Three Ways to Capsize a Boat - Chris Stewart [9]
All in all the Crabber was the choice of an aesthetically sophisticated owner who knew nothing about sailing but was determined that it should be beautiful. There was no sign, though, of such a boat among the slinky white craft moored stern to (parked backward) at the pontoons.
Next I checked the area where the boats were lined up in winter storage—again nothing resembling a Crabber. Finally, a little confused and worried, I went across to a sort of dump where the wrecks lay, poor old crippled boats who had given of their best and were now left to rot in this dusty corner of the boatyard. There were scores of boats here; I walked up and down the lines and in and out between them and suddenly, emerging from behind a rusting steel hulk, I saw the Crabber. There was no mistaking it. She was listing to one side, half propped by some flimsy timbers and with a tattered tarpaulin half on and half off.
I didn’t know a lot about boat maintenance then, but it was obvious that this poor old thing was in the most terrible state. Clearly nobody had done a stitch of work on it all winter. It was a wreck. I climbed onboard and looked it over. There wasn’t even an engine in it—the removal of which seemed to be about as far as the winter maintenance had gone. I sat there in the hot sun on the boat and studied the battered woodwork. It didn’t take much to see that the infamous Captain Bob Weare was a crook, or an incompetent, or both.
Having established the way things stood with the Crabber, I spent another afternoon in the bar trying hard to concentrate on my Greek grammar, but more often contemplating what looked like the ruin of my promising summer. There was no sign of Weare. I wondered how Jane, with all her apparent competence and authority, had been gulled by this person who had neither address nor phone number, but just a bar as a point of contact. But then again, she had contracted me as skipper and sent me a check for the boat’s expenses. Perhaps she was a little too trusting.
IT WAS MORE THAN a week before I managed to run Captain Weare to ground.
One evening I entered the Thalassa as usual, a little angry by now and far from confident of meeting the person whose deceitfulness was laying waste my plans for the summer. But on this occasion Yannis, the waiter, beckoned me over.
“Weare is here,” he said in an undertone, flicking his eyes toward an outside table. “There is Weare.”
Apprehensively I went over to the table, where the man was drinking a beer with some associates. “Would you be Captain Weare?” I asked, making an effort to be polite and unaggressive.
He half turned and looked at me without warmth for a moment before saying, “Who wants him?”
Weare, seated in his chair, was a short, stout man with no apparent neck. His face was a shocking red and dominated by a round and pockmarked nose and eyes of a watery and unlovely blue. He wore a filthy white boiler suit.
I extended my hand, which he shook perfunctorily.
“My name’s Chris,” I said. “And I’m looking after the Crabber this summer for Jane Joyce.”
He considered me arrogantly, then took a swig from his beer. “You are, are you?” he said. “Well, the boat’s not ready yet; there’s some finishing touches left to do.”
“I should think there are,” I said, struggling to contain myself. “It hasn’t even got the engine in …”
“The engine,” sneered Weare, “is the least of its problems. It’s got osmosis.”
It was becoming increasingly difficult to keep my temper, but the bastard held all the trump cards—he knew the boat and, more to the point, had the engine, keys, and papers.
“So what do you intend to do about it?” I spluttered.
“Know about osmosis, then, do you?” he asked, as he reached for the beer again and, with his eyes fixed on mine, took another long swig.
I stammered something incoherent about this not being the issue.
“Look,” he growled, “I haven’t time to