David Weston shows that nautical wisdom can be proved wrong
There is a saying that the two most useless articles on a yacht are a Naval Officer and an umbrella.
As a former Engineer Officer in the Merchant Navy, I will avoid comment on the utility of our friends in the Grey Funnel Line. I do believe however that there is a place for the humble brolly.
Our family cruising yacht was equipped with the old type of port and starboard navigation lights, mounted on the pulpit. These needed attention every few months to clean the corrosion from the bulb connections.
This fiddly operation was always a worry, as anything dropped swiftly ended up in Davy Jones’ Locker. We have now replaced the old units with LED lights, which are brighter and should hopefully be maintenance free. In order to ensure these did not become victims of my fumbling during fitting, the brolly was deployed as a safety net ‘just in case’.
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