An actor, from Sierra Leone, who’d appeared in a play called Black Men Can’t Swim, about a white yachtsman who collides with a DIY migrant vessel, appears to have been employing ‘The Method’ school of rehearsals.

The thespian collided with a moored boat in Falmouth Harbour while losing control of his trimaran, Same Boat, before narrowly colliding with former Yachting Monthly editor James Jermain’s Dazcat. He missed his boat but hit his tender, a Lodestar inflatable, ripping a hole in one hull.

When he failed to turn up for a pre-arranged meet to exchange details the following morning, James described him as a ‘cad’ and later, as the even-tempered journalist, managed to summon up some anger, a ‘toe-rag’.

James, a regular correspondent on the YM chat room, Scuttlebutt, turned to cyber space to hunt down the miscreant. That was when he discovered the blundering yachtsman is likely to be one Martin Hubbard who is on his way to Freetown to highlight an anniversary of the cessation of the slave trade.

James, a well-respected yachtsman, is affectionately remembered at YM for often being in the wrong place pretty much all the time. This latest escapade seems true to character.

If, as seems likely, Martin Hubbard, disapproves of the ghastly despotism and warlord rule that has wracked Sierra Leone for years, he may have made his feelings known during earlier visits. If so he would have run the risk of many dissenting voices in that country: namely to have had his hands cut off.

Only one sailor in this old world would have been unfortunate enough to have his inflatable in the pathway of a yachtsman steering with his feet while on passage to West Africa to highlight the evils of slavery…James Jermain.