Adrian Morgan, he of,  http://thetroublewitholdboats.blogspot.com/   took me to task, quite rightly, for not keeping my boat afloat in the winter and for not blogging enough!
The fact is I have had a touch of bloggers block recently, brought about primarily by an even worse case of boat owners block. If you ignore a problem long enough it may go away, sometimes known as creative procrastination, a disease well known to me in my former life as a local government officer,
The trouble with old old boat owners is that we have got all the T shirts, we have been there and done it all before…but we have learned nothing. Each year we intend to do things right but we get sidetracked into a fruitless dead end, usually around the heads compartment.
I found myself there a few days ago, contemplating a bit of rot. Better out than in I say so out it came. Back to bucket and chuck it next season unless I get a move on. I had intended to do some serious work on the stern tube but somehow got distracted.  It happens all the time these days….
The picture above is of Maldon in 1962, full of boats much like the one I now own. It’s Dan Webb and Feesey’s yard. I often feel I am back there whilst I grovel in the bilges of Crunluath, pity I don’t have their skills.
Adrian has found a Flying Fifteen I see, don’t go there I am tempted to holler. They are beautiful beguiling boats but built like rowing shells, unless its one of the scots built boats, which I suspect it is from the outer veneers, in which case its built tank like….  and sails similarly! It could be an earlier one I guess but then there are even more problems. They were never meant to last this long, that’s why they were fast in the first place. Still when did that sort of talk ever put off a determined man? There’s no money in it though, so forget making a killing. Trust me I’ve got form in this area!
Back at Maldon I had just stepped off Carmen, one of Dan Webb’s hire fleet, a well known racer in her day. I think she was a Buchanan boat but memory fails me, wet as a seal but a gem to sail. I’d spent idle class hours drawing her like on the spare pages of my exercise books; half a century later I own her… or something very similar. Pity about the half century, it would have been much easier a few years back. Or was it? We have all the modern glues, coatings and tools to help but they don’t really, not if you are going to do a proper job.
That’s the trouble with old boats, if you are going to get it right you have got to go back to the old ways. I got it wrong with my Flying Fifteen, it lasted a glorious five years, gave us a lot of fun and even more pride, but then it all went wrong and it fell apart, the epoxy held but the rest didn’t!
That’s why Crunluath is sitting ashore, I am trying to get it right. I’m just an old old boat owner, that’s the trouble.