February 2008

A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO THE MINGMING TEST

This month I'm going to introduce you to the Mingming Test. You won't need a
pencil or paper, just a bit of imagination. Oh, and a sledgehammer of course.

But first, some background. I conceived this little test while berthed in a
Cowes marina. My yacht Mingming is only a little fellow, by the way. Hardly
takes up any room at all and being painted mostly grey is easily overlooked.

So there we were minding our own totally inconsequential business when a large
and imposing yacht came in and berthed alongside. As she came close her bulk
threw a large shadow over us. The sky was blotted out. Day almost became night.
From the safety of my hatch I surveyed the great white wall of her topsides,
now just a few inches from my nose. The north face of the Eiger had finally
found the Medina.

The plummy cut-glass accents of the couple on board could be heard resounding
around the ridges and escarpments above. God, it must have been cold up there!
'All right,darling?' 'Yes, darling! A foot or two further forward perhaps!'
'That better, darling?' 'That's perfect, darling!' 'Jolly good, darling!' And
so on. You know the script.

Having successfully moored their alpine landscape my new neighbours no doubt
began to survey the surrounding lowlands from their lofty perch. I'm guessing
on this one - nothing on their deck was visible from my height of eye, as ever
roughly equivalent to that of a waterboatman.

I sat there and contemplated the awesome heights of this newly arrived natural
feature. I tried to work out what advanced mountaineering techniques they used
to climb up to and descend from the high plateau above.

A movement caught my eye and I looked slowly up. My neck felt as it does at the
end of a day at the air show. I was amazed to find that even at that distance I
could detect the faint outline of a blue-rinsed perm coming slowly into view
above the cliff-top. This masterpiece of tricological sculpture framed two
piercing eyes and a mouth like a healed stab wound. The eyes looked down and
the whole ensemble jolted. Had someone poked her with a cattle-prod? Hell no -
it was worse than that. She had, for the first time, seen the two little
travesties alongside. Me and Mingming.

'Good heavens!' she said, craning dangerously forward, the better to see. I'll
say this for her - she had a good head for heights. 'What on earth is that!'
She stared a little longer, then realised that there was life aboard the toy
boat down in the watery valley below.

'I say!' she shouted. 'You down there! Yes you! You don't go to sea in that…
that…thing, do you?' Despite the distance, she didn't need a megaphone. They
could probably still hear her in Switzerland.

'Of course!' I shouted back.

'Well it's jolly unsafe and it shouldn't be allowed!'

Call me old-fashioned but there are some things that get up my nose. This
particular thing had all the right ingredients for a nasal ascent. I had a
flash of inspiration. 'You want to do the Mingming Test, then?' I yelled back.

'What in earth is that?'

'Very simple, madame. We shall sail our respective craft, that is to say me my
modest little yacht and you your Helvetian canton, to a nice remote spot,
preferably about a thousand miles west of the Azores. Once there we shall lay
alongside, rather as we are now. I shall then take out my 14lb sledgehammer and
bash a ruddy great hole in the side of your boat, below the waterline of
course, then a similar ruddy great hole in the side of my boat. We shall then
wait ten minutes. At the end of those ten minutes we shall have a further
discussion about seaworthiness. If you are still there to participate, that
is.'

The two eyes stared. The stab wound worked nervously. Finally she found her best
retort: 'You're a horrid little man and I don't like you!' This woman had been
to finishing school, that was clear. Repartee delivered, the ice queen
retreated to her mountain lair.

The Mingming test, you see, is nothing more than a rather subtle way of finding
out whether a boat is unsinkable or not. Doesn't quite fall into the category
of 'non-destructive', but what the hell, it shuts people up.

Everybody should at least think about the Mingming Test, especially if they are
contemplating going offshore. More than a couple of hundred metres offshore,
that is. The seas abound with their own version of the 14lb sledgehammer -
sleeping whales, submerged rocks, containers gone walk-about, half-drunk
jet-skiers. One of them'll get you one day. However big you are.

I myself would never go to sea in a yacht that did not pass the Mingming Test. I
can't understand why it's not mandatory for every new-build to be unsinkable.
Easy enough to do with today's lightweight, high-volume designs.

Thing is, I've researched all this very carefully. What I've found is that that
there are only two positions a yacht can occupy relative to the ocean. You can
be either on top of it, interfacing helpfully with the air we so like to
breathe, or at the bottom of it, hobnobbing with wrecks and very weird sea
creatures. I'd take the former every time.

On top is the place to be and, for my money, in my own boat. I'm puzzled why
offshore sailors in particular don't make more effort in this regard. Why they
seem so prepared to let their pride and joy spiral down through the depths. To
lose their ship and exchange it for a flimsy bit of rubber tube that may or may
not inflate.

I'd rather stay at sea level for another reason too. I suffer from altitude
sickness. That's why I was relieved, but somehow not surprised, when my new
neighbours omitted to invite me up to their bivouac for a well-chilled drink or
two.

/Roger D. Taylor
/2007