RATTY’s famous remark, in The Wind in the Willows, that there is nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats has been something of a watchword for me. It holds true even for what some might consider the merely preparatory chores that fall to this season, in the very early spring.

My own Ranworth Rose remained at her mooring all year and has suffered a little in the winter months, as we all do one way or another. Somehow, her jib, furled neatly, as I thought, on its roller reefing, had worked loose in a storm and flogged itself to tatters. So, the first of my spring chores was to fit a new sail, get the whole reefing mechanism working again, renew some of the running rigging, and make all taut and trim again. This is easier said than done. It needed the help of a practical friend, and several trips back and forth to the chandlers for various fittings, new reefing lines, etc.

Some rich folk, of course, the owners of large yachts on which these little tasks multiply, have all this occasionally frustrating work done for them in a boatyard. They have only to step on to their yachts, made spick and span by others, on the first fine day in April. But they are missing out. It has been well said that, the smaller the boat, the more the fun, and part of that fun is the fitting out and making good each spring. Tasks that are paid work for some can be an anticipatory pleasure for others.

Thus it was that my friend and I spent half a day messing about on my boat going nowhere. We never loosed her from her moorings, never had the pleasure of a cruise; but the hard work that we did, that raw cold morning, getting her shipshape was rich with the pleasure of looking forward, and when, in a few weeks, that new sail is unfurled and fills with her first spring breeze, we will enjoy that day’s sailing all the more for having readied her for it ourselves. We will see how the shackles we fixed and the lines we renewed take up the strain, fulfil their purpose, and help us to surge forward out of Malthouse Broad and into the inviting vistas of the River Bure and the wider Broads themselves.

Indeed, for the Christian sailor, there is something Lenten in this business of fitting out, which often takes place in Lent. The whole point of Lent is Easter; for Lent is a kind of spiritual fitting out. The privations of Lent point towards the joys of Easter and, beyond it, to Pentecost, when the wind of the Spirit will indeed fill our sails. When I wrote a sonnet about Joy, in my sequence After Prayer, it was natural for me to reach for imagery drawn from many new seasons’ sailing:

How does she come, my joy? . . .
She comes like some swift wind, she fills my sails,
And on we surge, cresting the wine-dark sea,
The fine prow lifting, as my vessel heels,
The tiller tugs and quivers, and I’m free
Of all the land’s long cares. As that brisk breeze
Sings in the thrill and tremor of taut stays,
So my heart’s rigging, tuned and taut as these,
Sings with the wind that freshens into praise.
For when Joy comes, however brief her stay,
She parts my lips, and I know how to pray.