I now realise that if I want to continue to sail with Boaters I need to diet.
And so methinks do many of our Members.
This may seem a bit harsh and a bit drastic but given what I heard at the Skippers Question Time drastic action must be the order of the day for many if not all of us.
For those of you who missed what I thought was a truly excellent and informative evening, a question was posed along the lines of how should we rescue from someone the sea when they might weigh considerably more than the fenders with which we normally practice our man overboard technique.
Now I do not mean to be rude when I say this but taking one look around the room on the night I would posit that there cannot be a single Boater, male or female, who does not weigh considerably more than all the fenders on the boat combined.
And that is when our clothes are not weighed down by water.
But it was the answer that scared me.
And if anyone needs any more motivation to diet and lose weight, this must be it.
The panel were unanimous on the answer. Don’t fall in.
Brilliant advice!
On a par with the warning notice on a packet of peanuts that ‘this packet may contain nuts’.
I am not aware of anyone who has ever chosen to go overboard. But people do and when they do we must be prepared know how to pluck people from the sea.
And I for one have always placed my faith in Boaters Skippers to hoist me from the fishy waters.
It seems like I may have been wrong. And here is the really scary thing.
No one had a really clear idea how they would get someone of our weight on-board.
The consensus from my reading of what was said is that basically if you go over you are dead. Don’t expect us to get you out. We can’t. You are too heavy. And by the way your safety harness is not going to do you much good.
Thanks, lads (and lady).
Makes me wonder why we spend so much time on our RYA courses learning how to rescue fenders.
We might be great at recovering those but our ability to apply this learning to Boaters Members at peril on and in the sea seems very limited.
And I am not sure that this is limited to Boaters Skippers. There are plenty of articles seemingly which reinforce the news that MOB drills for real rarely work.
Unless the RNLI are within escort distance of the boat.
But have you ever seen a boat with stand-on RNLI tender?
Alternatively we could ask our Sailing Secretary to take into account our BMI index when allocating crews.
That way we might be assured that should we hit the water, there is at least the chance we will have the people on board with the size and stature to get us back onto dry land.
Or I could diet.
It might at least give me a fighting chance if I can get my weight down to Fender Weight.
And even if it doesn’t improve my survival chances, I will look great in my bikini next year.
