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Vision –
The mind has a funny way of creating vision when you’re not looking. As a single person and away from the distractions and or benefits and or constraints (where applicable), or all of the above, of a close relationship, the mind can enter an altered state of what is doable in life. And here’s me content in knowing this – from experience, in as much as this was the second time I’d felt this way. It’s great. It’s quite powerful. I know it’s not the same for everyone. Here I am in a single capacity and something else takes over. I can’t help this; the inner mind’s vision, a view to what can be possible with a little effort. The last time this happened I surprised myself with what was achievable and how such an experience was absolutely the right thing to do. Realistically I should be money managing in an attempt for house buying because I’d learnt the hard way that what you may buy together if you marry someone, (whose only desire is to acquire that house for herself), then what you eventually end up with is nothing. Not anything material anyway.

Spending money on a dream, one that was only outlined during a light bulb moment whilst on a kayak one day seemed a really good idea at the time. Is it a bloke thing to imagine owning your own boat, I wonder. Nothing was clearer at the time than the imaginary concept of being the captain of my own boat. At least if I bought a boat of my own it would only ever be my own.
Mind you, there’s quite a bit of homework required if I’m going to take the concept of boat ownership any further, after all this was a genuine curve ball of an idea. It’s not like I come from a long line of mariners. Dabbling in the hobby of yachting on the other hand was not completely unknown in the family. There’s a little history there, and there was no doubt in my mind that I could learn something from previous experience by others.
What not to do is a good one for starters. Question here though is what to do in order to know what not to do. This is where boating as a hobby is fundamentally flawed in a lot of ways. There’s no test to take, no competence judging and no practice required. As opposed to driving a car along a road, boating includes all the elements that are not on the road.
I didn’t want to hang around indefinitely for the right opportunity, for one reason I wasn’t sure what the right opportunity was apart from being in a good position to make this happen. I’d spent a few weekend mornings watching motor boats leaving Poole Harbour on their way out for a day on the water. There were all sorts of folk out there standing behind the controls of their boats. Observing this boat fraternity routine conjured up another image in my mind, one that saw my boat at the back of the queue in terms of everything; size, cost, swankiness etc. I couldn’t buy into boats such as the typical calibre of those seen to leave the harbour quite obviously for pleasure purposes. When viewing the price details for the kind of boats using the harbour for pleasure made me realise it’s a millionaires’ playground out there. Lots of those boats standing their owners in to the tune of tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands.
Clear from the start was that my boat needed to be different from the others. I would be in a different league. That’s what I wanted. That bit wasn’t so hard to imagine. I want to be different from others. I don’t want to follow, I want to lead. If I can’t  lead then I want to show out as different. There’s this switch in my mind that recognises the way I would like to be seen as not the same.

From the outset I thought I wanted a fibreglass boat. Cheap and cheerful in lots of ways. I looked at a boat known as ‘Shetland’. A good British boat. A patriotic buy too. A good all rounder with acknowledged robust design and good looks. There again,  I wanted to be different. I quickly moved towards an all aluminium boat design known as ‘Quintrex’, an Australian boat. There was an overriding argument in favour of an aluminium boat in that these boats can be readily beached. For me that was a game changer. As chalk and cheese it may have been to the ‘Shetland’, the ‘Quintrex’  never-the-less fitted with my vision. It was also unsinkable, according to the sales literature. OK, so it was not a patriotic purchase, and for that I have my mind to play against, it was however second hand and seeing as second hand was as good as it was going to get for me, patriotism on the second hand market was then nullified somewhat by that very fact. And that is as good a starting place as any.

