Drift, On Demand

A conversation about maritime freedom in which every current is pre-booked, every risk domesticated, and the sea reduced to a service with excellent response times...

I met him in a Mayfair brokerage which did not move.
This, he explained almost at once, was the problem.

He shifted in his high-backed leather helm chair, then did it again, as if expecting a reply.

‘You feel it? Nothing gives; no movement.’ He tapped the aquamarine baize of the desk, which behaved exactly like the rest of the room. ‘On a boat, it answers you. You get something back. Here…’

He left it there.

Around him were scale models of the boats he sold. Sleek, immaculate, the sort of things a child would immediately pick up and run along the carpet, providing sound effects.

‘Boating,’ he said, starting again, ‘is the last honest expression of personal freedom.’ A pause. ‘You might want to write that down.’

‘I’ll remember it,’ I said.

Behind him, photographs of water so blue it looked corrected. He checked his watch. ‘People spending money on six-star hotels. Baffling. Rooms which remain where you left them. No drift.’

We remained where we had been left.

He wore a monogrammed shirt, collar pinned into place, copper bracelets at the wrists suggesting something unresolved, and socks with anchors on them which made the point repeatedly. I had clean shoes which had done some work, and a tie which had declined to meet the collar which missed a button. Between us sat the difference between brochure and bus fare.

He drank single-estate kopi luwak, brewed with Volvic water, from a gold cup. I was handed something brown in paper which had already begun to give way.

‘Length matters,’ he said, without a trace of irony. ‘The longer the better.’ A beat. ‘Beam, too. People forget beam. You want something that carries properly.’ He nodded towards a model without touching it. ‘You don’t get that in here.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘My wife loves it,’ he added. ‘The length. Says you feel it straight away.’ He nodded. ‘She notices.’

‘I expect she would,’ I said.

He leaned in. ‘Out there, you’re your own boss. No rules. No oversight.’

Wherever you happen to be, his office is alerted and someone appears. Engineer, captain, solution. The problem leaves before it becomes yours. A signal sent and someone already on their way.

‘Panpan,’ he said. ‘You signal, we respond. Immediately.’

In his version, inconvenience had been moved elsewhere. A berth appears. Fuel is found. Lunch is identified by someone who, one hopes, can distinguish urgency from appetite. Dogs can be flown between vessels. He said it as if dogs naturally did this.

‘You’ve got to have a good Bimini,’ he said. ‘Proper cover. Taut. You’ve got to get it up and keep it up. Not slack. Not letting anything through.’ A glance. ‘You follow?’

‘I’m following,’ I said.

‘My wife likes to stand alee with me,’ he added, unprompted. ‘Properly sheltered. You feel how it holds then.’

‘I can imagine,’ I said.

‘And the bilge,’ he said. ‘People don’t like to talk about it, but it’s there. You ignore it, it rises. Best kept down. Cleared out.’ A pause. ‘You don’t want any back-siphonage.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘That’s where a good bush comes in. Keeps everything tight. Nothing getting out. Nothing coming back in.’ He nodded. ‘Proper seal.’

‘Naturally,’ I said.

‘Heads have come on massively,’ he added. ‘Very refined now. Plenty of room. Easy access. Everything where it should be.’ A pause. ‘My wife’s particular.’

‘I’m sure she is,’ I said.

‘Bravo Zulu,’ he said.

Then the map. Ibiza, Menorca, Puerto Banús, Bodrum, London, Jersey, Guernsey, Monaco, Malta, the Isle of Man, Grand Cayman, St Barths. Wherever you arrive, someone has already arrived.

He looked again at the carpet.

‘Crew,’ he said. ‘We present three equally qualified captains. You choose the personality.’

‘Of course,’ I said.

He said ‘personality’ as if it could be tightened.

The numbers followed. Seventy-two metres. Six hundred thousand a week. Forty metres for fourteen million. He said them lightly.

‘Windlass,’ he said. ‘Underrated. You want something with pull. You engage it, it answers straight away. No hesitation.’

‘I’ve heard that,’ I said.

‘It matters.’

‘Of course.’

Fabrics came next.

‘You can’t do that electronically,’ he said. ‘You have to touch them.’

He handed me glossy black gloves.

I looked at them. He didn’t.

I put them on.

When I asked how he got into it, he skipped the obvious parts and went straight to sequence. Charter. Bigger charter. Crew. Better harbour. Management. Ownership. Then the next one.

What interested him most was his plumber.

A man who started with a van. A couple of lads. Built it up. New watch. Better jobs. Then a charter. Then another. Then something larger. Then crew. Then, eventually, fifty metres.

He told it carefully.

‘You start small,’ he said. ‘Bit of call-out work. Then contracts. Then you take on a couple of lads. Before you know it, you’re running the thing. You’ve got stock, vans, people relying on you. You learn what holds. What doesn’t.’

He stopped, just for a second.

‘He did, anyway.’

It did not feel like an example.

By then it was clear enough. This was not about boats. The water was incidental. What he was offering was a life in which nothing arrived unannounced and nothing remained unresolved.

He shifted again. The room did not.

‘You can drift if you want,’ he said.

At first, it sounded ridiculous.

Then less so.

Length which satisfies. Beam which reassures. A Bimini always up. Bilge kept down. A good bush holding everything in place. No back-siphonage. Heads in order. A windlass which answers when asked. A signal sent and someone already on their way.

He looked at the walls again.

I did not like him.

He had no interest in me.

But I could see how it might work.