Fact is, I am hitching a ride as this behemoth plods in fuel-economy mode. We’re cruising under cloudy skies from its temporary lodging near my Balearic home to have some refurbishment done in my favourite shipyard at La Spezia. Yes, I know the yacht’s owner. But I know its skipper and crew better. I am – as so often – halfway between being a guest and a governess (to use old countryhouse terminology). I know the people at the yard too, and love to be around the craftsmanship they lavish (at huge cost) on the boats they service. This yacht is a vulgar monstrosity, but I have often very much enjoyed myself on board. When we arrive, we’ll see some spectacular, elegant, antique schooners of the kind favoured by old(ish) Italian money. I prefer those, but then I’m a snob.

Ah. Back to my young friend’s remark. I will get to it. Later.

When the bodies of her crew were found floating off the island, it was never seemed likely that The Ouzo just sank of her own accord. It turned out that the regular run of a P&O ferry, the Pride of Bilbao, took it to the very near vicinity at the probable time of the accident, whatever it was.There is much speculation as to whether it was involved. In the ensuing inquiries and court cases, the bridge officers of the ferry were accused of being less than thorough and thoughtful in their response to what they admit was a close encounter with a yacht (which they claimed to believe had probably passed safely by). One officer was tried for manslaughter and aquitted.

Oddly perhaps, I find my sympathies going to the crew of the ferry. Of course the families of the yacht’s crew have suffered a terrible loss. And the ferry’s officers may not have behaved brilliantly. I am emboldenedin my view partly because I have often been on the Pride of Bilbao and anyway feel a quite undeserved connection with people who make their living on the sea.

By default, not liking to criticise the Ouzo‘s crew leaves the blame to drift inexorably to the larger ship. This seems a little unfair.

I am also drawn to the wide range of technological solutions available to yachtsmen as they take their cockleshells out into commercial waters. Here are some of the devices and tricks which would have diminished the chances of such an accident happening being fatal (in no particular order):

(a) Stay out of shipping lanes at night;
(b) When a ship is near, shine a beam alternately at the sails and the ship’s bridge;
(c) Have an AIS ship-ID and course-plotting radio (£500);
(d) Have a watertight radio receiver and transmitter to hand;
(e) Have a watertight mobile phone to hand (£16 sachet);
(f) Wear a crotch-strap on one’s life jacket;
(g) Have a strong watertight cockpit door and shut it;
(h) Have an emergency position transmitter on one’s lifejacket;
(i) Fit an active radar signal enhancer (£500). 

So far as I can see, a small selection of these items (culled from sailing blogs) would have been very helpful.

I shall now go and do some of my very timid Mediterranean sailing, and probably cock it up.

Typically, I had thought of the great man even as I looked down from 35,000 feet at a trans-Mediterranean ferry cleaving the sparkling briney. I would have been on it if my conscience had been in better nick.

The funny thing is, reading JP makes me feel less guilty than just dreaming him up. This latest piece berated politicians for not promoting a post-growth economic and social creed. Mr Porritt seems to believe that this absence of leadership is blameworthy. He may think (but doesn’t really say) that the public can’t be blamed for not getting the message, because their political masters haven’t pushed it.

I’d have thought that there is very limited scope for democratic politicians to get ahead of their voters. Voters have been on the receiving end of twenty years of green campaigning, and it has become the leading orthodoxy, so if the masses choose to ignore the green message I’m inclined to think that it may because they’re living life the way they prefer.

I got almost cross with the Porritt message at the end of his column. He seems to feel that if voters won’t lead or be led toward “sustainability” then it’s just as well a recession will show them the way.  

This argument suggests that recession will give people a taste of green living – and pehaps a taste for it. We’ll see. I can imagine that people may learn that a camping holiday in Britain is even nicer than a Tuscan villa. But it won’t stop people hoping that the recession passes and they can be more confident that their mortgage is safe. 