Cuddy –
To choose, to buy and to have, it was all coming together. It’s a dream come true. Here I am, the proud owner of a boat and it’s all mine. It’s a great feeling, before the other realisation that nags you to get it in the water and deal with the issues involved with that.
Just as in a car, you need to know the basics before you can set about trying it out for real. The basics are …………………..! Well for starters the outlay of a few thousand quid for a boat should also be reflected in the outlay for a few safety devices to go on it. That’ll come later.
Having a boat in the driveway and climbing aboard does feel good and attention is inevitably drawn to other areas of vessel and trailer combination that are not familiar to begin with. I’m sure I’m not the first and nor will I be the last to fall into the trap of ignorance.
It’s a trailered boat and therefore trailer and boat together should be as one. I think that’s fair to say.
Once back at home and with the boat / trailer undergoing a more in-depth inspection by myself, more details do inevitably come to light. The boat and trailer together, they look as though they may not be a perfect match.  And that’s the par for the course when buying into boats and with no knowledge.
Theoretically that shouldn’t have been as big an issue as it turned out to be – from my simple way of looking at it. I managed to drive it home OK. And from a good thirty miles away. Yes the lights did fall off, but no it wasn’t a massive issue.
The alternative is to shore the boat up in a boat yard somewhere. That would cost more. This is where the trailered boat beats a yard stored boat for this hobby.
I do feel ready, in the right zone to follow this through; that means check it out properly, look and learn, do the proper homework and make sure everything has been covered correctly. In for a penny, as they say.

Time went by and one by one, various issues were engineered to a fix. I enjoyed it too. I put maximum effort into ways forward, thinking outside the box, and the end result was – well, not as perfect as I would have liked. It was however my own doing and my own work and for that I was happy and sure. And that was just the trailer.
The boat was also full of issues not so apparent when buying. But then why would they have been. To notice those as a true beginner without representation was expecting a lot. Far from being the complete package, this was more of a Pandora’s box. Yes, the boat was as sold a competent on the water vessel. But no, some things were needed that were not there. Some of those items were notably necessary – radio for instance, and others more by way of a desire to have. I know, I was being fussy in some places, that is my nature. I also wanted it right.
What wasn’t challenging was the name of the boat. No matter what the reason for naming a boat ‘Cuddy’, for me it wasn’t a good enough reason for keeping that name. I didn’t know what it meant or what it stood for. It didn’t mean anything to me. As far as I was concerned, ‘Cuddy’ would not grace this boat as a name any more.
Under new ownership I would now declare my boat as some other name. This was now the start of  a new enterprise and by way of insured name my boat would from now on be known as ‘Orangeline’. By coincidence this name never appeared on the boat itself. I did quickly remove all evidence to the fact that it had once been known as ‘Cuddy’. I didn’t however seem to find the time to re-label the boat with its new name. And it therefore became a boat with no name, as getting around to the design for the name appearance always dropped lower down the list of things to be done.

Sea trials – 
For the boat’s first outing on the water I was accompanied by my brother and his wife; who with some experience on the water would therefore not leave me feeling totally hopeless should something arise that I had neglected to cover. For its first outing its launch would be from a local slipway at Rockley Sands.
Everything worked like clockwork, a string of events, each followed by the other without so much as a hiccup anywhere. The boat and trailer combination I did reverse into the water down the slipway after untying the boat from its lashings on the trailer. Once in the water I watched it float off the trailer whilst still attached to the boat by the pulley rope on the trailer. Everything was perfect. Unwinding the pulley rope allowed me to slacken off its connection to the trailer and free up manoeuvrability to enable for a manual pull around to a pier berth.
This was the true beginnings of ‘Orangeline’.

Once aboard, the boat reacted beautifully. It would be a trial day of motor boating to wring out any forgotten requirements and get used to the feel of using a motor boat on water.
This wasn’t a power boat. Built as an estuary angler it didn’t need to be. To some it may have been seen as a mere two stroke plodder, to me it was everything boat wise that I had wanted. It’s not everyone who can boast to having their own boat. After a while and a circuit of Poole harbour I opted to hand the controls over for a less hands on approach and a bit of time to absorb the reality of it all.

I was happy relaxing in the boat. In itself it had been an eventful day to even get this far and I felt I deserved the time to relax and watch the water go by. We had covered the entire harbour and were on the way back, albeit slightly more to the shoreline.

Flotsam –
It wasn’t long before things started to go wrong. After a trouble free run so far the outboard then began to falter. The pace was all gone, the engine was stressed. Some discussion between us prompted me to quickly raise the outboard from the water and lock it in place for a closer look. There, wound around the propeller was another boat’s mooring rope, disabling the propeller from turning.
Luckily I had a tool kit. My brother’s wife held onto me whilst I hung over the back end of the boat to reach the propeller and cut away the rope. This was not a recommended move to be advised with all the apparent dangers ever present. It was though the only one available to us at the time. Eventually the rope came free and we returned to the slip way under power to moor up. Once loaded up we headed for home. My first day as a boat owner was not without incident. We didn’t talk of that incident any more. The boat was still in one piece. It started, it stopped and it motored. It was a successful day.

