John Quirk - Foul Bottoms: The Pitfalls of Boating and How to Enjoy Them

To all the wonderful members of my family.

...particulary the ones who are still speaking to me.

Boats are like girls. You never forget your first

First boats can be like first loves. Their attractions and faults tend to be magnified over the years. Even the most broken down old clunker can be remembered as a classic beauty when seen through the golden glow of memory. (Im talking about boats here.)

My first boat was a dainty classic, an 8 foot clinker stem dinghy which was acquired for two and a half weeks pre-tax wages. Ten quid was a lot of money to a teenager then. Every plank and rib was intact, the varnish had all but disappeared, she wore a piece of black rubber hose as a fender and her bottom had been daubed with tar. To me, she was as beautiful as Dyarchy... It cost a further 1.50 and 24 hours for British Railways to collect it from a sniffy South Coast yacht club, steal the beautifully spliced painters and dump it on the platform of our grimy local station.

Two stalwart mates were pressed to help me hernia it the last few miles to the shed where she was to be restored. The hill at the end of our street, which had been such a delight in our tobogganing and soap box days, now stood in front of us as though it were the South Col seen from an Everest base camp. As we were sprawled in the street, trying to summon the strength to draw a dying breath, another mate pulled up to show off his new car. Well, it was new to him, but it had rattled out of the factory in the late 20s on cobweb wire wheels with just enough power to drive a small sewing machine. A few comments were pointedly thrown at the driver to this effect. And it had the desired result. Shes got plenty of power. Here, throw that thing on the roof and Ill show you. We found the strength to heave it aboard the tiny car. It fitted as snugly as Norman Wisdoms cap.

You two will have to stand on the running boards and hold it on, directed the driver. I was to sit astride the bonnet and secure the stem. The freeboard was reduced considerably as the car snuggled down on its suspension, groaning under the load of four passengers, one dinghy and general old age. The driver stuck his head out of the window, looked behind him and suddenly reversed across the street and up the hill. We were a bit surprised at this direction, but the lowest gear in cars then was reverse and our driver needed the lowest one he could find. Boiling like your Grannys kettle, the whole crazy convoy ground its way painfully up the hill with a screaming engine, clouds of steam and the strong smell of barbecued clutch. And I do mean painfully. I was straddled over the radiator, gripping the sides of the bonnet like a rodeo rider. The cars mascot was the only thing preventing me from sliding overboard, and the fact that it was branding itself into my hide only added to the cowboy analogy. We arrived in triumph, the car heralding our arrival by blowing its top radiator hose. Ouch. The memory of it still brings tears to my eyes.

Over the next few weeks, the dinghy was blowtorched and scraped down to bare wood, sanded to death and lovingly re-varnished. She had light-coloured planking and contrasting darker transom, stem and wale strake. She also had the most beautifully swept bottom boards following the curve of the bilge. I found out why a previous owner had embalmed her bottom in tar; she had spent too many years drying out on sandy beaches, grains of which had become trapped between the planks and she never fully took up. Although she carried four passengers comfortably, and was the sweetest rowing dink I can remember, it was quite beyond my skills to keep up with her leaks. Eventually, she was unloaded at a profit and I bought a chubby plastic hull that I dressed up with mahogany trim. It rowed like a wet loaf.

Many of us may have had the opportunity to catch up with old boats and old loves. I dont quite know how to put this, but it strikes me that although both may have increased their displacement over the years due to water retention, at least the old boats still conform to their original dimensions... I would welcome my first boat back in a heartbeat, but the first love...? Let me get back to you on that.

Arthur learns the hard way. Too much can sometimes be more than enough

They say that many self-made men worship their creator. Not so with Arthur. He was all his own work and on the whole, he had not made a bad job of it. From dirt-poor backstreet beginnings, he had bludgeoned and swashbuckled his way to the A-list of Black Country society. He was, at middle age, a Birmingham nut-and-bolt baron. He had the eye and the taste for some of the finer things of life, and had the funds often in cash to purchase the odd whim without wincing.

Captivated by a shapely bottom lying in the sun on the beach of a Welsh estuary, Arthur saw the For Sale sign and acquired his first boat, a sweet lined pre-war cruising sloop. He couldnt help himself and beat the vendor down just for the hell of it. He passed over a furtive bundle of assorted company cheques and used fivers seasoned with machine oil and mothballs and handed similar packages to the local boat yard to put his new passion through the equivalent of the Intensive Care Section at Max Factor. She was a gleaming vision of perfection as she slid back into the water and towed to a boatyard mooring.

What do you use at the bottom of those mooring chains? he demanded of the yard manager. When shown a sample of the odd engine fly wheel and an assortment of concrete blocks, Arthur sniffed. Thats not a mooring. Ill bring you a mooring.

Back at his Works, he scoured the yard for lumps of metal that were too heavy for the staff to steal and he had not been able to sell. He assembled a metal mountain of old seized truck engines, half a dozen factory cog wheels and random leftovers from the industrial revolution. This was craned onto his biggest lorry and crocheted together with loops of chain that was too heavy for the Titanic...

History does not record how the boat yard actually laid Arthurs mooring but locals still say that it was the biggest load of metal voluntarily sent to the bottom since the Germans scuppered their North Sea fleet at Scarpa Flow. He was chuffed to have the heaviest mooring on the Welsh coast. After all, he said, handing some strange smelling notes across the bar that evening, you cant take chances with a 25 footer.

History also does not record Arthurs exact reaction when his wife told him she thought he needed a little help for their first weekend afloat and had invited her nephew along. His blood pressure edged into the purple zone. What do you want to drag that idiot along for?

Hes not an idiot, hes at university, she countered.

All that brain and no intelligence. He will probably wind up at some Looney council dreaming up titles for useless new jobs, reflecting on how his own hard upbringing compared with that of this pampered spoilt to death streak of bone and pimples.

The student eventually came to understand Arthurs barked commands and scurried from port to starboard when tacking with the speed of cold treacle. Initially, each bellow of Lee Ho! caused the student to gawp around for an unseen crew member called Leo who the skipper might be addressing.