Alicia is a 15’ traditional clinker day boat, and it was on account of my carelessness that one of Bill Smith’s lads in our local yard was applying his skills to fitting two new short planks in the flat run amidships.

“It would be nice if she had a little cuddy where I could sleep occasionally,” I said to Bill in idle conversation one day.

“You’d spoil her,” said Bill wisely. “And anyway it’d run to over a hundred to do the job properly.”

“True,” I muttered ruefully, eyeing a small Hillyard that sat stranded on its winter struts in one corner of the yard. “It would be nice to have just a little more space,” I thought aloud, “somewhere to cook and sleep of a weekend…” We turned to stroll back to the office.

“You’d like something with a roof on,” said Bill, blandly filling the silence.

“Yes,” said I. “The little Hillyard would be a treat, but there’s no way I could afford it.”

“Or that little 18 footer over there?” he gently nudged.

“Yes — she looks nice,” said I in innocence, “but more than I could afford.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” mused Bill. “He’s asking £450 but maybe you’d get her for £400. Why don’t you have a look at her anyway?”

“You’d have to sell Alicia” said I, like a fool accepting his suggestion. Was it Oscar Wilde who said the only way to resist temptation was to yield to it?

Seven days later Bill had sold Alicia, and within the fortnight I had become the somewhat tremulous owner of that ‘little 18 footer over there’ — a two-and-a-bit-ton centreboard sloop of copper-fastened ⅜” mahogany on oak built with Elkins’ loving care in 1937.

I say tremulous owner, for now it seemed I had a yacht, not a boat. A vessel I could no longer at all times handle myself, one that would need a mooring, and one where there would be no nipping into creeks or onto beaches, but instead a world of harbours to be entered and safe berths or anchorages. The step seemed bigger than I had fondly imagined, and for the next fortnight I did little but contemplate the enormity of my decision, a fact that all boats seem to impress upon one when dragged from their element to stand aloof and somehow naked on the land.

Exploration revealed that in her bilge lived several hundredweights of lead, six or seven fathoms of chain and a 4 horsepower Stuart. Above were two berths in the little cabin with sitting headroom either side of the centreboard case, and aft was a spacious cockpit. And all around I was able to reap the instant pleasures of years of loving care — glistening white topsides so smooth they might be plastic (!) and varnished mahogany with the patina of a mature antique; acres of varnish it seemed, as I contemplated scraping becoming more than the hour or two’s pleasant activity offered by Alicia.

I suppose it can only be smallness of mind, or perhaps the pleasures of owning a boat to sail rather than to tinker with, yet later as I spent what must have been a whole afternoon prodding about her nether parts, examining all the underwater seams, the centreboard casing, the deadwood, the rudder hangings, the stern gear et al, it appeared I would now be messing about in it as much as sailing it.

Owners of similar vessels who may read these words may feel I paint a somewhat negative picture; perhaps I echo nothing but growing pains, yet if one is of the nouveau pauvre, the yachting poor, or simply accustomed to doing it all oneself, such factors seem to loom large at the time.

I set to work… taking up the cabin sole, the cockpit floor, heaving out all the ballast, scrubbing and danboline for the bilge, more danboline for the sole, exhuming the anchor chain for perhaps the first time, cleaning the Stuart, scrubbing and painting the lockers, scraping and varnishing their doors, scraping and painting the main bulkhead, the same for the stern locker, replacing its hinges, machine sanding everything underwater, replacing the lower pintle, overhauling the gooseneck and the reefing gear, undressing, cleaning, varnishing and redressing the mast, scraping and varnishing the bowsprit, the same for the beautiful mahogany sheer strake… ah! — but the words come easy. A winter of weekends, and came April the little ship sat in the spring sunshine, brightwork sparkling, her waterline sharply cut above a gallon of hard racing copper that set off her polished white topsides to perfection. Blessed with a mooring, the day arrived when she was terrifyingly dangled from a crane to be lowered into her element where almost disbelieving I observe that she floats. Somehow you expect a dinghy to float, but this creation of solid timber and metal seems somehow less likely to.