At home there didn’t seem a need to improve any process used on that day, everything had gone like clockwork. The rope on the propeller incident was just a bit of bad luck.
To me, my boat was not an article to just be parked up until the next time. I continued looking over and improving the boat whilst in the driveway.
From a successful first launch there appeared to be little to improve. I would fix up things like holding areas to store flares, maps, all the gear, extra seating, wiring for pilot lights and dash wiring for a radio. Obviously the most important part of any boat was the radio.
As a side line and together with my brother we had decided that it would be a good idea to take a VHF radio licence course. During that course many stories were told about the rights and wrongs, ifs and buts and everything else related to water boating. Some of those tales were centred around how beginners to this hobby quite often ignore communication out on the water; instead relying on cell phones.
I completed the course and obtained the VHF licence. I didn’t actually have a radio and intended to source one in the fullness of time. I didn’t actually have any wiring in the boat for a radio either. The important thing was to have the licence in order that I could legally use one when I did find one.

Water legs –
It was quite a while until my next outing onto the water. I had covered a lot of the work from my own self derived schedule and had stowage areas for all the gear such as flares, maps, extra seating sorted by now. I had also completed some repairs to other sundry items such as cabin cover and other remedial stuff.
My girlfriend at the time – Troy,  and her little boy Samuel and myself would take a trip out in Poole harbour. As usual all the gear would have to be loaded on board at the slipway. Enough gear provided for a picnic out on the water, plus of course all the rest of the paraphernalia that by now was accumulating.
Also added to that was extra fuel. Following my first boating trip it was clear at the end of it that the amount of fuel on board was not enough, if relying only on the one tank, so I had bought two more dedicated transportable sea going fuel tanks. Add this little lot up and the weight goes up exponentially. One litre of water weighs one kilogram; fuel the same. But actually though, all said and done amounting to less than the weight of one more person. Better to have enough fuel than not enough. I had enough room to balance the weight out evenly.

Out on the water and underway I was careful to point out to the Troy and Samuel – on the way around Brownsea Island that there was a known set of rules out here on the water. Pass to the right hand side of any oncoming boats, give way to sail, life vests on at all times, stick to the speed limits and avoid erratic steering manoeuvres, drive safely, make sure you have a way of communicating with others on the sea.
I’m not proud of the fact that here I am in a boat and I don’t yet have a VHF radio, but I do have the licence and I do have a cell phone. And the only thing I could console myself with on this occasion was that although having been told during the VHF radio course that the cell phone cannot be relied upon out at sea, was that we weren’t out at sea, we were in Poole harbour.
So why can’t a cell phone be relied upon out at sea? It was made clear during the VHF course that although yes, indeed it was possible to call someone, and for help too, assuming there was a signal to be found on a cell phone at sea. But how would anyone help you if out to sea, or on the water. If you break down on water you don’t just call roadside assistance because there isn’t any out there on the water. And yes, it’s possible to ask for assistance over the VHF radio because tuned into the VHF radio is the lifeguard on a specially chosen channel. In part that was the whole point behind a VHF radio.

That though to me was a minor point at this time as we cruise around Brownsea Island. It’s a lovely day, bright sunshine and warm. It’s as good as it can get with what we have available to us, cruising around Poole harbour and taking in the sights on the water and off the water. There’s more than one island, and the landscapes to admire; the coastal landscapes too as we check out the shoreline. There’s the wildlife to watch, and the sea birds are all the more at home when viewed from this angle.
It’s a very enjoyable way to spend a day.
How great it is to be able to do this with some folk who were equally enjoying every single minute of every single aspect of our trip around Poole harbour. Little Samuel was over the moon. Just how much fun was to be had when riding around on the water. I was proud to offer such happiness to Sam and see his face light up. We were joking and smiling and laughing and driving and watching and experiencing and observing and it was an experience like no other. Yes, we’d been around Poole harbour before on the tourist boat, we’d been to Brownsea Island before on the tourist boat, we’d done the same route in the same boating channel laid out by identifying markers and watched the same sights as we went sailing by in the tourist boat. But not under our own steam. Here and now, we were.
Things just got better and better. Until now at this point my conscience was clear, but suddenly a train of thought signified a disturbing realisation.
I found myself in a bit of a dilemma. I remember now that maybe I had not installed the hull drain bungs on the slipway. How to solve this was not a written down task that I had seen anywhere.
No time to question the forgetfulness of myself. If those drain bungs didn’t go back in quick there would be trouble soon.

