(From December 1960 Broadsheet)

Why is it that so many otherwise intelligent women make the fatal mistake of taking an interest in their husband’s hobbies?

The wife of an angler sits for hours on a fly-infested bank with the picnic basket, wireless and everlasting knitting; the motor maniac’s wife picks up nuts and bolts and spanners, talks about carburettors, and is left with greasy overalls and oily dusters to wash while he slips off for a run to try the engine. Even the gardener’s wife can’t enjoy the lawn properly after she has finished weeding, in case the deckchair marks it.

But the most wholesale, full-time hobby of all—the Boat Husband—takes the cake. I have one.

From the first step on board, all is changed. Gone are the days of stairs, cupboards, rooms, windows or floors, and henceforth they are companionways, lockers, cabins, sidelights and decks. Then, at night, you lie awake for hours trying to memorise all about ropes—or are they warps?—and knots and hitches and sheepshanks. And when does a bend become a hitch, or is that a granny?

When the boat is laid up for the winter, there are bilges to be cleaned, the hull to be scrubbed down before painting, varnishing to be done, and anti-fouling to be plastered into every nook and cranny under the hull. The skipper is busy with the engine, so he can’t help with these jobs!

Come the spring, and the urge to get afloat. Bedding, crockery, utensils, fuel, Calor Gas, food, etc., etc., have to be taken by car as near to the boat as possible and transhipped—but Skipper can’t help; the engine has to be looked at.

You dump everything on board, park the car in a convenient, safe place, undo the mooring lines, stow the mooring pins and push off hard, scrambling aboard while Skip handles the wheel.

This makes Skip thirsty, so before “cheesing” the ropes on the fore and aft decks, a cuppa is needed. While you are still falling over things and trying to get them stowed away, there comes a cry from Skip:

“Lock ho!”

He drops you at the nearest bridge so that you can run along the towpath and get the lock ready, saving the boat from hanging about.

There always seems to be a lock at a pretty little village you would like to explore, but, as Skip always says:

“We can explore on the way back. It is a pity not to push on while the engine is behaving.”

There are a couple of letters to be written before the next village and a ’phone call he forgot to make—and, “While you are there, you may as well bring a tin of oil and a few extra cans of beer. Don’t forget the paper.”

Meanwhile, he looks at the engine and, on your return:

“Be an angel and take the wheel—the tail-shaft needs greasing.”

In the morning, Skip warms the engine while you lift away the well covers, mop down the decks and sides, and wash up the breakfast things between casting the boat off and getting under way.

All the time, you are unconsciously acquiring the vocabulary of the canal through constant use—and surreptitious peeping into certain glossaries in canal books. Should you let Skip down by standing with your mouth open when something is mentioned in the jargon, you are extremely unpopular.

You take photographs, pass him the binoculars, make cuppas every half-hour, fill the fuel tanks, see that the water tank is kept full, pass spanners, take the wheel while he looks at the engine—usually at washing-up time—work the locks, and shop for “something jolly good for the inner man”.

The crew consists of skipper, engineer, navigator, cook, galley slave, cabin boy, secretary and cleaner-cum-handyman. On our boat, Skipper is just Skipper—I am all the rest.

Invariably, at some lock or bridge, someone will come along and be heard to remark:

“You’ve got a nice boat there. I suppose it takes a lot of hard work to maintain her?”

To which Skip replies:

“Not a bit of it. Get yourself a good engine, keep the boat well painted, varnished and anti-fouled during the winter months, and there’s nothing else to do but enjoy life.”

M.E.M.