Here in Suffolk, on a frosty new year’s morning, a walk across the common always takes me to the river, its fast tides churning and tugging at the row of boats on stagings beyond high water wooden walkways over the mud. Some moorings have lately become very smart and posh, even boasting stern signs about privacy; a few are still rickety.

This always reminds me of when we were selling the 32-footer with its pathetically weak little 7hp engine: I showed the first set of buyers over and they asked me to run the engine. I did, and even put it in ahead and astern for a moment: I think they were quite impressed that it made the little rotting wharf shiver alarmingly and the walkway wobble.

I did not mention that if it had been a half-decent cruising engine it would probably have dragged the whole splintering shebang down to the North Sea on the fast ebb.

But that was long ago, and as I say the river staging has mainly become smart and solid enough for owners to be happy leaving a few boats there afloat over winter, with the same relative insouciance that we did for years in Brixham marina and Dartmouth, and indeed long before that when the Contessa 26 lived on tricky fore-and-aft buoys in the middle of the Hamble.

I walk now along our Suffolk riverbank, towards the remains of the pier and the open sea, and take note of the boats which seem still, on the far side of Christmas, to be in commission and visited by their owners. Maybe, on a fine day, taken out for a winter sail or chug along the coast, nicely calculated to get back in as close to slack water as they can.

Sometimes there are even winter cruisers visiting, borrowing a mooring, though as a rule they wisely go on the town side with a proper wharf and a boatyard.

But walking along, I watch and judge (oh yes, never pretend we don’t all judge one another, it’s the only way we learn).

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There was a wonderfully hardy couple there in the cold snap last November, wrapped up Shackleton-style with hardly a nose or ear in view, who appeared to have devoted their weekend to installing a new galley in a Nicholson 32, since they were teetering to and fro along the ridged path and then the wooden walkway in a bitter wind, clutching items like a two-burner gas hob, a roll of pipework and pieces of wood.

I longed to ask about it and whether they had any heating down below, but it seemed unkind to make either unwrap their mouth enough to answer.

Besides, I was envious of their comparative youth and determination. We had that once: our first baby was born in November and we somehow couldn’t see any reason why, in January, we shouldn’t all nip down to Essex, breastfed infant and all, to ‘do a few jobs’ on the Contessa.

That is how it is, when you’re still profoundly, lunatically in love with the fact of having a real seagoing boat of your own, doting on its every plank and spar and winch like a Jilly Cooper heroine emoting about Rupert Campbell-Black’s broad shoulders and powerful haunches.

You have a weekend off and so, obviously, you just go down to worship it and make plans for the spring, despite the filthy winter weather and the fact that you won’t get anything done because your hands will be too cold and it will get dark at half-past three, and you’ll probably eat a burger off the dodgy van out of desperation because you were kidding yourself when you made that healthy picnic.

Watching that pair build their galley I saluted them mentally and walked on. And remembered our own deep-winter attempt to screw a few fittings on our beloved first boat, while keeping a multi-wrapped new baby warm near the feeble katabatic heater, and occasionally exposing my chilled frontage enough to give him a feed.

We laughed at ourselves for it, and got little done, but the instinct was healthy. You really have to love a boat, not just own it. The baby seemed perfectly relaxed about the whole thing, fed and slept and looked around the little boat with approval. Why wouldn’t he?

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