I think that Jonathon Porritt believes that there is a large spiritual as well as an ecological deficit in modern life. He thinks people ought to embrace a radical alternative. Maybe they should. But I haven’t, and I know very few people who have. I mean that I know monks, greens, environmentalists - exactly the people who understand Jonathon Porritt’s message and even share it. But in every serious respect almost all of them go on living lives which are well short of radical transformation in a green direction.  

For the life of me, I can’t imagine what would radicalise people. An apocalypse might force such a change, or fear of one. But I don’t think an abstract concern for humanity or the planet will. And I find I can’t despise my fellow-humans for not being as altruistic as Mr Porritt thinks they should be.

Nor is it quite an absence of altruism. It’s more a sense that they don’t want to give up their definite delights for hypothetical improvements accruing to others.   

I am a natural royalist. Monarchy, opera, hunting and monasticism are similarly irrational, even absurd. And well worth defending. It would be tempting to do so because they are ancient. But that might take one toward celebrating torture and wouldn’t help you to defend opera. No comfort there, then. The best defence of any of them is that they are glamorous.

Princess Anne is the patron of the organisation which looks after the lighthouses of Britain’s northern coasts. But she’ s said to be a collector: an acquisition pharologist. It seems a wonderfully batty thing to be, and wholly admirable. The Times says she’s going round, ticking them off like a bird twitcher. Some, she sails to with her Navy husband.

Lord knows how she gets to the others. Probably on some sort of service vessel, as Robert Louis Stevenson did when he was still trying to prove to his father that he wanted to be a lighthouse engineer. That was before RLS tried to persuade his father that he wanted to be a lawyer. The story is beautifully told (though there’s not enough on lighthouses) in Claire Harman’s RLS biography, which I’d say is destined to be a classic. RLS was not keen to be a lighthouse engineer in the way of his grandfather and father. But he did like any kind of sea voyage and even went diving (at one his father’s sea defences) when to do so must have seemed a very hazardous thing to do. Like Anne and her husband, he liked married yachting, renting a schooner for Pacific cruises before taming bits of a tropical rainforest. Always thought to be on the point of death, discomfort and adversity seemed to invigorate him.

By the way, the Harman biography notes that Stevenson’s religious father’s wrestles with Darwinism matched those of Edmund Gosse’s father (who had his own seaside obsessions, as a naturalist). That story is told in Ann Thwaite’s biography of Gosse, which well matches Harman’s for sympathy and vigour. Gosse met and liked RLS, but then so did everybody, including, eventually, Henry James who didn’t take to him at first. (The correspondence between James and RLS, an almost incredibly different pair, made a neat book of its own.)

In the TV show, we sail toward the lighthouse on its islet off the Croatian coast. Francesco buzzes over from his schooner (The Black Swan) in a rib, and we meet the lighthouse keeper. It looks in every way an encounter with a charistmatic loner. He’s the kind of man I thrill to.

Online, I discover even better news. It seems one can rent an apartment and courtyard at the lighthouse. This what I really like: spiritual tourism. It’s my oxymoron of choice. I strongly believe in temporary monasticism, even if one shares one’s isolation with a partner. I accept that the pair pair be lightly hedonistic. None of that is quite penitential enough for some. But it can be very valuable as well as enjoyable. It goes toward the examined life.

In previous series, I have relished his saucy little Alfa Romeo Spider, and – even more – his scruffy little blue speedboat. His runabout isn’t big and it isn’t smart, but it is very chic. It’s of a piece with Francesco’s easy familiarity with his waterworld. In the new series, we were taken to Francesco’s pretty litle island in the lagoon, replete with a retreat in hut form. Naturally, I warm to such a place, especially if it’s a base for travel.

That brings us to Francesco and the new heights of boatiness he has achieved. He’s off with a crew of stripey-jerseyed lovelies on a yachting cruise from Venice to Istanbul. The Black Swan, his schooner-home for the journey, is extraordinarily lovely. I don’t have many amenities in this corner of the Mediterranean, but satellite TV is one of them, and I’ll be glued to this show.