The Disastrous Deckhand
How to Lose a Boat Hook and Alienate Your Captain in Ten Minutes
If you were to inspect my study wall, you would find a neatly framed piece of paper declaring that I am a qualified Day Skipper. Next to it sits an International Certificate of Competence for boat handling, earned some fifteen long years ago.
If you were to inspect my actual boating skills, however, you would find that they have rusted into complete and utter uselessness.
As an artist working on board boat, one might assume a seasoned woman of the sea. In reality, I am a chronic hazard to maritime safety. My husband operates the vessel with the cool, practiced precision of a seasoned captain; I operate on deck with the co-ordination of a newborn giraffe on ice.
Take coming into port, for instance. It is a simple enough procedure: my husband glides smoothly up to the pontoon and I toss the mooring lines to the waiting marina staff. Except, when I throw a line, it never quite reaches the polite young man standing expectantly on the quay. Instead, it hits the rather dirty harbour water with a heavy, humiliating splash.
What follows is a frantic, ungraceful desperate attempt to drag the sodden, heavy, now slime-caked rope back out of the sea. In the process, my lovely white sundress gets thoroughly plastered in black marina sludge (you would have thought by now I would have learnt not to wear a white sundress for such tasks, but I am ever the optimist!). I then have to try to throw the now-sodden, heavy snake of a rope once again, before my husband notices that we are about to T-bone a €2 million yacht and are not, in fact, tied on.
Then there are the fenders - those little plastic balloons that sit on the side of the boat and prevent it from banging into walls or damaging other boats when moored next to them. I have been taught - repeatedly, patiently, and with helpful diagrams - all the requisite knots. Theoretically, I know how to tie them in such a way that you can effortlessly slide the fenders up and down, ensuring they hang at the precise height to stop us from scraping the paint off our neighbouring boat.
Do I ever get them right? Absolutely not. My knots seem to fall into two categories: ‘welded solid for all eternity’ or ‘complete spontaneous dissolution’. The latter results in our fenders bobbing merrily off down the marina fairways, with me sprinting along the side decks, hanging off the rail, and chasing them frantically with a boat hook - trying desperately to retrieve them without following them overboard.
Which brings me to my absolute nemesis: mooring buoys.
Now, on paper, mooring buoys are wonderful. They are infinitely more environmentally friendly than anchoring because you attach the boat directly to an existing buoy, sparing the delicate sea-grass beds below, and you sit tight for the night without worrying about your anchor dragging.
In some civilized corners of the Mediterranean, there are delightful staff who zip out in little rubber dinghies, take your rope with a bright smile, thread it neatly through the buoy, hand it back to you, collect a modest fee, and send you on your way. It’s civilized. It’s graceful.
In other places, however, you are left entirely to your own devices. And this is where my maritime skills are tested to way beyond their somewhat feeble limits.
The Road to Cabrera Is Paved with Good Intentions
A recent trip to the beautiful, uninhabited island of Cabrera - just off the southern coast of Mallorca - offered a masterclass in my nautical incompetence.
The plan was perfect and I was looking forward very much to the overnight excursion. On the short crossing from Cala d’Or, the boat is often accompanied by pods of playful dolphins. Once you’re safely moored up in the island’s protected bay, you sip chilled cocktails on crystal-clear waters and watch the sun drop behind the craggy hills. In the morning, you wake up to drink morning coffee on sea so calm it looks like molten glass. The island itself is a dream of lush, wooded hills, a blindingly blue lagoon, and a medieval fort towering over the bay.
I was giddy with anticipation. I was going to hike up to the fort, take a series of reference photos, and then settle down on deck with my paints to capture the light. It was going to be paradise on earth.
It would have been paradise on earth... if it weren’t for the mooring buoys that needed to be negotiated before a single drop of paint could touch a palette.
As we swept into the bay, my husband turned to me from the helm and, with remarkable optimism, reminded me of my duty: "Just head down to the bathing platform, pick up the floating buoy with the boat hook, and slip the rope through the ring."
He said it like one might say, “Could you pass the salt?”
The reality, naturally, was pure chaos.
For the operation to work smoothly, the boat has to be held in an exact, stationary position so the buoy doesn’t get swept underneath the hull. However, my husband cannot actually see the mooring buoy from the helm. This means I am required to shout clear, calm, directional instructions up to him while he blindly manoeuvres twenty-five tonnes of Fairline.
