For the Afghan migrant who fashioned a raft from wooden planks and a table leg, it was his ticket to a new life in Britain. According to his rescuers, it was a vessel fit only for sailing to a watery grave.
In a grim reminder of the lengths to which the hundreds of migrants camped in the French port of Calais will go to reach English shores, the story emerged yesterday of a 23-year-old refugee who tried to steer a raft of six pieces of nailed wood with a bed sheet for a sail across the Channel.
The young Afghan, who was on the verge of hypothermia, was saved after he was spotted by the British crew of a Dover-bound P&O ferry, who alerted the French coastguard and stopped the vessel to protect the adventurer until help arrived while day-trippers looked on in astonishment.
French rescue services said that if the man had not been seen as he tried to cross the shipping lane used by car ferries approaching and leaving Calais on Monday it is probable he would eventually have capsized and drowned in the cold Channel waters.
Bernard Barron, head of the Calais marine rescue service, which came to the man's aid, said: "If the wind had picked up, even by just a single figure on the Beaufort scale, he would have capsized."