Fair’s fair, we can’t all be professionals from the off. There is a limit though. Having to explain the drain bungs missing from the hull to your girlfriend whilst cruising around Brownsea Island in a boat does not make for a relaxed environment. But on the good side I was impressed by my own imaginative thinking. A quickly devised solution to put things right.
Troy would never have imagined that she would become the saviour out on the water that day. We would swap roles and she would become the driver of the boat. With the throttles opened to full, as per my request, she would steer on a course around the island in the deep channel which I indicated to her by way of some pointing in the right direction. The hull stoppers could then be screwed back into place whilst I was hanging over the rear end of the boat. There simply was no other choice. It probably is written somewhere that this should not be attempted, after all there is a propeller in close by turning around at dangerous speed.
The need to go flat out was, I insisted very important in order to alter the angle of the boat, therefore allowing the water in the hull under the floor to be sent backwards and hopefully out of the drain holes. Nothing else made any sense at that time. This was the only course of action available.

The solution worked. We carried on our day once I had screwed the stoppers back into the hull. The boat was still floating so it must have worked. We made it back to the slipway. It was another successful day out on the water. It was even funny in retrospect and hopefully truly unforgettable. The motorboating had continued. There was always something to be learnt – that was a given. The boating just gets better and better.
Sadly Troy and I sort of split apart at some time after that. It was not related to the boating incident in any way. The hull drain bung incident was something that could only ever happen the once and it was probably unusual. It could have happened to anyone. It had still been an awesome day out.

Quintessentially Quintrex –
And so into the future and into another relationship with another girlfriend I would carry forward the momentum of motor boating as a hobby. I was gaining experience and knowledge and was becoming familiar by now with all aspects of boating.
This hobby is strange in a way, it has no competition membership in the way of competing for wins etc, it has no time / date target, it’s not class related, it’s not signed up for, as in a group, it’s just whenever really.
There was still some work to be done on the boat and I decided to keep moving with it. Several runs in it made a compelling case for itself as a hobby. It proved itself to be a bit of a twosome hobby as opposed to just launching whenever by myself. A case of safety in numbers. The expense of it was never lessened in any way. Spend after spend was by now normal. Frankly though I just didn’t care. I was hooked.
Further down the line and along with girlfriend Evangalisa, we headed for another boating day out at Poole harbour.
Going out in the boat, taking a picnic, mooring up somewhere, taking a break on the water whilst moored up – (a friend of mine had talked at length about how long an anchor rope needed to be: seven times the length of the depth of water being anchored into, blah, blah, blah) and I was taking with me for the first time an anchor with rope attached. Truth to be told I had never known how to use an anchor so hadn’t bothered with taking one before.
I guess I should just lob it overboard and let the anchor do the rest. There’s enough rope to allow for a bit of drift in the water before the whole shemozzle is anchored tight to the seabed. Easy peasy. I never owned one before anyway and for today my brother had leant me one from his yacht.
To me it was weird that if using an anchor on this boat then the whole anchor and rope combination had to be manually collected and then stored within the bow of the boat by carrying it all over the top of the windscreen and backwards to below. Maybe anchors were never a part of the design remit with this boat. I don’t know, it all seemed a bit scrappy I suppose.
Today we had an anchor and it was attached to a long piece of rope. I had enough rope I was sure because Poole harbour was only about five feet deep most places. Everything was as great as I had hoped for. The whole day to get this far had been brilliant. We eventually moored up on the West side of Brownsea Island, out from the shoreline. It was a lovely day and I was confident by now about the anchor and how to use it. I had by now thrown it into the water and the rope had followed it in. All we had to do now was sit and relax.

