Season's End

Boats at Bridgehouse Marina on the Lancaster Canal, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

The trees at the marina have begun their annual display of russet and gold and the leaves have started to fall and blow around the paths and jetties. As a photographer I can appreciate the colours, the quality of the light and the textures in autumn, but as a boat owner, and more specifically the owner of a boat whose gelcoat is 27 years old, I dread it in almost equal measure. I spent an exhausting weekend in May this year polishing the cabin and roof with 'Fiber (sic) glass Polish and Restorer' in an attempt to protect the gelcoat, but even so I view each leaf as a potential stain, every twig as a possible obstruction in a drainage channel.
Every time I visit the boat, my first job is to wash the debris off the decks and upperworks. If I knew a little more about trees I could identify the leaves that are my mortal enemies and those that are just a nuisance, but I remember the Nature Table at primary school as a place of unfathomable mystery, and my Reader's Digest guide to The Trees of Britain has no useful appendix called 'Leaves that will leave a mark on your Norman 23'. So they all have to be washed off. Every time.
Winter? I can hardly wait.