A mention by Curly during the Q&A session after my Cruising talk this afternoon (our stand at the Virtual Dinghy Show) reminded me this evening of a delightful story that I heard some years ago from Liverpool Coastguard, who had been involved in the incident.
Curly mentioned the small fleet of GP14s which sailed from Scotland to Northern Ireland as a charity fund-raiser, I think for RNLI, some years ago.
The story from Liverpool Coastguard, which I heard when my club paid them an officially organised visit, concerned another charity fund-raiser; two men (or was it three?) doing the same passage in a bath tub, under outboard motor.
They were highly experienced small boat men, and they did everything right. They had ample reserves of fuel, they put a flotation collar round the bath tub, they carried all the necessary navigational and safety kit, and they arranged for a trawler to escort them.
All went well on the outward passage. It was on the return passage when things went pear-shaped, when the trawler sank, and her crew had to be rescued in the first instance by the bath tub!
Oliver