12 to 40. A yarn. (Part 1 of several)

I remember being twelve, most of us do. My second year in High School in the North of England. My school uniform not quite as newly minted as it was a year ago. A crease no longer in my shorts. My leather satchel already replaced by an ex army haversack.....like the big boys. Rugby boots swinging on the outside. A distinction. School cap no longer straight but worn at a cocky angle.

Now I have friends whereas a year ago we were a company of strangers. Some are still alive over fifty years later. Alas many are gone.

I also remember being forty. No longer in the North of England. I'd travelled a route that took me through London, Paris, every major city in Europe and North Africa, Toronto and now to a small community in Southern Ontario. I'm surrounded by friends, a wife and two small children. It's October but still warm enough for us all to gather around the pool. Gathered to give and receive the gifts normally associated with reaching this landmark age. None of them practical. All of them representative of my interests and my sense of humour. One of these was a wooden toy boat with twenty little wooden feet glued to each side.

You see 12 to 40 has nothing whatsoever to do with age but everything to do with boats!

What is it with people and boats? Not the people for whom boats are a necessity and a way of life but people who have boats for pure pleasure.

Of course there are boats and boats. From kayaks to Giga Yachts. From quiet to noisy. From wood to steel. From power to sail and yes.....muscle. Then there are the uses. Over a third of the boats in North America are used for fishing. Many are high powered tow boats towing water skiers, wake boarders and the like. The list is endless. The fraternities huge. The friendships lifelong.

My first boat was twelve feet long! A wooden sailing dinghy of the type rarely seen any more. I bought her in Mudeford, Dorset in the South of England. She was lying derelict in some one's yard. Five pounds later she was mine.......still in some one's yard as I didn't have a trailer or a trailer hitch for that matter.

Mudeford. Pronounced "Muddyfud." The name just rolls off the tongue. I think perhaps you must go to Dorset to hear the sound of it. That soft, rolling west country lilt exported all over the world by seafaring men.

Didn't alter the fact that now I'm a yacht owner but my yacht is forlornly stuck in a Dorset front garden sharing the space with Hollyhocks, tall grass and Dandilions.

Three strapping rugby friends imported from London one weekend and two two by fours saw my yacht transported the mile or so to the local boatyard. In Mudeford in those days nothing was more than a mile from anywhere. Sleepy little place. Two churches. Three pubs. The odd thatched cottage and the boatyard on Mudeford Water. Bells on Sunday. Salt in the air.

I distinctly remember stopping at two of the pubs during this, my first seafaring passage. Purely for moral support of course.

We eased into the yard, my yacht nestling between us resting on its cradle of two by fours seemingly like a Nordic funeral byre. Bringing up, with the office to starboard, we rested not quite sure what do next. "Arr that be moy brother in laws auld skiff." A voice from the shadows of the doorway. "Oi'd 'eard he'd sold un." Again that west country lilt.

Jason! I rarely saw him without his pipe in his mouth. A throwback. A whiplash of a man. Surely already in his teens at the turn of the century. Born in a time when sail was the norm and synthetic a word not yet coined. Looking as though he more belonged on the deck of an Elizabethan ship of the line, sail needle and leather palm steadily and rhythmically working in time with the rolling deck......pipe in mouth.

"Put 'er on those saw 'orses over yonder oi'll show ee what to do," pipe never leaving his mouth. A cloud of acrid smoke followed him where ever he went rather like the smoke trail left by a lean, steam driven destroyer, from days past. How he never set fire to the place is beyond me.

We did as directed and then trooped off back to the weedy garden to collect the other bits. Wooden spars. A pair of oars that had seen better days. A stained and beat up old sail bag containing a cotton mains'l and jib. Another ditty bag containing assorted manila lines and brass bits and bats, nautical in nature, but alien to me at the time. Naturally we stopped both there and back for liquid support. It's called scrumpy and is peculiar to that part of the world....South Western England. A raw cider. Dangerous to the uninitiated or unwary. Deadly if you're thirsty.

My rugby pals and temporary delivery crew head for points north and civilization and I head back to the yard and my new yacht.....all twelve feet of her.....but she was mine even if I didn't have the faintest clue as to what to do next.

The "yard." No marina this. No fibreglass in sight. No power tools. No forklifts, fancy storage racks, travel lifts. No slips. Rather a boatyard that probably hadn't changed much in a hundred years other than installing a phone. No row of fuel pumps, standing at attention, waiting to feed its glass and stainless steel visitor.

The "yard." An anachronism. A time machine.

The first thing assailing your senses is the smell. Fibreglass has an acrid smell. A mixture of resin and glass. Cold and synthetic. A smell that always seems to be in a hurry but transports you nowhere. Diesel is an ugly smell. Greasy and malevolent.

Not in the "yard!' Here the smell is warm. A mixture of fresh wood shavings, varnish and woodsmoke. A smell that evokes a sense of a time gone by, of distant places. A smell that slows you down.......puts things in a different perspective. A smell that, feeding your imagination, can transport you to a different time.

Busy modern marinas are noisy places. The rumble of diesels. The whine of power tools. Fork lifts, travel lifts, ringing phones. A cacophony of sound rather like an orchestra with each element playing in a different key. An unpleasant dissonance as though industry is measured in decibels. Impatient.

Not in the "yard!" You can hear the gull, sitting on a piling, insisting it be fed. The hissing of steam from the plank bender fed by an old wood burning boiler. The soft thud of the caulking hammer as Jason's son patiently repairs a hull that today would be described as "traditional" even antique. The growly rasp of sandpaper as an elderly workman refinishes a spruce spar soon to be replaced by extruded aluminum. You can close your eyes and know where you are. You can close your eyes and think of what might have been had you been born in a different time.

The sound of patience, of happiness with self. Contentment. A time, sadly, gone by.

I see a small pall of blue smoke approaching. Jason. A bit of a wry smile on his face. I think he'd been watching me for a while. Knowing what was going on in my mind and happy to be on the inside looking out.

He stood by my side, quietly puffing, not saying a word, looking at my newly acquired yacht lying upside down, like a turtle, on over sized saw horses. "As oi remember she never leaked that much." He said quietly. Very reassuring I thought. "First you"ave to clean"er up so as we can see wot 'as to be done." More west country lilt "You'll need a scraper and sandpaper. Oi 'ave some in the shop." "More than a weekend job but we're in no 'urry." OK for him to say! "Get all that old varnish ofn 'er, insoide an out, then we can see wots wot."

He left without saying another word. Faithfully followed by his cloud of smoke like an old dog and not unpleasant.

So began a lifelong interest and love of boats. Of dreams accomplished. Of dreams still in my mind although now I'm older and not as strong as I was.

So began my friendship with Jason....a mentor.....but more of him, his yard and my new acquisition later.