Captain’s Log #2

Three Weeks aboard the boat, and I’m still alive.

Captain’s Log #2

Sink or Swim?

I have now survived three weeks aboard the boat. I marked this not-an-anniversary yesterday by running out of wine, and by wandering the streets of Alperton, where I shall be moored until April, in search of a proper off-license. (N.B. ‘proper’, in this sense, denotes an off-license which, legally or otherwise, continues to sell alcohol after 11pm.) By some provenance or happy fortune, I discovered that the Sivasakthi Cash & Carry, a short walk from the boat, could and would provide.

(A quick Google search of the name reveals that it incorporates both the Hindu god Shiva and his wife Parvati. A peculiarity of reincarnation allows Parvati to be both Shiva’s first and second wife. In any case, the internet informs me that one Hindu myth told that the son of Shiva and Parvati — to whom Shiva was quite cruel in her first incarnation and whose death he caused — would defeat the demons that had driven the gods from the heavens. Sivasakthi is, then, an appropriate name for a purveyor of alcohol and cheap snacks in the early hours.)

Pre-planning is, it turns out, much more important when living the nautical life. One must set aside hours in the day to run the engine, in order that the batteries may be charged, in order that one’s phone and laptop be sustained, in order that one’s morning — or afternoon — alarm works, in order that one has time to run the engine, iterum iterumque ac postremum.

Whilst 24-hour off-licenses eliminate the need for such forethought as regards life’s absolute necessities — cigarettes, alcohol and food — they do not tend to stock any of the coal and kindling required for the small stove I have aboard, which serves as the boat’s primary source of heat. So one must keep stock of these things, and set aside time to replenish them in advance of their exhaustion. One rather wishes that the local Sainsbury’s had shown the same regard for future need, as they themselves did not take stock until the end of last week, meaning that, for several days, my only source of heat was layers of clothes and the occasional hot water bottle.

Though I am at heart a stoical sort of chap, and seem to have been born for the cold. My father claims to have studied our ancestral line, and has concluded that, as well as trace elements of Gaelic and Basque and Norman, we are in part derived from Viking stock. This would explain his physique, to be sure; an estate agent of people, if such a man existed, would describe my father as ‘compact’ and ‘solid’, perhaps ‘squat’, certainly ‘well-rounded’ and possessed of a healthy surplus of ‘ballast’. (It would also explain his recurring dream, wherein he murders co-workers with — and here he is quite specific — short-handled battle-axes.)

So the cold is not all that bad, though one would be lying if one claimed immunity. Here, then, is another sub-section of proper planning: water and tolerance.

When, for instance, should one take a shower? Two separate considerations are at play, for not only is conservation particularly important on a boat, but comfort in winter is seldom guaranteed. Short showers, then, are to be taken only when aroma requires it. And, further still, only once the stove is at its optimum heat. For walking out of a shower (which is only ever lukewarm) into a boat without a fire going is morally and practically the same as stepping out of the shower into the open air. A sure route toward hypothermia, or at least to influenza. This is, to an extent, unavoidable; the layout of the boat, and the size of the stove, means that the living area is the only place which can be properly heated. The bedroom and shower-cum-toilet are never anything but cold, so stepping into and out of the shower requires momentary flirtations with death, characterised by steaming skin and chattering teeth.

Where aesthetic is one’s only concern, and for the sake of conservation, comfort and practicality, the kitchen sink is the best place to wash your hair. Keep a bowl in the sink at all times; with the addition of the proper stuff, you can wash your dishes whilst drying yourself.

All of which represents a quite considerable change in one’s established norm. It requires education. It requires learning ‘on the job’. I am, by nature, unplanned and unplannable; I anticipate only to be late. Living on a boat requires a change in habit of action and mode of thought, which is an interesting experience.

However, this manner of education, being as it is inextricably linked with the act of living, is fraught with potential dangers. The only equivalent I can think of by way of comparison with normal, everyday, house-bound life is learning about your boiler and your electrics by trial and a good deal of error. Except that even that analogy seems to fall short, for whilst poking with the plumbing of your house might lead to flooding, which is expensive to sort out and repair, the same act on a boat could quite feasibly lead to it sinking. In short, a mistake on the water has its effects magnified by the fact of being on the water.

My education in all of this comes in many forms, ranging from the ridiculous to the serious, but always with severe consequences to failure.

