You find the odd gems hidden away in the deepest corners of boatyards, and you find some real monstrosities too. There’s the classic plastic or wood sloop whose toothsome sheerline catches your eye all the way across the yard. There’s the work-in-progress, half its guts yanked out and strewn around its decks; the handyman special, a blocky home-built deckhouse perched jarringly atop a sleek hull; and the dream-gone-sour, the giant ferrocement hulk still awaiting its first taste of water 25 years down the line.


In between beauties and beasts are the forgotten boats, the ones that just got propped up and left behind at the end of some long-ago season. I look at them and wonder why. Innocent victims of a passing fad? They’re old, most of them, and usually small; whatever value they have on the secondhand market would probably be eclipsed by the work needed to bring them back from the dead.
 
Even so, I can’t help feeling a pang for what they once represented –  fun, freedom, an escape from the pressures of daily life – and for the knowledge that most of them will never again heel to a warm summer breeze. Often, these forgotten ones can be had for the price of the outstanding storage fees.  If nothing else, they make a mockery of the claim that sailing is an elitist sport; there are thousands of boats around our shores that will get you afloat for little expense other than hard work, determination, and a few hundred bucks’ worth of bits and pieces.