We had the picnic and settled down for a little rest. A short time later there’s talk between us regarding the location of the boat versus the island. There seemed to be some concern about how a particular land mark wasn’t in the same place as it had been a half hour earlier. An observation by Evangalisa noted. This was all explainable though, as you might expect on a moving body of water. There were tides to think about, currents, waves, other boats and all manner of things not applicable on land. So with that easily covered I felt I deserved a bit of a snoozy snooze.
A rude awakening was not was planned, but if you snooze on the water it’s maybe what one should expect. Being awoken by a disturbance then followed, whereby it became apparent that the positioning of the boat was in question again.
My boat had definitely drifted whilst I had a rest, and worse still, it had drifted into a moored up yacht that previously had been moored up elsewhere. That looked to be the case to me after Evangalisa woke me up. Nothing else made any sense. My boat was here and this other yacht had been elsewhere. Had this yacht moved position while I was unaware? The owner of the yacht seemed not to be too flustered under the circumstances, he was more interested in preventing damage from a possible collision. Whilst at arms length and leaning over the side of his own yacht he had a hold of my boat to keep the two separated. If I was going to be honest with myself I was impressed. That was some seriously good human nature going on there. This guy averted a mishap of someone else’s doing and was being good natured about it.
I had to apologise. We needed to be on our way whilst trying not to look the amateur I was. The guy accepted my apology with very good grace. I started up the motor and eased the boat forward to catch up to where the anchor rope would be vertical in the water, thus explaining the correct usage of how to retrieve an anchor buried into the seabed.
The roles were reversed once again, the control of the boat of which was passed to the Evangalisa whilst I stood on the bow of the boat ready to haul the rope from the water. As I  stood on the front of the boat hauling the anchor from the water I did notice an embarrassingly notable occurrence. Should I admit to the cause of the disturbance earlier, or fake it off and not make a big thing of it. Why ruin the mood, all in all it had been another fantastic day out on the boat?
I wanted to keep secret the reason behind that mishap but honesty got the better of me.

We motored back to the slipway to finish off a brilliant day out. We had a right old laugh on the way back, the boating had been on good form. I did later have to admit to why my boat had seemingly gained a mind all of its own.
The anchor that I was using that day was a fold away type, the design of which was for space saving where there isn’t much room for storage. None better for this boat. If only I had cut the binding that clamped it together in the folded position. Chucking an anchor over the side that was in the folded position was no better than attaching a rope to a house brick. The anchor wasn’t that heavy to begin with, it was designed for small boats.
It had been another learning curve. An embarrassing situation that was made good. A triumph of a day out.

Deep water –
My mind was now set on taking that boat out once again only this time into Portland harbour. On the face of it Portland harbour was probably the least appealing place to go motor boating. Kayaking there was fun even though the waters were placid and there were plenty of folk that did go motor boating there in more expensive boats than mine. Therefore there must be something in it, I’d decided. Where else would you get the opportunity to cruise around in waters fifty feet deep whilst still in a harbour. This was the berthing point for submarines when the Navy were here.
So Portland was where we were headed. I think I had everything worked out now. The weather was great once again. The fifty foot water depth was a draw in itself to cruise over.
With these depths of water I mindfully considered that everything has to go right, that’s a lot of water there. The anchor was useless the last time I used it; down to operator error. This time I didn’t take it as I didn’t have enough rope.
Everything looked ship shape. The boating days just got better and better. Ahead of me in the queue to use the slipway at the Portland boating academy were a couple with an equal boat to that of my own. I couldn’t believe it. Someone else with an aluminium boat. It was similar to mine but without the canvas cover and windscreen. I was enjoying watching their efforts to launch the boat. The couple had removed the lashing strops holding the boat to the  trailer; which is fine. This has to be done to ensure the boat floats off the trailer as it is reversed into the water. The couple reversed that trailer at speed. Half way down the slipway the guy jams his brakes on hard and the boat takes off from the trailer. Flying through the air towards the water, had it reached the water it would have been most impressive.
It didn’t.
The boat landed short of the water and crash landed on the concrete slipway.
It was nice to know that there were other idiots out there who made equally as ridiculous mistakes as I had made.

