The good publishers of PowerBoat Magazine have said I could brazenly promote my new book, as long as I made it about boats. That was tricky because the scene for High Heels and Gumboots is mostly confined to a 10-acre section in Golden Bay, with barely a boat mentioned. But I reckon I’ve found a way around it.
If you’re keen to enter the realm of boat ownership, but have decided that boats are either beyond your price range or in your price range but in need of major work, I’m here to tell you that this is a good thing.
A boat of, shall we say, a certain age and exhibiting signs of poor maintenance – such as corroded wiring, chipped fibreglass, a touch of rot perhaps, torn upholstery, dirty bilges and in need of some mechanical love and care – could be absolutely perfect for you. To which I hear you say: WTF?
But hear me out. Boat ownership is like a series of rites of passage. You start off with a boat that’s inexpensive, basic and has a maintenance list as long as your grocery docket. Which is perfect, because as a prospective new boat owner, you love work. Just as you love dirty bilges, nuts that are corroded on forever, and faults that, for every 10 people you ask for advice, will deliver at least 20 answers, all of them in conflict with each other.
That’s because ownership of older boats is a block course on Basic Boat Maintenance 101 that runs every weekend. Plus, there are bonus courses – like Character Building 101, in which you don’t cry no matter how many times you graze your knuckles on stupid bolts; Perseverance 101, in which I excelled: the belief that if you try something one way and it doesn’t work, you continue in exactly the same manner, even though it delivers the same result; and Chandlery Spending 101 – you can study this at increasing levels, but will never graduate.
However Basic Boat Maintenance covers the easy stuff: simple knots, changing fuel and oil filters, replacing impellers in water pumps, basic plumbing with extended courses in places that are impossible to reach and in places that are disgusting. And simple electrics, usually installing a stereo that costs more than what you paid for the boat.
Financially, the basic boat maintenance course is a sound business model. Sure, you have your initial capital outlay and ongoing costs, and seldom add substantial value to your boat, but you are getting all that training and experience for free, and it will last you a lifetime.
I am not being cynical. Seriously. In a time when private tutors probably charge at least $60 an hour, you get free advice from your friends, hardstand bystanders, your friends’ friends and even highly qualified experts, although you will probably ignore their advice because it will be the least palatable.
So this is where I smoothly take this column around to my lifestyle block and my new book, High Heels and Gumboots. After 30 years writing about, owning and sailing on boats, I had built up a reasonable knowledge, especially yachts, but when I spontaneously purchased a lifestyle block in Golden Bay, I was at the bottom of a huge learning curve. Or was I?
It turned out a lot of that boating knowledge could cross-credit to my new discipline as a lifestyle blocker.
Like the day after the Big Storm when I found a massive branch blocking my driveway. The branch was still partially connected to the tree about 5 metres up. I couldn’t just tie any knot around the branch because it would slip off the foliage, so I tied a rolling hitch, a sailing knot which exploits friction to the max, and pulled the branch clear with my ute.
Or when I was building a retaining wall and got through my massive slump in confidence by telling myself that I had built a plywood dinghy, so therefore I could transfer cutting lines and make a scarf joint. I would love to say that having stripped down my YSE8 Yanmar engine, I was a whizz at servicing the three-cylinder Perkins in my Massey Ferguson 135, but, no. However, Nobby, the tractor whisperer who did fix my tractor, let me call myself his apprentice for a few hours and even remove a filter or two. His son Darryn handed me a wrench as big as a hockey stick to tighten the nuts on the tractor’s huge rear wheels after he fixed the brakes.
And plumbing. Lifestyle blocks are an endless study in basic plumbing, especially when dealing with Golden Bay’s worst drought in 20 years and finding cunning ways to redistribute liquid platinum; ie, water. But perhaps the best skill from boat ownership is nutting out problems for yourself through a mix of logic and intuition.
So if you are young and keen to develop a whole range of skills, buy a thoroughly second hand boat for a winter project – because the skills you gain will be useful if you ever buy a lifestyle block.
High Heels and Gumboots by Rebecca Hayter, HarperCollins 2025, $39.99, available from major bookstores and
