A while ago I re-read Joshua Slocum’s fascinating book Sailing Alone Around The World. In case there is anyone out there who has not heard of Slocum, he was the first man to circumnavigate solo in a small sailboat and is therefore hailed as the father of cruising as we know it today. You can equally well hail him as the father of sailboat restoration as we know it
today. He had the basic qualifications; boundless enthusiasm laced with incurable optimism.

Here’s a quote from Victor Slocum’s biography of his Dad, describing Spray:

“The sad and dejected hull of the old sloop, awaiting the hand of rehabilitation…”

Ring any bells? And then there’s the comment from the Spray’s owner as he and Slocum walked around her: “She needs some work…” Now that’s an understatement we’ve all heard before. What other parallels can be drawn? I wonder if Joshua ever hid the yard bills from Mrs. Slocum, or ever
received a good telling-off for being willing to work all day and half the night on that darn boat, but not having time to put up a shelf in the kitchen.

I expect that Mrs Slocum was as supportive as the next boat widow. All we know for sure is that she swore off the sea forever after an earlier voyage in a boat that Joshua had built. That sounds uncomfortably familiar too…