I followed after them with the launch of my own boat.  Evangalisa stayed alongside the boat with it tied to the jetty whilst I trundled backwards and forwards to the car park and back with gear to stow on board. Her view on matters gave cause to question. She says to me after I had finished packing everything into the small space available that as far as she was concerned the boat looked unbalanced. I didn’t see it myself, it looked as it should look with all that weight in the back.
An assurance by myself to redistribute the weight more equally sounded the best way forward. Undeterred, she repeated herself a few times to make herself heard. Equally undeterred I made little of it, it was after all only a small boat.
So we climbed aboard. I took the helm and fired up the engine. Ropes were free, nothing holding us, so off we motor. The water seemed deeper than the depth I knew it to be as we passed beyond the safety of the jetties. The water turned from a blue colour into a inky dark colour.
The boat took on a whole new feeling when cruising around on these waters. It was now a proper boat. That was until the boat slowed and the engine stopped working. Quite unexpectedly the engine had cut out. We were now drifting without power.
I didn’t have an anchor that day, but I did have an oar. Quick reactions and mainly panic, and in a flash I’m at the back end of the boat looking over the outboard. Staggeringly, I found myself happy looking over the engine end of the boat. A simple mistake – could have happened to anyone, the reason for the stall was clear, I had forgotten to attach the petrol pipe attached from the outboard that runs and connects to the fuel tank can. It’s just like the old saying, we’d been running on fumes. Asking the other half to take over the controls was now becoming more the norm. Evangalisa did as I asked and we were able to power up the engine after I reconnected the hose and. We resumed motoring.

It was a fantastic day out. What we had covered so far felt way and beyond my original expectations for Orangeline. Looking at typical pleasure boating i.e boats leaving a harbour and cruising to a nearby destination to have a  lunch on the boat and then come back again in time for tea didn’t come quite the match to any of the days out we had on this boat of ours
I think my trips had been more exciting frankly. Never mind just today, look at the bigger picture. Many nautical miles, many events and many happy memories. I was pleased with myself. And it went through my mind how great this was, here today especially, heading around the harbour.
And I kept going over this and that in my mind. Something wouldn’t add up.
I decided I need to check something. Not to be accused of a knee jerk reaction, another case of panic hit me, as I remembered again the one process during the launch of the boat that I certainly should have remembered, but may have forgotten. The trouble was I couldn’t quite remember. Like an amateur (and I admitted to the girlfriend without hesitation that) I may have forgotten to screw the hull drain bungs into the hull before dipping the boat into the water. It was unbelievable.
I once again explained the process required, the help needed to get out of this mess (just like it was the first time, as she wasn’t to know of this event happening once before.)  There was no time to loose and Evangalisa stood up to the task required here whilst I once again hung over the back end of the boat grappling for the hull stoppers within inches of a spinning propeller.
So Evangalisa was right, the boat had been unbalanced. It was filling up with water. At least the hull was sealed water tight now and we eventually carried on motoring around Portland harbour.

Overall, the boating had been good. I was years into this practice and had learnt a lot.
I was proud to be the owner of  ‘Orangeline‘. I’d been lucky to have with me people who had the interest to get involved on the same level out there. On the way home that day from Portland harbour we stopped off at a public pic-nic sight where we could cook ourselves a barbecue tea. The area was a drive through so stand alone barbecue’s were provided. I drove through and parked up. We sat down on a bench and cooked our tea. We talked and laughed generally speculated about this, that and the other.
From nowhere I remembered something, another forgotten process. Shamefully I realised there was a confession to be made. Talk of the hull drain bungs unfitted whilst out to sea was hilarious in the retrospect, however, I didn’t remember taking them out once we were back on dry land. Not that it mattered, I assured Evangalisa, as refitting the drain bungs out there on the water must have worked. Surely the water in the hull would have been ejected by flat out throttle cruising whilst I was draped over the back end of the boat screwing the hull drain bungs back in again?
With that I strolled over to the boat and removed the hull drain bungs. I wasn’t ready to be drenched by a voluminous bulk of sea water, however, I should have guessed. With the hull bungs out an incalculable quantity of sea water poured its way out through the holes.

The hobby of boating was not how I ever imagined it to be. All my own experiences helped me to decide that maybe boating wasn’t the hobby for me. Much, much later and following years of non use, I sold the that boat without a name. It did have a name for me, it was always Orangeline’.