> There's also the "Technical Manual" quotes section. Such as the CPS training manual, chapter 1 :
>
> "Before the anchor is cast, it is imperative to check that the line is tied to both the boat, and the anchor."

Yep. They really do need to teach the average boat owner things like that, because in my experience the average boat owner has less brains than the stuff growing on the bottom of his boat.

True story: There was a guy who got into minor (ie, non-life-threatening) difficulty on board a small sailboat in Auckland Harbour a while back. He had no radio, no other means of signalling for help (these people never do), and the only one of the dozens of international distress signals he could remember was: a fire. You already know where this is heading, don't you. Yep. He had some petrol. He had a bucket. He had a lighter. As a means of attracting attention, it was one hundred and ten percent successful, especially after his entire boat burned to the waterline and sank.

Another of my favourite Coastguard stories involves the guy who was bright enough to know that he had a dangerous amount of fuel vapour lurking in the bottom of the bilge, and that it shouldn't be there. However, he wasn't bright enough to know that an electric vacuum cleaner wasn't a very good way of getting it out. Again, though, it was technically successful, since most of the vapour probably escaped when the explosion blew one side of his boat off.

...in case anyone asks, the *right* way to remove heavier-than-air fuel vapour from the bilges of a boat is in a bucket. It works, plus there's nothing funnier than watching someone carefully filling bucket after bucket with apparently nothing and then tipping it out over the side of the boat.