Hiremanship

by Gordon Winterton
(with apologies to Stephen Potter)

 

Over the years our Club has been a tranquil institution. However, the sweetest of natures can be strained when it's a matter of one member borrowing another member's boat. This interchange is published with the approval of both members, to demonstrate the close study which both have made of the works of the Sage of Yeovil.
The following is an excerpt from the Commodore's scrap book. The people concerned are on reasonable terms and agreed to the publication, (after a decent lapse of time), of this correspondence as a guide to the sort of language a hireman or a letman can employ to attain the desired one-up position.


THE OPENING PLOY

Dear 'X',
I received your letter of 21st April in which you said that you wished the misdemeanour of 'A', in that he did not clean my yacht's cooker, to be put on record. I felt I should wait for a suitable period after 'B' and I spent some hour and a quarter returning the rigging of the boat to some semblance of order so that I might communicate in temperate language.
I am aware that the higher ranks of the academic world are alcohol dependent but that has ceased to be a defence in the Courts and is certainly no excuse as far as I am concerned. My observations of the results of one week's drunken orgy of vandalism are as follows:

1 One nearly new quant broken. This quant had been used successfully by myself, my co-owner and several other skippers and will cost the Club some £40 to replace.

2 In order to attain the licensed premises with the minimum delay, you put the boat away with one reef in the mainsail.

3 Presumably you traded the better of our two frying pans for beer money.

4 The topping lift, which was deliberately long so that there would be the possibility of an easy repair when the next Green Wyvern skipper broke it on one of the bridges, had been cut with a knife and the end left unsealed so that it is now barely long enough.

5 Presumably, unlike some ten other skippers, you found it impossible to sail the boat with the peak halyard rigged in the manner which I and my co-owner prefer. Instead of untying the knot at the foot of the mast and feeding the halyard through the existing blocks in whichever way felt best, you, in your drunken stupor, moved the blocks, thereby altering the arrangement of the peak halyard and the topping lift feeding through a common double block, which is essential to assure easy lowering of the mainsail.

6 As a result of that excess you ran out of shackles and used the extra shackle under the forestay which is fitted to allow the forestay line to run along the length of the boat. As left by you the mast could only be lowered conveniently by placing one crew member, standing on the water, some ten feet off the port bow.

7 Although I have employed an alcoholic, and have made a careful study of human folly, your reason for moving one of the four fairleads from the base on the tabernacle, and unscrewing it, extremely roughly, some foot away completely escapes me. There are now two unsightly holes in the tabernacle.
As you may realise, my distress at hearing that the oven was not clean was tempered with relief, that, after a week with you as skipper, we still had an oven. I am thankful that my toolbox, which you broke into, did not contain an axe. I would suggest that, for the sake of peace and harmony, you keep out of my sight for at least two years and I sincerely hope that you never again set foot on any boat which I either wholly or partly own.

Yours,

'Y'


THE REPOSTE OR COUNTER PLOY

Dear 'Y',
Your intemperate and abusive diatribe against my personality and my profession took me by surprise. I can only think that it is the latest chapter in a protracted character assassination attempt of which I have been aware for years.
It is even more surprising that you, by profession a practical man, should take issue with my serious and protracted efforts to improve the rigging of your vessel. I fully believe that it is the responsibility of each skipper not only to attend to standard matters like rope deterioration but also to ensure that the running rigging operates in a fashion that will facilitate the raising and lowering of sails and therefore minimise the risk of jamming and even collision. In the case of your yacht, as I found it, this not only involved the whipping and splicing of every rope in sight, but also the re-siting of certain shackles, blocks and leads. For you to take issue with the 'double block' affair is staggering. When a mainsail halyard is pulling a block in one direction, how can a pull on the topping lift in another be effected easily, safely or without chafe over the edge of the block? The existence of that double block in that role reflects either monumental ignorance or penny pinching or a dangerous order. I do not propose to argue each point in detail, but I would be willing to justify to you all my actions next we meet.
I, however, you would argue, that a GW skipper has none of these responsibilities and therefore no right to effect such improvements, then I can only think that it is perhaps for the better that you should refuse me to sail your boat again. Let me reiterate that I had an enjoyable and efficient sailing week at Easter. I am only sorry that the cooker was not left clean.

Yours,

'X'

NOTE FOR POTENTIAL LETMEN OR HIREMEN

In the letter from the boatowner (or letman), he establishes a position of high moral grandeur: the acceptance of one and a quarter hours spent re-rigging to allow his temper to subside is good letmanship. However, he weakens his position by reverting to personal abuse. This is followed by rather obvious irony which, though amusing, leaves the letman open to counterploy. Finally he fails to retrieve the position by assuming a rather grandfatherly attitude. All in all, justifiable though the invective may be, it will be ineffective against a seasoned hireman.
And of course 'X' is just that; by a early hip-throw he soon asserts himself and enlists sympathy as a maligned professional who has suffered years, as he puts it, 'character assassination'.
This is followed by a mind-boggling picture of halyards, rigging, cleats and double and treble blocks ending in a damning indictment. How can a professional be so ignorant or miserly? Whilst the letman is still pondering whether the hireman has his facts right, 'X', the hireman, concedes the whole issue whilst thanking the letman for an admirable Easter.

Some of the detail could be slightly re-arranged and it must be said that both players made errors; nevertheless this is a play worth study if only for the wealth of material, from a shackle to a toolbox without an axe, contained in the letters.


EGW
1989

Peter Newton in Sparklet well practiced in getting off the mud.