My holiday’s always involve lots of gumboots (otherwise known as Wellie’s or Rain boots in other parts of the world). The reason for this is that I’m nearly always in the Marlborough Sounds where the beaches are rocky and there is a good tidal flow. Years of experience have taught me that it’s always better to wear gumboots when walking around the beach. They protect your ankles from barnacle scratches and being bashed by rocks, and you get the added advantage that if the tide comes in just that little bit too much before I’m back home, I can still get back without getting my feet wet! The other advantage is that they are easy to slip on and off.

Other uses for gumboots

Try as I might, I find I also wear gumboots a good deal of the time when I’m not walking around the beach. They are the best attire for gardening which is a bit like bush bashing. It usually means I’m up a bank pulling out saplings, slashing foliage, grubbing out plants, pruning, sawing and then dragging all the foliage with the sharp sticky-outy bits down to what is affectionately known as the ‘dump’ (i.e. the big pile of foliage remains after pruning). There are many opportunities to be poked, stabbed, jabbed, squashed, bruised and bitten during this process.

Gumboots are also the best attire for running down to the jetty, launching dinghy’s and kayaks, and late night jaunts to the jetty for various missions. They are fast to get on and off when one is in a hurry, and have the added advantage of keeping your ankles warm on a cold night.

So why, you might ask, would I ned to run down to the jetty late at night?

Good question - and this is where the dressing gowns come in.

When the Southerlies come

Our bay is pretty sheltered, except for when there is a Southerly when it comes straight in the bay and rips up the hill. We’ve had some fairly interesting experiences with boats flipping and outboard engine’s being damaged as a result. We even had our boat end up on the beach with a hole in the hull after a particularly strong Southerly - not great at all.

During this latest holiday we had an inflatable dinghy tied up at the jetty and, of course, a Southerly came through and got worse as the evening wore on. As we prepared for bed there was some discussion as to what we should do - leave the boat where it was and assume the Southerly would amount to nothing, or do something about it now.

And now for the dressing gowns

The male in the house told us we were being stupid and wanted nothing to do with it. After more discussion my sister and I finally donned our gumboots and dressing gowns and trooped down to the jetty in the dark with our torches.

It was windy and choppy but luckily the tide was reasonably high which meant we wouldn’t have to pull up the dinghy too far. Unfortunately it had the outboard on the back though which made it really heavy. After struggling with it up the beach for a while, we also realised there was water in the bottom of the dinghy, so opening the bung and letting that out helped quite a bit! With some of the weight gone, we dragged it up over the rocks, slipped and slithered our way over the seaweed, tripped over the sticks and debris at the top of the beach and managed to get it on the grass where we left it safely for the night - tied up of course.

Was it worth it?

The wind raged through the night and then settled down. The dinghy was fine sitting on the grass, tied up by the boat shed.

You may wonder whether it was all worth it. Well, having got up numerous times over the years in the wee small hours of the morning to fix or rescue something in a storm, I’ve learnt it’s better to listen to my intuition and take action when my mind tells me to. Both my sister and I would have woken several times during the night and worried about the dinghy - no doubt getting up at some stage deep in the night to do something about it.

I’m not always good at listening to my intuition. Case in point was the queue for the ferry the other day. My intuition said go in the left hand queue, so I went in the right hand queue. Guess which one took three times as long? 🙄

But in the case of the dinghy I did listen to it. Did we save the dinghy from flipping and causing damage to the motor - who knows? And that’s the problem with intuition. You don’t really know whether you avoided something or not, because it never happened. But it COULD have. And it if had, we would have really kicked ourselves for not listening to our intuition. It also would have been expensive as we no doubt would have had to fix the damage to the outboard being submerged in water for several hours, and then there is the inconvenience of not have a dinghy when we most need it.

So I’ve learnt over the years, it’s always better to put on my gumboots and dressing gown and listen to my intuition rather than ignore it, no matter what anyone else says.

Karen