I'm fond of boats. I've been fond of them since I was a boy though I've only ever owned a small sailing dinghy. Boats and anything to do with them were, and still are, fascinating for reasons I don't entirely understand.
Contact with boats was limited back in my childhood, living as I did in the Midlands and miles from the coast. Early memories include rowing boat rides on the Arboretum lake, and a fishing trip to a local reservoir where we used a square punt made out of old railway sleepers to get out to where the fish were - or at least may have been till I arrived. The local canal system, itself a source of attraction to this day, was another landmark that stands proud of the mists of time. I remember playing on the canal bank as narrowboats chugged past towing butty boats full of coal. Cargo carrying has long since gone but the canals are still there, as too are the rope marks chafed into stone bridges - reminders of the days when narrowboats were horse drawn and the tow path was there for the horses to tow them.
Holidays to the seaside provided the main contact with boats. I loved the fishing boats that lined the harbour walls, festooned with ropes and nets waiting for the next high tide. Pleasure craft bobbed at anchor with their slap, slap, slap of rigging blowing against the mast. The first trip I remember on a large boat was a brief excursion out beyond a harbour, I'm not sure which one now. There were two boats, each with a deck full of paying passengers and one with the added attraction of a diver who was going to descend to the bottom in traditional diver's helmet and weighted suit. The one without the diver was apparently cheaper and offered a better view of said diver doing his bit for the tourist industry.
Boats never seem to be called "it"; they are always "she". They have a life to them. Even the weathered skeletal timbers of boats stuck fast in the local sands have a character and prompt thoughts of how they were used in their days afloat. Many a boat spends its latter years on dry land, wooden props and wedges keeping it upright, faded tarpaulins covering the wheelhouse. Partially sanded hulls and patches of red primer bear witness to long abandoned projects that needed far more than a few weekends to transform the boat back to a former glory. Even boats still afloat show signs of neglect; a bottom awash with rain water and stray litter dropped there by the wind, a mooring rope thick with strands of green algae, and cracked paintwork that testifies to years of sunlight and neglect. For all their lack of seaworthiness these old boats often have far more interest and atmosphere than their modern counterparts.
Perhaps old boats really do have a personality.
