It’s been a very trying time, the last few months.

Due to the work situation, being that I didn’t have any for a few months, I’ve had to move away from my life on the Fraser Coast to the Big Smoke. I don't know why no-one wants to employ me. Maybe because, as one potential employer told me “you're thicker than frozen tabby turds", whatever that means.

Anyway, now I'm good, at least until the boss has more to do with me!

It's been pretty tough, but even tougher has been the need to part with things that will no longer fit in the new house. And I've been forced to sell my greatest love. That's my boat, not my wife.

Now I read those chat room things, and I see the heartbreaking wailing from men forced to this desperate action. I just never thought it would happen to me.

Selling your boat is a bit like selling one of your kids, except harder. And as I’ve discovered, the biggest mistake you can make is to try to sell your boat for what it’s worth. My advice is to pick a number, divide it by two, and then halve it. That’ll go close to giving you a fair price.

But unless you’ve owned a boat, you have no idea how much cashola goes into keeping it from sinking.

Most boats are surrounded by a break in the time-space continuum. A careless examination of a tinny on any given day won’t show the vast amounts of time and capital that have gone into making it seaworthy. You have to look at tinnies sort of from the side of your eye, like a dim star on a dark night, or Phil Gould.

So it’s an easy mistake to make then, putting an unrealistic price on your pride and joy. You understand the sacrifices that have been made in time and clams, but the bloke you’re trying to sell it to can’t see that at all. All he sees, usually, is an unremarkable piece of aluminium or glass that’s worth about a quarter of what is being asked for it.

Your only hope is to get him to look at it sideways. At least that’s the theory I’m working under. So don’t get too upset if a boat you’ve gone to look at is surrounded by nubile blonds in bikinis drinking cans of lager. It’s only me trying to get the price I think I deserve.