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Thanks for all your comments, have finished with a lot of help. Sadly not on Boatman’s wavelength, finally got the theme .
FOI 7 thanks to actonhighstreet
LOI 3
COD superb 26 that was on my wavelength
One or two still to finish parsing ie 9 get the cut down tree but not the rest.

In 9 "One cool" is 1, 5 where the 5 isn't the first "cool" that came to mind.

Just revisiting the forum now and I think it's quite revealing. Ordinarily by now I think we'd be at least 7 pages down. But we're only at 5. This leads me to think Boatman is a setter people think is tricky but actually easier than it seems. Or they dislike him/her so much they don't bother and hence don't come to the forum. Just an observation but I quite like the psychology of it.

Thanks geeker, will take another look at it.
Rocky interesting comment, actually I usually don’t even try Boatman puzzles when he/she comes up in Guardian n weekly.

I don’t bother with Boatman. A couple of years ago one of his puzzles omitted the special instructions required to solve it, and he refused to confirm or deny if it was a mistake. I lost interest then. Setters need to respect solvers who give up their time to attempt their puzzles.

Given the context it was easy to choose the wrong tv personality. I went with JS and created a number of plausible options.

In reference to 24.
Otherwise I actually enjoyed the quirky nature of many of the clues.

My original answer to 22d was based on thus particular Boatman's craft, and on reflection was more a description of him than the craft. But it stymied me for 22a.

Finished, having only started today (busy day yesterday and got very stuck on the Sandwich Sudoku). Neded a few nudges from the forum, thanks- and hadn't spotted the theme but once it was pointed out solved a nice little flurry of clues, some of which almost solved themselves (I only had 1st letter of 16d, but given the theme ...!)

Still puzzled by the "depth symbol" of 12a: in what context?

I had decided 3d was "dockstrike" as matching all 4 crossers and stopping [trade on] water, though should have been "4,5", but baffled by its parsing, till I looked at CrosswordSolver and got the right, nicely clued, answer!

FOI: 21a
LOI: 23d, a new word
COD: let's go for 3d after all!

Hi Pam,

12a - Don't hold me to this, but I think the wordplay is saying that the second word ??? of the first word is the abbreviation for "depth".