"Left! No, right! Back a bit! Stop! Wait, where did it go?!"
As we drifted into range, I lunged forward with the boat hook like a medieval jouster. Success! The hook caught the metal ring of the buoy!
Except... the momentum of the boat didn't stop.
Instead of me pulling the buoy toward the boat, the buoy pulled me toward the water. I was nearly dragged headfirst into the sea. Desperate to keep my balance, I tried to walk the hook towards the front of the platform, but the sheer drag of the buoy yanked the pole straight out of my hands and I went flying.
There I was: flat on my stomach, scrabbling around on the wet teak of the bathing platform, watching our only boat hook drift away on the current.
Up at the helm, my husband’s patience was wearing razor-thin. He couldn’t see what was happening below the transom; all he knew was that I wasn’t communicating, and we were still drifting loose.
When I finally scrambled up, I helpfully informed him, "Not only have I not secured the boat, but I’ve also lost the boat hook!" I braced myself while a few very choice, un-nautical words echoed off the rocks of Cabrera. My husband was forced to execute a series of frantic engine tweaks to bring us back toward the floating pole without running over the buoy - or losing me overboard – although he might well have welcomed that, at that particular moment!
Just as total marital meltdown was imminent, a lovely couple in a passing dinghy spotted my plight. With the quiet grace of sea captains performing a rescue mission, they zipped over, scooped our boat hook out of the water, and handed it back. Taking one look at my flushed, panic-stricken face, they offered to help. I practically shoved the mooring line into their hands. They expertly threaded it through the buoy's steel loop and handed the end back to me.
Close to tears, I thanked them profusely, collapsed into a heap on the deck, and buried my head in my hands to mourn my epic failure to execute the simplest task in boating.
My husband walked down from the helm a few minutes later and was rather bemused to find his Day-Skipper-certified wife having a dramatic meltdown on the aft deck.
A Guide to Placating Mutinous Wives
Before he could begin to placate me, we were distracted by the toot of a horn and looked up to see our good friends arriving in the anchorage in their boat. Surprisingly, the usually unflappable wife looked to be in a similar state to me. As soon as she had picked up their mooring buoy (with far more grace than me, I should add), they jumped into their tender and came across to our boat.
She climbed aboard, looking completely shell-shocked, and plonked herself down next to me where I was still sat curled up on the bathing platform.
While our crossing from Mallorca had been a little bumpy, our Seakeeper stabiliser had done its job flawlessly and we had barely noticed it. Alas for our friends, their boat was awaiting stabilisation and their journey had been rather more eventful.
Halfway through the rather rough crossing, my friend had ventured below deck to check on things, only to find the galley cupboards flung wide open and the fine china literally flying through the saloon.
For the remainder of the journey, she had been forced to wedge herself into the galley - back jammed against one set of cupboards, feet braced against the opposite ones - using her entire body to keep what was left of their glassware intact.
Needless to say, by the time we had finished swapping tales of woe, she and I were in desperate, non-negotiable need of a very stiff drink.
Our husbands, keenly aware that they still needed our collaboration for the return journey the following day, sensed the sharp tang of mutiny in the air. Before we could formally resign from boat life forever, they bundled the two of us into the Williams tender and whizzed us over to dry land. They deposited us at the island's solitary quayside tapas bar, immediately ordering us two double gin and tonics to keep us on side.
As we sat there, nursing our drinks and our pride, we declared in no uncertain terms that we were never stepping foot on a vessel again. We were staying right here.
Our husbands, ever practical, pointed out the slight logistical flaw in our plan: Cabrera is a protected, uninhabited national park. Staying here meant living permanently off-grid on a rock with no shops, no drinking water and exactly one tapas bar.
While spending the rest of our days living on sangria and patatas bravas felt like a surprisingly reasonable alternative to returning to the boats, we had to concede that it might wear thin by Tuesday.
A few G&Ts later, the trauma of the mooring buoy and flying crockery began to fade. We were coaxed back into the tender, ferried back to our floating home, and sat together on the deck as the sun dipped low, turning the bay into a mirror of burnt orange and deep indigo.
I reached for my sketchbook, took a breath of the calm salt air, and had to admit... despite the rogue boat hooks, the mud-splattered dresses, and the flying china... it was entirely worth it.
(Now, if anyone knows how to teach me to tie a fender knot that actually stays put, please do get in touch. My husband thanks you in advance.)