Appointing a yard to fix your engine doesn't necessarily result in doom and gloom. Instead, it can be quite thrilling as Paul recently discovered,
I think I have spotted a brand-new talent in the world of entertainment, an emerging, shimmering star. Simon Cowell probably thinks he’s cornered the market in talent spotting, but I have to tell you I’ve just viewed a video by a remarkable lad and, yes, he’s really got it and he’s going places. He’s called David, and he works on the river where I keep my boat.
But first let’s spool back almost a year to when I found myself motoring down the Irish Sea in a faltering breeze. A flat sea, a vivid sunset, and a promise of the night under the stars were all on the agenda, until I looked over the side. There’s always something to spoil a grabbed moment of pleasure, isn’t there? Just when you think things are going nicely, boats can bring you up short, shattering those dreams, and dragging you back against your will into the real world.
White smoke. There was white smoke coming out of the exhaust. I shrugged it off, which only seemed to encouraged it to billow even more until we were trailing clouds like the Flying Scotsman in full flight. Strangely, the dials showed temp, pressure etc were all normal. Odd. But still the white smoke billowed. I looked at the chart. Where was the nearest land? Not that I was running for shelter, but because I might be able to get a whiff of a phone signal and start a lengthy, and probably depressing, search for the cause.
I got a couple of bars somewhere off south Wales. Funny how your first call on occasions like this would once have been to a boatyard and a man with an oily rag. Now it’s Google – or even worse, to an internet forum which will leave you confused, probably misled, and possibly humiliated. It turned out that nobody seemed to think this was much of a deal and I switched off before the ‘gang’ started to rubbish me. So we thundered on. Was it unburnt fuel (one suggestion) or steam (another popular one)? But with the twitching needles on the dials still reassuringly where they should be, I tried to forget.
Some months later, and back home, I asked my local yard to have a look. They phoned me back. I hate getting messages when the boat is being worked on. It is never good news. To be honest, I get less grief from the bill than I do from those doom-laden messages.
“Sorry to bother you, sir. Did you know there is no seawater coming through your cooling system?”
“But it was fine all the way down the Irish Sea.”
“It's not fine no
