>

.. on dry land.

My Mate Houghton appears set on weighing his delightful boat Raindance down with so much useless crap essential nautical tackle that I’m sure it’ll founder and sink if he does much more.

He’s asked me to arrange to buy some essential high tech stuff from an outfit in Hamburg (now, if THAT’S not authenticity for you…), and – given that neither he nor they speak a shared language and I do – I’ve been talking to Toplicht, a ships’ chandler for wooden boats.

Being a bit of a dope, I neglected to inform them that we only wanted one piece of essential high tech stuff, so they wrote back, quoting €65 for 1.5kg for 3.

Now, DHL charges under €15 for that weight, so I called them up, apologised for my error and asked what the shipping charge would be for a single item.

€65.

I ventured politely (honest..) that I couldn’t quite understand that and it’d actually be cheaper for them to send in to me (€6) and for me to forward it.

“Well, why don’t you just DO that” says this snotty Hanseatic person.

Which is what I did.

Talking about winning hearts and minds…..