Discussing the time @Zoë O'Connell and I were talking our boat, Scarlet, into Shoreham harbour when I saw light glint through a thin nylon thread in the air in front of me.

“Fishing line!” I yelled, more out of instinct as it posed no threat to us, surrounded, as we were, by the stainless steel rigging lines of our boat.

The line made contact with the starboard shroud. This did … very little to our 8000 kilogram metres per second of momentum. The line turned into a delicate gossamer spiral in front of us as it instantly broke.

The fisherman on the harbour wall high above us started jumping up and down, yelling.

Like, you cast your line across the entrance to a working harbour…

…in front of an approaching boat…

…which can’t see your line…

…and even if it did, cannot manoeuvre out of the way or stop in time even if it wanted to.

So, congratulations, I guess. You “caught” a whopper: 4 tonnes! Shame you couldn’t reel it in. Go tell your friends about the one that got away.

Some people are just a bit thick, I guess.