Armchair sailing

This from Elaine Bunting's excellent blog on the Yachting World website: • Small amounts of alcohol will be permitted at Happy Hour and on special occasions • No smoking below decks. If you must smoke please consider other crew and make sure all ash and smoke goes overboard • Drugs on board: none, thank you • Please keep heads, showers and yourself clean. Smelly loos and crew are not welcome • Watchkeepers: steer at least half of your watch to conserve valuable energy • Try to save power by turning off all unnecessary lights, appliances, instruments, etc • Water will not be rationed but when showering please turn off shower head when washing body and hair and rinse off with minimum amount of water • Please make as little noise at night as possible so as not to disturb others. No speakers on deck • Lifejackets must be worn and harnesses attached to jackstays on all night watches. Person coming off watch must check new watchkeeper is wearing lifejacket, Life Tag and harness is clip...

I was directed earlier to the Crewseekers site which is a whole lot nearer to real sailing that the books I wrote about yesterday. This uses an intriguing business model where yacht owners can post for free and prospective crews have to pay a subscription of, currently, £60 a half year to access details of the sailing opportunities. Good thinking! You have to be careful to get the hyphen in the URL as crewseekers.com takes you straight to a site about rabbit mating. Strange.....but true.