The companionway washboard in cockpit table mode

There were three of us sitting in Samsara’s cockpit as the sun went down over Spanish Water in Curacao . That was when the conversation turned to the size of the cockpit.

Well, it would do, given the size of said cockpit and the fact that there were three of us in it with the table up (actually the companionway washboard balanced on the tiller in its alternative role as a repository for coffee cups, beer bottles, breakfast, and – as I sit under the awning writing this – the laptop and a cup of tea).

It does mean there was even less room for the three of us because, in order to stop the rudder moving as yet another giant RIB roared past with 20hp on the back and the remote throttle all the way forward, the tiller had to be immobilised by means of a wooden strut and its opposing shock cord made off on the headsail cleat.

It works rather well. I always did want a cockpit table.

But it does mean there is only room for three.

The other two were Caroline and Fred, a Dutch couple in a 42footer who had adopted me when I arrived and drove me into Willemstad for Immigration, Customs and the Harbour Authority (to tell me where to anchor). The least I could do was invite them aboard for a beer.

“Did you ever think you would like a bigger boat?” Caroline asked, by way of making conversation (she was jammed on the far side of the table. It could have been worse, she could have been on the side with strut and the shock cord.

“No, never,” I told her. “There are a lot of advantages to a small boat. I can lift the anchor in one hand to bring it on deck (and most people would still consider it over-sized).

“I can turn round in marinas without giving everyone heart attacks.

“I can climb the mast without chickening out before I get to the top.”

“Everything is cheaper – including the boat herself…”

And all of this has become a talking point in the beach bars of the Caribbean – and the Tuamotus, for all I know, and the marina terraces all the way up the Hamble…and certainly Uncle J’s hamburger joint in Spanish Water where last night I sat drinking Heineken with a Englishman, a Dutchman and a German – and no, this is not the beginning of a joke.

Instead, we discussed big boats – very big boats. In particular, the tragedy of the Bayesian, the superyacht that capsized in a totally unexpected waterspout off the coast of Italy, drowning 12 people including her owner, tech mogul Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, who was just about to start at Oxford.

Yes, it is a tragedy. But no, it would never have happened to our boats – smaller boats, sensible boats.

The facts will emerge eventually of course – in a court somewhere where reputations will weigh in the balance and a price will be put on life of young Hannah, so full of promise, whose body was the last to be brought up from the bottom.

But that’s what you get, we decided, when you want to have the second tallest mast in the world (well, obviously you don’t. You want the tallest – but the case isn’t difficult to argue).

And a mast that tall with however many sails all hoisted and ready to go would weigh as much as any one of our boats – certainly mine. I’m only about eight tonnes all up.

Then, there’s the other side – the retractable keel (which was, apparently, retracted). The keel is for stability – to make the boat pop back up if she gets knocked down. I got knocked down last autumn running into Storm Babet on the way to the Canaries.

So, the boat was full of water. So, the 10mm bolt holding the gooseneck together snapped like a twig, four metres of teak toe-rail popped off with nothing but the sheer force of water. Sails torn, fridge inverted (in contravention of the instructions) big spanner in the sink, a single kernel of sweetcorn lodged on the top of a picture frame…

But the boat popped back up. She carried on sailing – all the way to Las Palmas.

Nobody died. Nobody got sued.

Small boat, you see…

Small boats are the answer.

I never knew that saving my own life would be so complicated. Believe me, it is much easier to drown.

If you have read Old Man Sailing – or even Faster, Louder, Riskier, Sexier – you will be familiar with my attitude to drowning. I have devoted several pages to the alternative, which is to grow so old and decrepit that I end up in some care home with a jolly girl in a plastic apron saying: “Never mind, let’s get you cleaned up…”

Believe me, I could not bear it. Far better, I reasoned, to fall over the side and watch my boat sailing away on her course into the sunset. How long would I be able to tread water? Until night falls? And then I would float on my back and look at the stars and contemplate my life and whether or not I had lived it as best I could – and all the other things people think about when they know it will be coming to an end soon.

That was why, when I fitted out Samsara in 2017, I did not install an EPIRB. I told Tamsin and the children that, if I should be long overdue arriving at my destination, they were not to instigate a search and rescue operation. Either I would turn up or I wouldn’t.

Now I am 75. I heard the other day that my old friend Kim Sengupta, foreign correspondent (war correspondent, mostly) of The Independent had died – in his sleep, in his own bed in London, from a heart attack at 68.

Clearly, I’m supposed to be dead by now – EPIRBs are for younger people.

I did begin to wonder whether I should have one in the middle of the Atlantic in 2020 when I was escaping from the first COVID Lockdown. World trade was non-existent. Pleasure boating was banned. I realised just how alone I was out there, and that if I should need to be rescued, there would be nobody passing by for me to call for help.

But there was nothing I could do about it, so I stopped worrying.

Yet now I have bought an EPIRB. I went into St George’s on the bus (one of those wonderful 18-seater Grenadian buses that come along every three minutes and take you wherever you want to go… and sometimes kick you off because the driver has spotted 18 people waiting on the other side of the road wanting to the other way…)

I had been thinking about an EPIRB ever since the crossing from the Cape Verdes. It was late in the season because I had been delayed by the knockdown repairs in the Canaries and then there were the phone calls from Mindelo about the house sale (which went through in the end, you’ll be glad to hear).

 So, there I was halfway through the 2,131-mile Atlantic crossing when it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen a ship for three days – hadn’t even picked one up within 30 miles on the AIS, come to that. I certainly hadn’t talked to any other yachts (they were all anchored in Prickly Bay, their crews heading for Happy Hour in the One Love Bar).

I began to think logically about what would happen if I did hit The Container.

The Container is something that tends to preoccupy the singlehanded sailor if he lets his guard down. The Container is out there – and with the speed Samsara was chasing down her Westing even with the rudder held together with string (see The Voyage #2 book), hitting The Container would put an end to the narrative with a bang. Literally.

I had it all worked out: I would take to the liferaft. I had two hand-held VHF radios. I would wait until a ship came past and then I would call up (all tentative and apologetic) and ask “Could you give me a lift?

Except there were no ships – no yachts. In fact, not even any sealife or birdlife.

Just me.

I began to feel just a tiny bit anxious.

I was not anxious about falling over the side and seeing the boat sail away – that would be my own fault and all part of the plan.

But to run into The Container out of sheer bad luck when I was actually doing everything right – well, that just wouldn’t be fair. I could imagine the sort of language that would emanate from the little liferaft in the middle of nowhere.

I could imagine how much I would regret not having an EPIRB.

And now I’ve got Mr Musk’s Starlink, I bet I would use that to call for help – and then someone would have all the inconvenience of finding me from my last known position. I felt a certain obligation to make it as easy as possible for them.

Hence the EPIRB – and it’s my own fault for leaving it so long.

Buying it in Grenada means it is registered in the USA. This makes a difference because Samsara is a British vessel and I will have to get it reprogrammed to summon help from Falmouth rather than the US Coast Guard Maritime Search & Rescue Center in Virginia – where the inference is that my plight would be less of a priority than if I’d paid my taxes to Uncle Sam.

The nearest place to get it reprogrammed is Curaçao, 400 miles away.

Also, I discover that in order to screw it onto the bulkhead, I have to take it to pieces, and I cannot for the life of me work out how to put it back together again. On top of everything else, there is a hidden spring that throws the device out of its casing without warning and hits me smack in the face.

It would be just my luck to run into The Container and go to the bottom while still reading the instructions.