I leapt commandingly aboard, concealing apprehension about what I might find below — how many times have we heard of fine looking ships where the naked eye has not the searching persistence of the ‘oggin? Nervously I disappeared into the bilge; jewels of water were quickly forming on the dry seams, the odd trickle had begun to form a puddle against the keel. The old salt’s words, “She’ll take up in a week or two,” suddenly had meaning.

That evening I pumped her out — maybe a couple of hundred strokes — and the next day Wally arrived to finish the rigging. Wally’s a bit of an institution where rigging’s concerned and I count myself lucky; he’s a rigger of the old school who had already hand spliced all the soft eyes aloft and guided me in dressing the mast. Now he settles down with his spike, marlin and nimble fingers to make up all the ends on deck, this after we’ve borrowed the crane to lower the 30ft solid spruce mast on to its step.

For a little boat the rigging is ridiculously complex — Mr Elkins was determined his mast wouldn’t fall down. 2 forestays plus a roller jib, 6 shrouds and 2 running backstays, all on an 18 footer. Having thought we got it right in the dressing, standing back to admire our handiwork our only mistake was readily apparent — the crosstrees were upside down…

For the next fortnight, like a nervous chicken tending a brood, each evening I would drive straight down to the quay, row out to the mooring, pump her out and generally fuss about my new command. I began to get some of the pleasure, and sure enough as the days passed the pumping got less until it seemed she was taking nothing at all. Came a fine evening — a weekday evening when few are out and there’s no grockle to gawp on catastrophe — we inched out of the raft of moorings for what I would politely term ‘motor trials’. That is, starting the Stuart and chugging downriver past the serried gin traps and the yacht club with a look of evident command upon my phys, whilst silently praying that no-one gets in the way as I practice a few manoeuvres. I find the ability to manoeuvre a boat in a small space accounting for the vagaries of wind and tide quickly instils confidence. And I hate the feeling I might be wearing ‘L’ plates, or — worse — one is being watched.

After a couple of hours I began to feel I had some control of the situation — which way she would turn tightest, how much way she carried, what she needed from the Stuart, and how she would handle herself while I was on deck picking up lines or whatever. Successfully I wriggled her back on to the mooring, the most feared manoeuvre of all, and celebrated with a pint on board.

Still a mite apprehensive about the first voyage under sail, the next weekend an experienced friend came along and, assisted by the softly bopping Stuart and feeling like the proverbial Drake, we made our way down river and out into the familiar Solent. After the diminutive Alicia, one pleasure is instantly apparent — we are sailing upon a remarkably stable platform where, with a companion, there is all the time in the world for one of us to go forward, get in fenders, hoist sails and generally tidy up without the lurking fear that at any instant I might be pitched into the wet stuff. Suddenly there seemed to be time, whereas in the dinghy there was often the impression that events just happened, even if one’s designs were otherwise… Perhaps all one is engaged in is a more conscious planning of events, of thinking things out in the knowledge they’ll take longer, yet knowing that so long as there’s sea room she’ll look after herself quite comfortably while you clamber about on deck doing whatever’s necessary.

With a little practice, and someone to show me how, we trimmed the jib and had her sailing hands off — not bad for a centreboarder, and unheard of in the dinghy. I was being educated and, as the evening breeze fell to a zephyr, we returned most correctly to the mooring, sailing up river, handing the main off the marina, and ghosting up to the buoy on the jib without a sound from the Stuart. I basked vicariously in my colleague’s confidence.

It was a good summer, and came the autumn I felt I could steam upriver in the knowledge I had some qualification to be standing at her tiller. And because she is a yacht needing a mooring and at times professional handling, I became quietly aware of another author’s anecdote in reference to little ships where in a High Court action over such a vessel the judge is heard to ask council for the definition of a yacht: “According to the plaintiff, m’lud, a yacht is a hole in the water surrounded by wood into which he pours money.” Not quite, but it’s a trifle up on the dinghy.