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This photograph is all that remains of the Black Pig, an old converted 20 ft fishing boat pulled up on Whitstable beach in the mid 1970s. Rotting, leaky, she cost me £125. She had a bent bowsprit, a rising centreboard, tatty sails and an ancient Seagull outboard motor that fell to pieces the first time I tried to use it.
Nevertheless I spent many happy hours sitting aboard her, high and dry on the shingle, dreaming of voyages I would make in her once I'd repaired all the leaks and polished the brass and patched the sails. I imagined crossing the Channel to France, and then pottering amongst the waterways of Europe, living in her tiny cabin and attracting and entertaining beautiful female crew members in every port of call.
But the furthest she travelled was about half a mile into the bay, where she skulked on her mooring, nicknamed "The Hulk" by Whitstable residents.
Then one day an early gale blew up and drove her back ashore, smashing her soft hull against a groyne. I rescued what I could from her, and burnt the hull, ceremoniously.
Considering her condition it was probably a good thing that I never took her to sea. I would almost certainly have drowned, or at least required rescuing. Yet I remember her with affection, the smell of boiling pitch, the glint of brass, the people who I met and talked with as I scraped and sanded and painted, evenings spent in The Guinea, the nearest pub..
| I think I inherited my love for boats from my maternal grandfather, who had boats on the River Thames. My mother is pictured sitting on his last boat. I can't remember going on it, but I'll bet I did at an impressionably early age! |  |
So until now my boating has been achieved vicariously, on the vessels of others, even though, as below, I may have looked the part... This picture was taken aboard a venerable old barge in Holland as we chugged between locks one summer's day in 1974.
One day I'll have another boat, and achieve my dreams...