I left Gosport with a backpack, a credit card, and the delusion that a 1979 Contessa 32 could stay clean by “wiping things down once a week.”
By day 100 I owned twelve cleaning brushes, a laminated cleaning schedule taped inside the companionway, and the religious belief that the right cleaning brushes are cheaper than divorce lawyers.
The Day the Headliner Started Crying
Nine days in, the forepeak ceiling began dripping brown tears onto my pillow. Regular kitchen spray just spread the nicotine stains into bigger halos. A desperate WhatsApp to a liveaboard friend produced salvation: 50/50 white vinegar and the stiff yellow cleaning brush from the £18 Force 4 set. Ten minutes of circular scrubbing and the headliner went from pub-ceiling yellow to wedding-dress white. The vinegar smell vanished in six hours. From that moment I understood: on a small boat, mould isn’t a cosmetic issue; it’s chemical warfare, and cleaning brushes are your only infantry.
The £3,200 Hull Scrub That Cost £18
Week three, Newtown Creek, springs. The waterline dropped two metres below the boot-top and revealed my coppercoat wearing a green hipster beard. Boat speed had fallen from 5.8 to 4.2 knots in the same 12-knot breeze. I tied a bowline round my waist, grabbed the long-handled soft cleaning brush, and spent forty minutes underwater in 14 °C Solent soup. When I climbed back aboard the log jumped to 6.1 knots before I’d even coiled the rope. That single scrub with the cleaning brushes added 0.7 knots for the rest of the season—roughly 150 extra miles of free sailing. A professional hull clean in Hamble would have been £3,200. My total cost: £18 and one numb pair of feet.
The Bilge That Tried to Kill Us
Day 41, diesel bug apocalypse. The bilge water had turned into chocolate milk that smelled like death’s armpit. Every time we heeled, the sludge sloshed into the cabin sole and coated everything in black grease. I pumped fifteen litres into buckets, attacked the metal with the wire cleaning brush meant for barbecue grates, and watched decades of crud curl away in satisfying black spirals. Two hours later the bilge floor was bright enough to see your reflection. I poured in a litre of enzyme bilge cleaner, left it overnight, pumped again, and the smell disappeared forever. From that day forward the cleaning brushes lived on a hook by the companionway like a fire extinguisher—always ready for the next emergency.
The Galley War Nobody Talks About
By day sixty the stove gimbal pins were seized solid with salt and burnt-on curry. The boat came with one green Scotch-Brite that disintegrated after three uses. I invested £14 in three dedicated cleaning brushes—one brass for carbon, one nylon for stainless, one microfibre bottle brush for the thermos flasks. Fifteen minutes every Sunday morning and the galley stayed surgical. Friends who visited larger boats came back whispering about “that weird hospital smell” on our 30-footer. They had no idea it was just vinegar, hot water, and the relentless application of cleaning brushes.
The Final Revelation: Cleaning Is Cheaper Than Replacing
Over 100 days I spent exactly £47 on cleaning brushes and supplies.
I saved:
- £3,200 on a hull scrub
- £900 on new headliner material
- £1,100 on bilge-pump replacements ruined by diesel bug
- £800 on professional detailing Total saved: £6,000. That’s £60 per day lived aboard, paid for by plastic bristles and elbow grease.
If you’re moving aboard anything under 35 ft, buy the twelve-brush set before you buy the solar panels. Because the truth nobody tells you is this: on a small boat, the difference between paradise and floating hell is decided by how religiously you worship at the altar of cleaning brushes.