Every year, just as the Essex marshes begin to sprout with the first buds of succulent samphire, a final, final demand to pay the TV licence wafts through my letter box and lands on top of the others.

These are as sure signs of spring as the knock on the door a few seconds later.

“Oi,” says the gruff, familiar voice through the letter box, “pay your TV licence then get your backside down the boatyard and get your boat cover off.”

The truth is that Adi knows too well that his berth holders, and me in particular, are an indolent bunch of slackers who need rousing from the cosy months of hearth-side hibernation when we’d happily forgotten we owned boats.

Down in the yard, those with delusions of adequacy are shuffling around in a confused daze like meerkats in brown and blue boilersuits, and there’s even one wearing crisply ironed white overalls with epaulettes, which denote senior rank and an altogether higher degree of competence.

Most of us, though, are realists, assured above all that if we do anything, as Adi often intones wearily, that we’ll either damage our boats and land him with a load of work or damage ourselves and land him with a load of work.

He’s got a point, and to that end the yard has withdrawn its supply of yard ladders after someone in white overalls fell off one and sued the yard and the neighbouring boat owner who’d left an open can of red antifouling at the bottom of the ladder.

When his overalls were put through the wash and they came out pink he sued his wife and she left him.

Like all health and safety initiatives, the ladder edict led to unintended consequences, as more resourceful boat owners made their own and the most resourceful ‘borrowed’ them.

In another case, the fall from Grace, which was the name of the boat, was cushioned by landing in a paint tray of antifouling, which after washing turned the brown overalls mauve.

The one intended consequence of the seasonal mayhem is that the chandlery at the top of the yard has stopped its 20% off sale of ladders, antifouling and overalls and is doing a roaring trade.

The other consequence is that berth holders have stopped trying to self-harm with angle-grinders and orbital sanders and wot not and, like young buck kangaroos, are trying to harm each other and punch each others’ lights out.

At least, they would have done, but for the fact that there’s not enough space in the yard to swing a cat or even a sharp, right upper cut.

All the plastic boats, many of which have summer berths downriver, are on the hard waiting for their lift in, and all the wooden boats are in their mud berths waiting for their annual lift out.

It’s like a game of chess with as many pieces as there are squares on the board.

Finding fortitude

Being naturally of a defeatist nature I turned to walk the few yards home but somehow discovered inner backbone and renewed motivation thanks to Adi, who blocked my path and kindly growled: “Oh no you don’t, Dave, get your covers off and get varnishing.”

I walked along the pontoon and started to peel back the winter cover which, to my surprise, was far better secured than I remembered with proper knots of the type you find in books.

I was even more surprised when a voice on board said: “Oi, get off of my boat.”

This puzzled me for a bit as I hadn’t remembered selling it, but then was helpfully informed they’d shuffled the berths around in the winter.

I found Snipe, my 1953 wooden Blackwater sloop, and with trepidation approaching terror peeled back the cover like a mourning shroud, to see what state of shameful dereliction she was in.

And it was worse than I thought.

In a panic, I lifted the floorboards and looked in the bilges.

I then examined the lockers, shelves, forepeak and galley where all I found was a half-eaten pack of mouldy ginger nut biscuits.

With remorse, regret, shock and shame, I trundled to the chandlery, cursing myself.

I’d made the stupidest of beginner’s errors, and it was going to cost me dearly.

There were no tea bags on board!

Dave Selby’s book, The Impractical Boat Owner: Tales and Trials from Years of Floundering Afloat, is available on Amazon.

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