You wouldnt believe how much people eat when theyre on a boat. Ive been slaving down here in this galley like well, a galley slave. Must be all that salt air.

Not that the air down here in is particularly fresh. Something to do with the loo. They all seem to think lifes too short to pump a toilet.

The toilet isnt the only thing thats primitive on this 36 foot bath toy weve hired for the weekend. Before we left port yesterday, a bloke with a grey beard showed us the ropes.

His language was so archaic it was like watching a foreign film. Why call it a cleat when thing you wind the rope around would do? He kept trying to scare us with stories about people getting beached and having to be rescued. Silly old barnacle.

I didnt much like the way he smiled when we waved him goodbye and motored away from the wharf without pulling the rope off the thingee he called a bollard. We werent trying to demolish the wharf.

Nautical door heights havent changed since the Battle of Trafalgar which accounts for the huge lumps on my head. Not that Im complaining. Nothing worse than a belligerent sailor.

I dont mind being stuck down here really. I much prefer roosting in the woody womb of the vessel to being up there white knuckling the wheel and screaming.

But I only did that once yesterday. Sailings like war, Ive decided long periods of boredom interspersed with brief moments of life threatening terror.

I was steering through a stretch of perfectly empty water, when suddenly hundreds of little yachts started whirling around us like angry bees.

The famous camaraderie of the seas went right out the porthole. Youd think the Anglo Saxons had invented only one word.

I can still see the faces of the yachtsmen I nearly sliced in half - pale and open-mouthed like portraits of the damned in a medieval painting.

A miss is as good as a mile, I said. But they told me go downstairs and cook dinner. All they think about is their stomachs.

Soon after, my husband visited me in the galley saying he needed the radio. Well, the boat does have a nice cd player. No, he said, wed run aground.

The man with the grey beards smile seemed to have widened an extra few centimentres when he turned up in a yellow rescue launch. He told us to sit on the far side of the boat while he tied a rope around the mast and hauled us out of the mud.

The yacht leaned on such a sharp angle as he roared off into the distance we were heaved into the air like acrobats from Cirque du Soleil.

Things quietened down after that. We anchored overnight in a bay. Now theyre hungry again. And they expect meals from a pathetic excuse for a fridge.

If theyre not careful Ill throw in the tea towel and run away to sea.

Helens email: notnuts@bigpond.com