Joanne McNeill: Lifejackets waste of space

Joanne McNeill says "lifejackets are bulky encumbrances which restrict the movement and agility crucial for operating any vessel effectively."

Holy flying catfish! Making an exception to strict house rules by turning on the telly in daylight for the first time since the Twin Towers disaster, to watch America's Cup racing last Sunday morning, proved just how dangerous daytime television can be.

As the Team NZ boat reared up and hung suspended in mid air, time held its breath while the world balanced on a wingtip. Momentarily the picture was unfathomable. It could not have been more disorientating had a Vogon Constructor Ship hoved into view.

Even after the horizontals and verticals regrouped, the palpitations subsided, the boat resumed sleek uprightness, and the telly was safely off, everyday reality remained electrified by an undercurrent of potential that any minute the world might flip again.

The ideal way to sail is gently, in light airs with a capable captain and nimble crew in a well-stocked, impeccably maintained, classic wooden boat, preferably with a sturdy boarding ladder, in warm waters. But even so, venturing forth must be in the full understanding that anything can happen at sea. Dallying with the powers of Tangaroa and Tawhirimatea is inherently risky - which is probably what makes it so exhilarating.

Despite recent calls for tightened regulations around wearing lifejackets - by deluded safety crusaders who counterproductively attempt to shackle our every move in these obsessively risk-averse times in the mistaken belief that safety is anything more than a fond illusion - America's Cup crews do not appear to wear them.

I can see why.

Out of water, lifejackets are bulky encumbrances which restrict the movement and agility crucial for operating any vessel effectively and are likely therefore to cause more trouble than they prevent.

Their only real purpose is to keep any panicking non-swimmers, unconscious persons or drowned corpses unfortunately tipped overboard, afloat.

I refuse to wear one, or swim between flags at the beach, on principle.

Institutional safety measures defeat the very purpose of the conscious spiritual act of abandoning the self to the sway of the mighty ocean and surviving to tell the tale.

The issue reminds me of a night when, while we were out making music, a cyclone unexpectedly changed direction when the boat on which we planned to sleep was tied to a pontoon. We returned after midnight only find it in a flotsam soup of tree-trunks and dead fridges being thrashed against the pontoon by a raging sea, with no chance of moving it and the "self-draining cockpit" brimming over, threatening to sink it (which despite emergency bailing in driving rain was highly amusing because of the arrant grandiosity of the maritime terminology describing a mere depression in the deck which, even the first time I saw it, on a fine day, was still full of water with a dead fish floating in the murk).

Cockpit eventually bailed, one of our musical number, a splendid passing international yachtie, went way beyond the call of duty, rowed out to his boat and brought back a big fender to help cushion the overnight blows.

It was so rough we urged him to wear a lifejacket for the trip.

Disappearing into the stormy darkness, he declined with the unforgettable words, "I'd rather drown like a gentleman".