An Irishman's boating diary
It was Marion who first set her eye on “Driftwood” a 10.5Mtr Drettmann DD yacht that had just been brought into Ireland on a truck to be sold into a growing boat market. She was called Staris at the time and at first I didn’t really like the look of her (the boat that is, not Marion.) I was very happy with our current boat and didn’t want to change. But those women folk know how to weave their magic on us men…
We called our first boat “The four of us” because, well because there was four of us I guess. We hadn’t a clue about buying boats and we bought it from a shed in Bansha in Co Tipperary. The guy selling it explained that it was made of plywood but it has a fibreglass skin over the ply “So you’re getting the best of both worlds”… I believed him!
We bought the Seamaster 30 “Glory Days” at a bargain price, that said it was kind of mankey dirty. There were cloths in the wardrobes covered in mould and one leather jacket that had mushrooms growing on it.You have to be able to see past the dirt with boats and see what you can make out of it. She was called Glory Days after the Bruce Springsteen song, well I presume that bit.
When we sold Trindle we bought a Seamaster 27 called Jerry. It was a terrible name for a boat so we renamed it “An Bhean Eille” it’s Irish for The Other Woman. They say it’s bad luck to rename a boat. Well my experience is that you will have bad luck with every boat whether you rename it or not.
Trindle was once a ship’s lifeboat but when we bought it, it was some what neglected. It had sank on the Grand canal and lay on its side there for eight years. We had often admired it and we could see through the surface to a boat that had potential.
Continue reading “We bought “Trindle” while it was still sunk…”