee break I just wander back up the cottage (all of 30 yards_ and have my break on the sofa. At the moment i’m kind-of wondering why I have a relatively large boat at the same time as all of my plans to launch it and sail it have mostly disappeared – except that, like most examples of THIS guy I have met even this guy gets something out of just turning up several days a week trying to think my way through some problem or other : most problems now are of my own creation !

A month ago, almost to the day I spent some 26 hours in the A&E department of my local hospital and during that first night the place got so busy that there wasn’t even space to sit so I spent a lot of that disconsolately lurching around the quiet night time corridors. At some point during that time i’d had one GP, one medical registrar, one A&E consultant and one stroke consultant all tell me that i’d had a stroke (as if I couldn’t work it out) and eventually I got to the head of the queue for an admission bed. I don’t remember that much about the next 2-3 days because I was shifted from department to department and if anything just got more sleep deprived and exhausted ; eventually I was discharged but only because my partner hassled the ward ‘sister’ into doing some of the necessary tasks for discharging a patient.

This week so far iv’e had a follow up with a kind (and rather ‘mumsy’ GP) and later on in the week I have another appointment for yet another technical investigation ; for at least one whole day this week I spent all of it on the sofa – mostly sleeping.

Some time fairly early on in this whole episode I came to the obvious question and conclusion of : is this it for my life as an outdoorsman ?……..I came to the end of my days as a climber quite naturally and then saw a slow decline as a long distance ‘ultralight’ hiker and that all ended some 6 years ago when I had a knee replacement. That also put paid to my time as an expedition canoeist and bushcraft instructor – all that was left after that was my life as a sailor………

When I go outside to do some job or other on the Pathfinder my honest thought is that I will never get to sail her, let alone start off on the ambitious voyage plan that I once had : to be totally honest i think that even my time as a sailor is over………..make of that what you will.