Abandoned Again.   

Well after the maiden trip we did one just more and tied up for the night, and for the next week one day seemed pretty much like another. It became apparent that this was becoming an unprofitable venture which didn't seem to bother Big Wessy and Lil Cloud as that seemed to be the way things usually went for them. However this fact had not escaped the attention of the owner Dirk Cranium who eventually called a crew meeting and told them "this venture isn't working I'm out!"

Here we go again, off I go to the breakers yard, I thought. I was wrong Lil Cloud true to form filled his pipe tootled off up to the bank blew smoke in the managers eyes, wagged his silver tongue and came out with a fist full of dollars! I was saved again, but mortgaged up to my bins.

Lil Cloud and his mate realised that something had to be done if they were going to get me out of debt and so decided to run half hour trips round the bay along  with the other three boats. A cunning move, that way they could join the rota knowing full well that when my turn to board passengers came, the other boatmen had no choice but to fill me up and get me out of the way or they couldn't get in themselves to operate.

As you can imagine this practice wasn't very popular but I later found out that it had happened a few times in the past by those with the same parasitical attitude as my two, and so we were suffered albeit grudgingly, though how he was allowed to take passengers to sea after working all night I don't understand. As for Big Wessy I suspect that he have had some sort of private income though it was all a bit of a mystery to me.

Of my competitors one was a pensioner and only did it for beer money, but the other two relied on their boats as their only source of income and I could see that it was a struggle for them. One was man in his forties with a wife and family who was still fit enough to work at the fishing and only carried passengers when it was busy enough for him to earn something decent, otherwise he preferred to work his creels etc.

The third boatman was a man approaching his sixties and operated an old boat "Victory" which was well past its best, rather like the man himself!  He was skinny little guy with silver hair and bright blue eyes that twinkled from a tanned and weatherbeaten complexion. I picked up from Big Wessy that his name was Al Legory and had spent the his sea time fishing, mostly in cobles, until the grabbing of catch quota's by the richer and larger fishing vessel owners forced him to sell his boat. The sector of the fishing industry that Al had enjoyed working in is now classed as a "cottage industry" by the greedy people who went on to fish the industry to near extinction.

For some reason Big Wessy went out of his way to be as objectionable as he could to Al Legory, some said this was because he was jealous of his handsome features and friendly nature, which attracted the customers. I suspect the real reason was because Al could lose and find Big Wessy  as a boatman, which lets face it isn't the hardest job in the world.

Al Legory had started work at dawn or before all his working life, so it was no surprise that he was down at the slipway before Big Wessy and Lil Cloud had wiped the duckfat from their eyes.

Then to cap it Victory was always the last to moor on a night long after I had been tethered by my two.  I was beginning to see them in their true light as I listened to them bleating and blaming everything under the sun for being beaten by this little feller when in fact they were plain lazy.
                                                                                                       
                                                                                                             Billy Inkwell Ashtray