Make or break situation

How you can get snookered when sailing

- Dave Selby

As last month’s issue of PBO seemed to be almost entirely devoted to sinking, and how to do it, the editor has asked me to be a little bit more buoyant this month, and write something about floating, and how to do it. For this, you will need a boat, and this article will help you acquire the right one.

First some background. We wouldn’t want to give the impression that sinking is all there is to sailing, despite the fact that statistics from the RNLI reveal that at least 100% of the 200 sinking incidents it attended last year involved boats, as my east coast chum John Rogers pointed out in his feature last month about attempting to sink his wife Di on their wedding anniversary.

Di is apparently delighted with the Dick Everitt painting of the episode that John earned for his efforts and presented to her, and he’s promised her a frame for it on their next anniversary.

Moreover, at least 100% of those incidents of sinking were attributed to water, as demonstrated by our American contributor Roger Hughes, who successfully tested the theory by using a hosepipe to fill his boat. So, you see, there seems to be a close correlation between boats, sinking and PBO contributors.