Hi all

We had a interesting day today in the race around the bay

The wind was blowing fairly hard with squalls coming through ever so often and at one point we had a 30 second gust that showed 50 knots and caused a fair bit of havoc to the race fleet with 2 of the 5 boats competing deciding to call it a day

After the race we tied a up at the marina and had a warm drink and as I was getting of the boat I slipped and ended up in the water

There were no fixed ladders close by so I swam to a boat a couple of berths away that had a swing down swim ladder and with some difficulty I climbed up and out of the water

I was wearing my wet weather trousers and stormy jacket and with all my clothing soaking wet it was not as easy to get out of the water as I thought it would be

Everyone else other than the skipper had left so I was not too embarrassed but he could not lift a soggy 110 kg out of the water and the only casualty is a dead mobile phone,a swollen side of my left foot and a few aches where I hit stuff on the way into the water

This got me thinking that if I fell overboard on my boat I would struggle to get aboard again even with the fixed ladder on the transom

I am thing about having a rope ladder attached to my fixed ladder tied up to the top rail with Velcro or similar and if I fell in I could pull it down into the water so I could climb up to the fixed ladder

Any thoughts would be appreciated

Regards Don