Sailing Anecdotes

[delatbabel]

There's been pages of quotes from the wise, but I thought I'd start a thread of short anecdotes, facts, figures, and trivia.

My favourite two to start:

• A sea safety expert surveyed, during an entire calendar year, all of the man overboard incidents. What he found was that, across all of those incidents, 100% of the people who did not go overboard survived the incident.
  

• In one recent calendar year, 17 people world-wide were killed in shark attacks. 43 were killed by falling coconuts.
  

[Nausikaa]

Just read this morning in a Swedish newspaper (Göteborgs Posten) that 50% of all who drowned in Sweden last year had consumed alcohol.

Interesting statistic that. It would seem that not drinking is just as dangerous as imbibing your favourite tipple.

Aye // Stephen

[Livia]

Originally Posted by Nausikaa

Interesting statistic that. It would seem that not drinking is just as dangerous as imbibing your favourite tipple.

That depends on the base rate of drinking.

For example (and I'm making up the % of drunk Swedes here) if only 10% of Swedes are drinking at any one time and 50% of drownings are drinking, this means your chances of drowning increase dramatically if you drink.

Imagine 100 Swedes.

10% drinking so 10 are drinking and 90 are not drinking

If not drinking is the same dangerous as drinking then you would expect 90% of drownings to be non-drinkers just because there are more of them.

If the rate is 50-50, let's say 2 drunk drownings and 2 non-drinking drownings (4 drownings out of 100 people), this means that 20% of drinking people drown while only 2.2% of non-drinkers drown.

[MMNETSEA]

Read a report (can't quote ref) that 75% of adult males who drowned off their boats in Florida - US were found with their flies open.

Was this the result of over indulging in beer? Or merely the quality of the beer?

[Nausikaa]

Originally Posted by Livia

That depends on the base rate of drinking.

........................

If the rate is 50-50, let's say 2 drunk drownings and 2 non-drinking drownings (4 drownings out of 100 people), this means that 20% of drinking people drown while only 2.2% of non-drinkers drown.

On the other hand, if 90% are drinking and 10 are not, it would seem far safer to drink than not drink. Unfortunately, the relationship was not quoted in the paper. Just shows that Churchill's opinions about lies, damned lies and statistics were probablt statisticaly correct.

Aye // Stephen

[scotte]

Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage people, you should be perfectly comfortable. Bobby Bragan, 1963

[Aquaria]

Originally Posted by MMNETSEA' date='20 March 2010 - 02:56 AM

Read a report (can't quote ref) that 75% of adult males who drowned off their boats in Florida - US were found with their flies open.

Was this the result of over indulging in beer? Or merely the quality of the beer?

...same applies to german waters, but the numbers might differ and it is obvious that the flies open fell off SAILboats... should there be a connection between strong beer*** and the rigging???

**

Uwe

SY Aquaria