I had heard that the world of boats involved a lot of wearing white trousers, g&t in hand, while schweffing around on deck with tycoons and slebs. Turns out it actually involves a lot of scraping unidentifiable brown gunk from the bilge. A heady mix of fresh rust dust, old rust chipping a, sawdust and god knows what else that has mixed into a mulchy mess and stuck itself all over the bottom of the boat. And when you do it on a beautifully sunny day, the pain is even greater.

   
    
 
First you pump, then brush, then you scrape, then you go in with a gloved hand, and finally you Hoover. The end result is pretty pleasing.

 Proof it was actually me doing the grafting…

   
But after eight hours, you definitely deserve one of these…

 
Or two!