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My Personal Sailing Adventures - with land trips on the side: Zen and the art of boat maintenance...why there's nothing half so much worth doing as messing about in boats
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Boat maintenance payoff time! Its anchorages like these that make it all worthwhile.
It’s endless. It’s
frustrating. Boat maintenance can be repetitive to the point of inducing Alzheimer’s.
But as Water Rat said to the Mole in The Wind in the Willows
“there is nothing—absolute
nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats”
Different attitudes to boat maintenance
There are different ways of approaching boat
maintenance.
A friend told me about the idea of looking after your boat
as if you have a superyacht crew. Hard
work but your boat’s going to look schmick and run well. (You hope.)
Another couple have a strict schedule of “One job per day,
perhaps”. And that’s between two people.
I aim for work/life balance.
It’s not all beer and skittles though.
Sometimes it’s all beer. I follow
the tools down at happy hour rule if I can.
Confessions of a boat boy
When Yana de Lys was moored at Yacht Haven in Phuket we had
friends who had boat boys - locals who looked after their boats for them. Keeping the boats clean. Taking care of regular maintenance. So when they went sailing all they had to do
was show up.
Most sailing boat owners have to do their own boat boy
work. Like me.
It can be fun. It can be tedious. It can be frustrating. It can be satisfying. Despite the poor pay – well the no pay – it’s
better than working nine to five any day.
Even the interminable cleaning is okay. Any job involving water when it’s stinkn hot
is fine by me. But I had to laugh the
other day when I saw the boat boy for a small motor cruiser on my jetty hosing
down his boat in the rain. Under an umbrella.
