Wednesday, April 13

One of the boats we visited yesterday

(the one with the muddy burglar under the bow)  was 'pratically given' to the owner's mother in the '60s when she was an art student. I hadn't really understood what was going on when he said that she used to have to get up in the night to pour concrete into the hull and stop water coming in - this aspect of boat life was clarified by an elderly lady today:

you had to bail every day because the wooden boats were so leaky, in 1974 a woman gave me her boat for fifteen pounds because she'd come to hate it. I bailed both boats every day and got hers fixed up, then sold it for three thousand pounds and took off to South America but my lodger sublet my boat and the sub-letter wouldn't bail - I got a call to say the boat had sunk but I still had the mooring and a thousand pounds so I bought this boat - this one's got a steel hull.

4 comments:

  1. Wow! That's really leaky! Hint: automatic bilge pump.

    A friend bought a used 36-foot sailboat that had an automatic bilge pump that had to be operated manually. I corrected the sensor switch wiring and he was very, very happy.

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    Replies
    1. I think you'd have been very popular on the London moorings during the bailing perod

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  2. Reality takes the romance out of everything. Sort of.
    Sx

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  3. I think the drugs (plus extreme youth and daftness)helped keep the romance going in those days

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