Honest mistakes

I made a cracking mistake this morning; there's a hatch at the back of the boat you grab weeds from where they wrap around the propeller shaft (as part of essential maintenance). During our show-around, we were shown how to remove the retaining bar (which has two screw threaded handles which push down and keep the hatch in place) and a tip for remembering to put the bar back in-if you forget, the boat sinks.

Don't panic, this story isn't calamitous.

The tip was to place the bar across to top of the deck hatch, along the edge of the hatch's hinge edge. This means you can't try to shut the hatch without noticing the bar, at which point you slap your forehead, issue the time-honoured Homer Salute to Mistakes, and put the bar in.

Now, I had followed this to the letter, and the weed hatch cover (which comes out completely) was to the right, on deck, while I froze my hand removing weeds and checking the cotter pin.

As I moved the hatch cover to replace it, I knocked the end of the bar, which promptly fell down the weed hatch, briefly waving at the prop shaft as it headed for the bottom of the canal. Oops.

After a couple of minutes of reflection, I rang the guys hiring out the boats, and a fella with a hve magnet got the bar in less than a minute. He said he'd never had to fish out one of the retainer bars before, which surprised me !

I reflected on my mistake, and realised it was entirely honest; I was half awake but followed he instructions faithfully. The fella with the magnet said he'll make sure it gets fed back into the show-around, so I now feel quite pleased with my novel mistake as it should ensure nobody else panics (we didn't panic btw, it was all very logical).

Have you made any honest mistakes like this recently?