Just Deserts?

Yeah, yeah, yeah--impressive...but what's the food like on this one?

Breaker: A second Titanic nearly sunk recently--in the Caribbean, of all places.

Brass Tacks:

A sinking yacht called the Titanic avoided the fate of its tragic predecessor, thanks to an international rescue operation co-ordinated from a do-it-yourself store in Wales, it emerged today.

Three crew were rescued in the Caribbean after one of them dialled from memory the number of a friend in Aberystwyth who serves as a volunteer on the local lifeboat.

With their yacht listing badly, short of power and too far from the nearest island, Grenada, to use VHF radio, the crew members cheered when the 4,000-mile call from their satellite telephone got through.

It was only after heartfelt reassurances that he swung into action, co-ordinating the rescue from the store's kitchen section. He took down grid references for the 79-metre, 1,700-tonne yacht on a till receipt and phoned them through to Milford Haven coastguards.

The alert was passed to Falmouth, which deals with international emergencies, and within an hour a French spotter plane located the Titanic. A United States coastguard cutter arrived at the scene shortly afterwards and towed the damaged vessel to port.

The yacht, which was playfully renamed after its previous owners decided to transfer its old name to a new ship, had taken on two and a half metres depth of water in the engine room by the time rescuers arrived.

(courtesy The Guardian)

Now, this is hardly a tragedy of Titanic proportions (oh, SNAP!), but it bears mention simply because it will now serve as proof that somebody was stupid enough to name a ship after the biggest embarrassment to float the Seven Seas.

After all, it's not every day one comes across such a perfect example of idiocy and I think posterity can learn a great deal from this debacle, if they stop sexting each other for a second and tell their one of their robots to read this article aloud to them.

Are you there posterity? It's me, Margaret...

_