What's the strangest thing you've found in your lockers?

A chum removed the locker lid from his fishing boat in Portscatho, Cornwall and a Mink shot out like a missile; Peter was a big bloke but he reckoned by the determined way this thing went over the side and swam ashore it would have gone for his throat if he'd hindered it, no idea how it got there but suspiscions of a practical joke by locals.

As for even odder things in a cockpit locker I once hid in one and got a picture - with backlight flash - of surprised crew opening the lid; it seemed a good idea at the time.
 
Seajet said:
A chum removed the locker lid from his fishing boat in Portscatho, Cornwall and a Mink shot out like a missile; Peter was a big bloke but he reckoned by the determined way this thing went over the side and swam ashore it would have gone for his throat if he'd hindered it, no idea how it got there but suspiscions of a practical joke by locals.
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Fishermen's Friends?
 
Younger daughter (aged 7 then) found a pack of three of those condom-shaped disposable mobile phone waterproofing protectors you could buy at the checkout of some chandleries. Basically condoms without the end pouch and the lubricant, served in a foil packet just like the regular type, and sold in threes in a matchbox-sized pack. You put your phone in one - one size fits all - tied a knot in the end, and job done for the day.

She came up on deck and declared to my wife, 'Mummy, look what I've found - it's for protecting a mobile phone from the sea'. Mummy had never seen these items before, and I think the image on the pack - a reticulated-chested man walking up a beach - didn't enlighten her.

'Oh, are they darling - I see. Let me take them for you.'

'Look Mummy', said our budding engineer, opening one: 'you take them out of their pack and roll it over your phone, like this.'

'Look Mummy, it's like a balloon. I can blow it up.'

By this stage I wasn't sure which to be more concerned by: the other yachts trundling up the river Hamble around us after a weekend away while my daughter apparently blew up a condom in the cockpit, or the fact that we didn't keep condoms on board and my wife hasn't yet twigged that this wasn't one. Tricky.
 
Blimey! I thought that finding an opossum on the aft deck was pretty amazing - I even wrote an article about it; and I still don't know how it got there, bearing in mind that we were anchored quarter of a mile from the nearest shore - but compared to some of these discoveries it seems rather common-place.
We, too, have had a cat, or rather a kitten, which made its presence known in the middle of the night by sitting on my chest... (I nearly died of fright; 'thought it was a rat) But a mink...! And a FOX...! Inside the locker...! How on earth did that happen?
 
AntarcticPilot said:
My father (a Master Grocer) reckoned that use-by dates on tinned sardines were only there to satisfy legislation; that sardines improved indefinitely in the tin.
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Do you get "use by" on tins? I though it was always "best before".

The difference, of course, is that after a "use by" date the manufacturer thinks the stuff may actually be dangerous (rotting shellfish and the like) whereas after a "best before" it is likely to just not be as nice.

Pete
 
Mink are commoner on boats than you would expect! They can squeeze through very small openings and find boats very comfortable! We have had a couple in our marina in the past couple of years.
Strangest thing I have have found was on an otherwise totaly empty boat on brokerage, sitting right in the middle of one locker was a very over ripe Camembert. It had started to run over the sides of the plate and was very stinky indeed.
 
prv said:
Do you get "use by" on tins? I though it was always "best before".

The difference, of course, is that after a "use by" date the manufacturer thinks the stuff may actually be dangerous (rotting shellfish and the like) whereas after a "best before" it is likely to just not be as nice.

Pete
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You're probably right - but I think this was long before current food-labelling laws. Dad has been gone for 24 years :(

PS, No, it wasn't a tin of ancient sardines that got him!
 
Fasntastic!

Seajet said:
A chum removed the locker lid from his fishing boat in Portscatho, Cornwall and a Mink shot out like a missile.
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Sounds like a plan! ;)

Seajet said:
Well you can try to give a Mink a cuddle if you like. :)
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I just might! :D

I've had this notion / idea to take a (possibly two) Ferret(s) onboard.

Well! .... historical they have been taken to sea with great success.

Also! ... if people can sail with Parrots, Cats & Dogs ... why not!? :)
 
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Boreades said:
As part of running new cables round the boat, I had to completely empty the locker under the chart table to get access to a cable pipe through a hole in the locker. Imagine my frustration when I couldn't get a mouse wire to go down the pipe. Imagine my surprise when I hung upside down in the locker with a torch and found a tiny jar of Marmite lodged in the neck of the pipe! :confused:

Still with its original plastic seal round the neck of the jar, unopened, and dated "best before 1999".

Mrs Boreades and I have been scratching our heads, wondering how any foodstuffs got into a locker we never use for food. From the date on the jar, we can vaguely lending our boat to some other people in 1998, they must have stuffed stuff anywhere and everywhere.

What have you found?
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Have you seen the new marmite ads? You sure you don't work for them? :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHjssdNNzP0
 
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Not strange perhaps but our first boat had a Hamlet Cigar and a box of matches in the chart table - nothing else-, not sure if I was supposed to smoke the cigar as the boat sank, or use the matches to set light to the boat - then light the cigar.
 
Ha, you were lucky.
Many moons ago, sans petrol or wind, I and two friends sat off a Spanish ria without tobacco..back in the day.
Each of us quietly searched every single locker, crevice, seat back in that boat..nada zilch
One of the reasons I stopped smoking I suppose, 'it' was ruling me, not 'me' driving the bus!
 
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