So, you’ve saved up for two years and you’re on a ship that’s bigger than the Titanic and, so far, you’re having the holiday of a lifetime until… 

Come 9:30pm though there’s a bit of a thud and by 9:45pm the bar you were drinking at is now leaning at the jaunty angle of 22 degrees and you can’t stand up straight even if you were sober.  What do you do?  You do what every self respecting sea traveller would do; you panic in your native tongue!  And right there is the heart of the problem when it comes to abandoning a floating hotel.

Of course, it doesn’t helps if you have a captain who’s the first one in a lifeboat but asides from that, you’ve got a multinational crew who are all telling you not to panic, despite the fact the ship has tipped over to one side.  Could this sinking been avoided?  Well, after the nautical nits came to me for advice, I’m glad to say it could have, so here’s my 4-point plan for the future of sea safety.

The first issue to address is the height of the ship.  Why keep building them upwards, why not spread the load and put the different levels side by side?  Hey, what’s wrong with a square ship, it’ll be more bloody stable than a namby pamby single hulled effort thank you very much.

Next on this list – sea cones!  Well, we have them on our roads!  Bloody great orange cones 50 feet high, that’ll keep the ships well away from any under water boulders.  And let’s not forget about adding some sea traffic lights?  It works perfectly well on our roads.  But I draw the line at round-abouts, that’s just plain stupid.  However, I am looking into the possibilities of a wet shoulder.

Now, it’s come to my attention the captain of the Costa Concordia has been arrested, notably after the messages between him and the coastguard were recorded.  Yeah well, you dropped a bollock there son!  “I hit a rock that shouldn’t have been there,” he said.  What a twat.  So, we can safely say that underwater charts are a waste of time and dangerous.  My solution, raise up all of the rocks under the water line so everyone knows where they are!

When questioned, Capt Francesco Schettino then added to his statement, “I was thrown in the water when the ship tipped over.”  Yeah, what straight into a lifeboat – I DON’T THINK SO!  It seems as if the Italian language has changed over the years, because, “Get back on board,” now translates as,

“E-v-e-r-y-o-n-e  f-o-r  t-h-e-m-s-e-l-v-e-s,” or “R-u-n-a-w-a-y.” in certain quarters. 

Keep your eyes peeled for a return to this story, I can’t wait for the trial…

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2012 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Neils Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.