I should know better

I suppose I will go ahead and confess to the sordid shipwreck story.

Palm trees shedding coconuts on desert island beaches are not involved here. Readjust your anticipation - we are on Loch Lomond in a rising force 5 on a chilly September day. I can hear the rushing noise as dozens (note the optimism) of you quit the blog at once. Sensible you - we should have done the same on that day. But we were trying a new boat, and sense was not on board.

Suffice it to say we tried a really hairy gybe and capsized. Right over. Keel in the air. Stuck there clinging to the hull, suddenly totally aware that the loch is a glaciated one and almost 700 feet deep in the middle.

Well, we floated in and at last came ashore on one of the larger islands as dusk was falling. I squelched out, very glad of dry land. The boat owner staggered out and sat down suddenly. I noticed that he had stopped shivering.

"How are you?" I asked.

"I can`t hear you," he replied.

Immediately the manual flashed before my eyes. The First Aid manual, that is. In eidetic clarity I saw the page on hypothermia. What was the stage after progressive loss of senses? Ah yes - coma and death. And what was the remedy? Of course - instant immersion in a hot bath.

I gazed around hopefully at the darkening island Under the scrubby bushes no steaming hot baths lurked. I realised that the manual expected you to suffer hypothermia in your own home, or at worst in a really good hotel.

But - I knew there were summer houses on the island. They would all be locked up and probably the power shut down, but they were the only thing on offer. I dragged the patient uphill through the brambles until we found one. It wasn`t too hard to break in.

I was lucky. It was damp and dismal, but I could switch the power on. We had heat and light. But it was going to take some time before anything approaching a hot bath materialised. Were there any other remedies.?

I racked my memory. Warm the patient by total body contact.........there must be another way.

Stimulate the circulation.

This is where it gets a bit like a Hammer film. Not for the faint hearted. Remember, I had to improvise. In a dismal damp room on a deserted island, lit by a 40 watt bulb, I stripped the lad and rubbed him vigorously all over with offcuts of coconut matting. It`s the scene they cut out of Treasure Island, I suppose, but it would fit in well with the old traditional seagoing punishments - the cat, the keelhauling and the coconut matting -" Oh please cap`n, not that! Not the coconut matting......!"

I often wonder how he explained the scars in later life......

Yes we survived, and at dawn righted the boat and got back to the mainland.

I phoned work, it now being Monday. I always remember that call.

"I won`t be in today. I`ve been shipwrecked."

Kept close to home by a bad chest, I am mesmerised by the Olympics. There`s something about the constant enormous output of energy, usually futile if British, and the hypnotic adulation of the commentators - "a magnificent achievement by Bloggs to finish seventh in the repechage!"

Let`s face it, we Brits don`t do sport. At least when we do, we contrive not to notice it. If you ask any man about his interests he will answer "Sport", and if questioned he will shout "Football!" (Men are given to shouting about sport.)

Now if an African had answered "football", he would mean that he played for a local team and aspired to greater things. If a British male says football is his hobby, his idea of participation involves a sofa with his mates and three crates of lager, in front of the telly.

And we don`t admit to the existence of other forms of sport. Anyone who takes part in a sport not involving a ball is a sad anorak, or, if the sport involves expensive equipment, a posh git, or if it involves horses, a posh girlie git. And the problem is that we are not bad at activities involving equipment and horses.

We are, for instance, quite good at sailing - how amazing for islanders! It gets a grudging coverage on television, resented perhaps because it isn`tseen to be competitive, violent, nasty, fast or involving drink bad language and foul behaviour...........

Well, they haven`t been there.

There`s a rule in racing that if a crew member goes overboard you HAVE to stop and pick him up, or forfeit the race. It has to be a rule. If it wasn`t, race waters would be littered with bobbing heads and echoing with plaintive drowning cries - nothing must get in the way of winning. I was always amazed that there wasn`t a rule about not carrying torpedoes.

As a hard man Vinnie Jones would sink without trace (probably literally) in competitive sailing.

The ways of nobbling your opponent by denying him wind, and therefore forward motion, are many. I rermember crewing for a man with three other women as he employed two of these means and sent the nearest rival scuttering off on a premature and losing tack. He leaned over and shouted graciously to the defeated competitor:

"That`s fixed you, you bastard! Not bad for a crew of bloody women, eh!"

Well, I don`t have to tell you what came next, girls. The crew dropped everything and sat down. The boat came into irons and just wallowed there. Like Bligh he stood there at the tiller, a small man astounded by mutiny, perhaps with visions of floating breadfruit and exile in a small boat........well we could have set him adrift in the rubber dinghy and thrown his lunch in the water after him. It was a slow quiet sail home.

Men who go down to the sea in ships are hard, but the women are made of titanium..

Sometime I`ll tell you about the time I was shipwrecked.

Meanwhile I`m going back to the telly. The Beach Volleyball heats are on......