Today’s post comes from Trail Baboon’s resident risk-minimizing maven Bathtub Safety Officer Rafferty.

At ease civilians!

But never feel SO at ease that you topple off your speeding boat and are left stranded in the ocean overnight, forced to tread water for 14 hours while praying that someone will find you even though you are miles from shore without a life jacket and have no means to call for help.

Farfetched?

Yes, it’s true I have been accused of less-than-positive thinking in a worst-case-scenario- worshipping kind of way. But before you call me a fantastical alarmist, know that this happened to some people over the weekend, and miraculously they lived to tell the tale, otherwise we might never know that any of this occurred.

And the tale is not finished. Yet to come – details on what they were doing when they fell overboard, and why they were not wearing flotation devices. One can only guess at the possibilities, and while all of the options I’ve imagined are foolhardy and some are downright embarrassing, none of them are worse than perishing in the sea at night.

See? That’s somewhat positive, thinking-wise!

And I hope this will be a powerful safety lesson to everyone – don’t ever go anywhere on the ocean. I know some people like to go there for fish and others for flotsam, but let’s face it – the ocean is too big and powerful and you can easily get lost out there. There is a reason humans don’t have fins, flippers or gills. Every time I notice these things about myself, I’m glad I didn’t join the merchant marine.

Plus, the ocean is packed full of scary creatures like stinging jellyfish and great white sharks. I happen to know from a careful examination of movies and TV shows that sharks are pretty much everywhere. You can’t go swimming in any kind of a movie without running into one, and they are especially fond of terrorizing us. Throughout my personal movie-viewing history, sharks have been the leading ominous music-triggering creatures, even more so than bears or Bigfoot.

Again, strictly from a safety-oriented viewpoint, it is crystal clear that we have no business on or near the ocean!

You may argue that a journey aboard a cruise ship is a fairly safe way to experience the sea but I would advise against it. A quick check online revealed that getting thrown off the back of a cruise ship by a nefarious stranger, while it is something that never ever actually happens, is still a vivid fear that requires, among other things, at least one what-to-do-if explainer from Wikihow.

If I were going on a cruise (which I would never do), I’d memorize this protocol because being heaved off the aft deck by a psychopath is almost certainly a death sentence. That said, making every move on the checklist is important and you should do it.

But note that by the time we get to step #10, you are being advised to “… console yourself with memories of good times.” There is very little hope left at this point, though the Wikihow authors are quite optimistic that in your final moments you’ll somehow be able to remember what they said about the proper frame of mind.

That’s positive thinking!

Yours in low-risk travel,
Bathtub Safety Officer Rafferty

How long can you tread water?