Why I am never retiring!

In which Lucy L Ford attends a sea survival course – a birthday present from The Skipper

‘You have be able to jump into the sea
when the time comes’… I can’t wait

Apparently when we retire we are sailing round the world. In preparation for this great event, for my birthday The Skipper gave me a ‘Sea Survival Course’!
“You’ll need to know how to get into a life raft when we sail to the Falklands” … well doesn’t that thought just fill you with confidence! The Falklands is probably a bit ambitious for someone who to date, has never managed to go beyond Le Havre or La Rochelle “… and you have to jump off the top diving board at the swimming pool in your oilskins … you have to know what to do, and be able to jump into the sea, when the time comes.” … I can’t wait!

I then learnt that he had also signed up most of the yacht club on this course … he probably got my ticket half price … but I had no intention of simulating a beached whale, clad in luminous yellow in front of his cronies … so … I paid my son to attend in my place.
Crossing the channel has got to be the highlight of every summer holiday. After tangoing with a few tankers, the Skipper always celebrates the relief of clearing the shipping lanes (fog free, thankfully), by putting up full sail. Such a great idea just as the tide changes and the sea kicks up wind against spring tide. So there we are 10 miles south of Portland Bill, fish swimming past the window, over canvassed as usual. As the anemometer registers 36 knots, and we take it green in the cockpit, the coastguard reads the work of fiction that is called the inshore weather forecast.

“Wind: North-East 3-4 decreasing 2-3 later. Sea- state slight to moderate.” Complete fiction. Is it ever anything less than 7 gusting 8, out here? But I suppose we are not exactly ‘inshore’.

When the anemometer hits 40 knots, the Skipper decides to clamber out on deck to do a bit of reefing. This usually triggers complete neurosis and visions of him being swept overboard. At this point I do wonder whether I should have done that sea survival course after all. I also wonder if the seas around the Falklands are any better, and vow that I am never retiring!
It would have been more comfortable on the ‘Vomit-Comet’. But to have suggested that would have been to “Spoil the holiday.” As if slopping and slamming around ten miles south of Portland Bill, isn’t the highlight of mine!

Well I suppose it beats “shoes-on, shoes-off, belt-on, belt-off”; or being taken aside for extra searching, because I managed to set all the airport security alarms off. I think they get airport security guards from the same box that they keep the traffic wardens in. The rather officious woman, who more than touched me up, ‘was not amused’ when I suggested that ‘the underwired bra’, might be the cause.