There was a brief blogging hiatus last week (I know, I know, you didn’t notice…) as I was away at a management think tank thing. As usual with this sort of affair, there’s some kind of team building activity alongside the discussion and actions arising.

This time we were at the RNLI for a ‘sea survival experience’ which involved getting garbed up in the RNLI gear, jumping off a 3m ledge, getting into a lifeboat, having a simulated force 4 or 5 gale throw the lifeboat around, trying not to throw up and trying to ensure your colleagues didn’t throw up on you, before being winched out after 20 minutes or so. (There are photos about but George has gone on holiday so they’ll be posted later).

What did I learn from this:

• Lifejackets have varying degrees of “safety” and the best advice is buy the best quality you can if you need them.
• Getting into a lifeboat is hard.
• Organising people inside a boat is harder.
• Most things can be used to bail water and/or go to the toilet in.
• Singing is good.
• Wearing wellies at sea doesn’t necessarily mean you have to drown.

An excellent adventure at the RNLI college in Poole.

The also excellent Katie Ledger (@katieledger) was our facilitator for the rest of the time and handled our usual range of personalities with aplomb. She left me with an excellent phrase (not heard it before):

“The cracked ones let in the light.”

Very good.