For example: I now know what it ‘feels’ like to drive a boat with a propeller that is obstructed, or tangled in debris. I did not know this on my second night, when my instinctive reaction to decreased speed was to increase the throttle. This worked, after a fashion, but the plumes of black smoke that began billowing from the vents, and up through the floorboards, was a nasty shock. I spent my second night stuck on the side of a canal, the edges of which were too shallow to allow me to moor within four feet of the bank, having had to turn off the engine and shut off the fuel, and pull up the floor, in order to avoid a fire that would have destroyed my home.

Then, it took me four days after mooring in Alperton to figure out the cause of loud bangs, irregular in timing alone, which would occur sporadically throughout the night. The cause, or culprit, was (and I say was quite deliberately) a pigeon, which roosted in the tree above the boat. This pigeon had a poor constitution and a poor metabolism, causing it to expel large and hard parcels of excrement onto my steel ceiling. I discovered this, and the cause of it, whilst sweeping leaves from atop my solar panels. That night, upon hearing several of these filthy bangs, I pre-empted advice I was later to be given on this matter, took the barge pole from its resting place, and proceeded to give the tree a thorough thwacking until the offending bird had buggered off. I have yet to hear another bombardment.

But had I failed in this endeavour, by some miscalculation or lack of balance, I would have ended up in the canal. Wet and freezing, I may then have contracted some related illness, or a more serious bout of the many diseases that linger untreated in our urban waterways.

And I write this tonight after a number of gas-related issues, the severity of which I am still unable to calculate because I haven’t ‘lived it’ long enough. My carbon monoxide detector, for example, was triggered by a rapidly rising ppm (Parts Per Million), the cause of which I have yet to fathom. It is likely that it was caused by my fridge, which is powered by gas — a thoroughly stupid and insensible idea — and which has never worked. I left it connected principally because the heat from its exhaust had the effect of warming the front of the boat, if not cooling the food within. After disconnecting it from the gas line, the carbon monoxide detector became satisfied. But this is circumstantial evidence of the problem, not proof that the fridge was the problem. And I will not know for sure that the fridge was the problem unless and until the detector goes off again; or not, as the case may be.

(The advice, incidentally, by which to guide one’s actions in the event of such an alarm is to vacate the premises, leaving all doors and windows open. This I did, as best I could. But, upon informing mother of my predicament, her stern admonition was that “It’s too cold to stay outside,” so I should “Go back inside and move the detector. You must keep warm.”

Warmth, as I pointed out at the time, was no use to a dead man. And, in any case, isn’t muddled sensation a side-effect of inhaling carbon monoxide? Nevertheless, I followed the advice. I am presently alive, and I am presently warm. Though I suppose that one or both of these could be put down to illusion and hallucination.)

And now, that being done, and following a peculiar thud and shudder, it would seem that the gas no longer works at all. The pilot light in the boiler, which will occasionally oblige by making my water lukewarm, is out for the first time since I moved aboard.

All of which brings us back to this issue of pre-planning, and provides evidence the destabilising and unforeseeable nature of what Harrold Macmillan described as “events, dear boy. Events!”

I cannot swap the gas bottles over in the dark. I cannot be sure that the one currently connected is empty, which is the probable explanation for my gassy issues. Perhaps the cold has caused a pipe to rupture. Perhaps that triggered the alarm. Who can say?

All I know is that, now being in the habit of thinking ahead, tomorrow will be unpleasant as it dawns. I am supposed to figure out the cause, and to rectify it if I can, without the three or four large coffees, thick as tar as they really should be, that I rely upon to jump-start consciousness, humour, temper and intellect. How?

And, then, straying further into the ridiculous: what of the queen hornet, bastion of evil and host of an empire of similar character, discovered by my first and dearest visitor? He, descended from and with relatively recent experience of The Outback, dealt with it admirably, compensating for my own very silly reaction to its presence. (And where do these reactions come from?)

In a house, with space to manoeuvre, I should have displayed the calm, thorough and slightly sadistic ruthlessness which is, I think, an aspect of my character. But here, in close-quarters, where the issue was both unexpected and immediate, I became quite insensible. (It is in this type of scenario, and this alone, that I have always operated by forethought and planned execution. Who does not dream or imagine, from time to time, being confronted by a mugger or a terrorist or, in my case, a sudden and challenging argument? I do this a lot, and, in the event, react — in the latter case, which is the only one of which I have experience — according to carefully preconceived motion, mixed with the usual and exciting feats of instinct and unpredictability. I fear that we may, one day soon, begin to call this type of behaviour ‘Trumpian’.)

Boating life has, then, both undermined and reinforced my scepticism of plans and routines.