Elsewhere in these pages there's a post on the remarkable rise of mega-inflatable, which the UK government dismisses as a 'small boats' problem whereas it should be celebrated as a 'big boats' sensation. As children we too had an inflatable, although a canoe seating just two or three. Later in my time as a captain we would be tasked in a swimming pool with climbing into those inflatable slides that can be detached from the doors of airliners after a ditching.
But this stuff is on a whole different scale. The prior post pointed out that inflatables of this kind are wholly unique, and kindly supplied by Mr Alibaba and his friends for record attempts across the English Channel ~ a route that has inspired any number of historic crossings in the past from Bleriot to that Frenchman with his jet-powered platform!
Such is the pace of development ~ on a par with DARPA's heavy-lift challenge in the US ~ that my recent post described inflatables capable of seating some 130. Now therefore in just a short time we've (not me personally) been able to nearly double that number!
Were I a vlogger I would buy one to mount a challenge, along with a select group of followers... but I'm not, so I won't.
We shall however wait in anticipation of an entry in the forthcoming annual, which to my mind is a bit too 'Dorling Kindersley' for my own tastes nowadays. Back when I was a child (shut-up, Luther) it looked like a telephone directory and would include records we were more interested in, like the world's longest human penis.
Ed. The author has a good friend who arrived on an inflatable... or used to.
