How many times have you been frustrated by the well-intentioned but often unhelpful cry of: ‘It’s over there!’ when questioning the location of a racing mark, fishing pot marker, navigation buoy etc? One of my regular crew is a retired RAF navigator, and he had already schooled us in the ‘o’clock’ technique for indicating the actual direction of a particular feature – often including, where appropriate, the add-on comment of ‘no threat at this time’…

However, there still remained the thorny issue of identifying which side of 12 o’clock we were referring to: was it 2 or 10 o’clock, etc? Why this was a problem is not clear, but it had occurred
too many times to be ignored; so I therefore added a few discreetly-positioned number stickers
to the front of the cockpit and this has helped resolve the issue.

Over the top? Maybe, but with advancing years we need all the help we can get! The cost was negligible, just a few pence for some sticky-backed plastic.

Ron Sykes

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