Signs Sillery

Over the past few years we have been slowly removing the signs and stickers that have littered various parts of the boat urging us not to smoke, stand on the roof, throw razor blades down the toilet and so on.

We think that by now we can remember most of that stuff anyway, and have become quite adept at giving a little safety talk when friends arrive, so they soon get into the swing of this boating thing.  Things like:

“If we sink, lifejackets are stored at the back of the cupboard near the bed, but you’ll have to lie on your stomach, take the electrical cables and spare bike parts out, pull out the camping chairs, bump the hanging clothes out of the way, unzip the storage bag and pull them out one at a time.   Alternatively, we suggest you simply climb onto the roof, and step ashore.”

We have a set routine for warning others to hold on while descending the aft steps as well, they are very slippery.   Perhaps it is because we don’t have a sign there, that one of us, after carefully demonstrating to Jenny and Colin the correct method of holding on and taking care, immediately demonstrated the incorrect method.

The injury could have been worse. As it is in that perverse turn of logic that describes one as “lucky” that the accident could have been worse when if one had been truly “lucky” there’d have been no accident, and even after almost a week the “lucky girl” still whimpers a bit while transitioning from horizontal to vertical.

So today a lay day was called, one in which she was forbidden to move from the horizontal, and she didn't either, except to wash everything that wasn’t bolted down.  I have made an “out of order” sign to hang on the machine for next time.