ADRIAN MORGAN

CHARLOTTE WATTERS

Floating on her waterline

Will he ever get that waterline painted on right?

There comes a time in any wooden boat owner’s life when – in my case after 26 years – you just want to throw some money at a boatbuilder and let them get on with it.

From what I have read in pre-war magazines, an owner would simply entrust his yacht to the yard with instructions, some detailed, some taken for granted, as to what should be done by the time he returned in the spring. It might entail pumicing the topsides, and applying a flawless coat of white Llewellyn Ryland enamel; or ripping out the Rippingal, grinding the valves in the Stuart Turner and renewing the Kobe antifouling (“red please this year”).

Come early May, owner would arrive – I like to picture him in casual suit, check shirt and tie, at the wheel of an Alvis, but it might as well have been a Morris Oxford or perhaps a Bentley. In whatever case, he would have been well heeled.

The task of fitting out Sally every season I have “For the always undertaken myself, not just because I am not well 27th time, heeled or own a Bentley (let alone a suit). I have got to I buckled know every inch of her, inside and out. If there’s water in the bilges after two weeks with no rain, I will know she’s down to taken in a little seawater, and have been known to dip a fitting her mug in her bilges to taste. I keep a keen eye on those tell out” tale cracks in the enamel that might suggest a little water has been creeping in behind the Toplac. And then, as always, there is The Question of the Waterline, which has been a bane of my ownership since I don’t know when. Will I ever manage to get it quite right? But, as I said, there comes a time... That time came in May 2021 when Sally was slipped at the yard a few miles south of Ullapool. For the first time I was tempted to let the yard do the hard work that has kept Sally afloat in sound condition – not pristine I hasten to add – throughout my ownership. Top of the list was to get that *%$£$!! waterline sorted. I despair to think of the times I have laid on the masking tape, squinted both sides, readjusted, measured down from the sheer only to see as I rowed ashore a slight – and I am talking 1/2in (12mm), no more – pesky bump just aft of the chainplates, and I thought this time I had cracked it. Naturally, no one else notices these things, but that is not the point. I do. And it was on the list of things I could pass over to the guys in the yard, with their fancy lasers or, as Humphrey Barton would have done before Sally was launched in 1937, and what he did for every Giles yacht, a system of pipes and water levels. Incidentally, the waterline may have been spot on, but as Sally slipped into Christchurch harbour, dressed overall, she was woefully down by the stern, a ballasting error that cost her designer compensation worth nearly a fifth of her £400 or so building price.

For old times’ sake, and seeing as I had a roll of that fancy blue masking tape in the car, and as the sun was shining, I decided to have a go. From the smudge of discoloration, I could see where the waterline wanted to be. And yes, the port side differed from its twin. How could I have missed that in all the years, unless Sally was simply not (wash your mouth out) symmetrical?

Once started it seemed a pity not to do a bit of varnishing of toerail, and painting of coachroof, etc and soon the regular business of fitting out had begun and the thought of turning Sally over to virtual strangers seemed impertinent. Thus, for the 27th time since I first saw Sally on that Hamble mooring, her owner buckled down to the task of fitting her out, and on the first beautiful spring day of 2021, it could not have felt a better time to get acquainted with the old girl again. Was it straight? I didn’t dare look...