I confess we missed Excel this year, went on a jolly instead with a few pals crawling around boatyards and marinas in the Eastern Med. Do you know as a result I missed the dreaded Boat Show headache and dripping nose syndrome that lasts for weeks. We came back with crumbling livers but re-enthused having seen lovely looking craft being built from real tree wood on beaches, no CAD design, no tear drop windows, yachts with masts and rigging that could stand umpteen trips round the Horn. We saw engineering solutions straight out of a mad max movie, practical and they worked.

I got back to carrier bags full of bumf brought back by those who thought I should know about the latest multi - cylinder intercooled turbo supercharged probably rocket assisted engines. Some with wonderful rotating drive units that stick though the middle of the bottom therefore doing away with shafts, rudders, bow and stern thrusters, says the blurb. I bet its a worry going through the Barrow Deep, one slight error…. crunch, oh golly, the propeller thingies on the bottom have come off! Bit of a worry that, still you would be able to touch up the antifouling whilst waiting for help as the boat should sit level on the sand.

One company sent me a tube of wonder gunge (black) that they swear will cure the leak over the mates berth. Wonderful, £250K of research to replace a bit of caulking cotton. We have used it but the plastic butter tray is still hanging from the deckhead in case the drip finds a way through. It must be a sign that I am getting older as I maintain that in 150 years we have had few completely new innovations, even the wonder gunge is a substitute for putty and red lead. Before you all cry ‘rubbish’, The steam engine, steam turbine, radar and perhaps GRP were all new original ideas completely outside the frame. I was reading a technical journal the other day and do you know some chap at a University has extracted the fibrous strands that you find in old carrots, he impregnated these strands with some disgusting two-part stuff and got something stronger and lighter than carbon fibre.

This is exciting innovative stuff, stand aside, I’m off to the garden centre to get some carrot seeds going to grow a new Cheoy Lee Trawler.