Worried of Epsom

Perusing the cruise pages of yesterday's Telegraph over breakfast this morning, we became concerned about safety. Not only did the cruise liners on offer look absolutely huge and ride far too high in the water to stay upright in any kind of a sea, there only appeared to be eight lifeboats to a side, for maybe 4,000 souls, including crew, dancers, doctors and other hangers on. Whereas my memory of my only trip on a liner, the 'Empress of Canada', has two rows of lifeboats to each side, and probably rather more than eight to a row.

But a few clicks later all is revealed. Modern lifeboats can hold 370 people apiece, with somebody called Schat-Harding in the lead. With Mr. Schat being, or having been, an innovative marine engineer from Norway.

So the ultimate cruise experience is being herded into one of these lifeboats and then bounding around in a North Atlantic winter storm for a few days while the rescue operation is organised. Winter storms which can take the tops of waves well up the superstructure of even the largest cruise ships.

I couldn't turn up a decent image of an orange Schat-Harding boat, but the yellow job above does give the general idea. But what I did turn up was various orange, Schat-Harding versions of the boat noticed at reference 1.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/zanussi-or-bust.html.