Caulcutt was right as Bonham was safely back on board at the second attempt to pick him up. And Bonham was not the only one to jump ship on a day when survival skills were more important than sailing subtlety.Wild gybes also took their toll, Nigel Bramwell’s Hawk spectacularly shredding the mainsail and Adam Gosling having two taken off his Swan 65, a guest with a broken arm, and permanent skipper Steve Dodd with a fractured wrist.But, while ambulances were shuttling between Cowes Yacht Haven and St Mary’s Hospital the tough were riding the waves to victory. Not least Harry Cudmore and crew, taking Peter Harrison’s 50-footer Russe Noir to its second Class I win in two days and adding the Sir Walter Preston Challenge Cup to the Glazebrook Challenge Cup won on Sunday.In the X-Boat fleet, where at times it felt as though there was more water in the boat than outside, the Hamble fleet’s Peter Baines, a former winner, added a third in his bid for the Captain’s Cup His major problem could be a recurring knee injury. This is also true of those servicemen executed for “cowardice in the face of the enemy”, when they were, as is now officially recognised, much more likely to have suffered psychological trauma under hideous circumstances.To “pardon”, ie to “forgive”, in such cases is quite inappropriate.

Letter: Getting a bad name

Sir: Not only was my husband always called by his first name, which he did not use, but the final insult was when the nurse asked me if he could sign his name. I thought he was going to leap out of his wheelchair and throttle her.
SHEILA M BARROWBirmingham. Letter:

Exonerate Bentley
Sir: The long overdue recognition of the awful injustice meted out to Derek Bentley and others wrongly convicted calls not for pardon – royal or otherwise – but for full and unconditional exoneration. Catholic bishops are ordained in a gathering of bishops who witness to the communion of the Church, after proper appointment. Pat Buckley and Michael Cox did the deed secretly and announced it later; both knew and accepted that they would be automatically excommunicated; it is much more than “a technical breach of canon law”.HUGH LINDSAYBishop of Hexham and Newcastle, 1974-1992.

He has acted for many years now on the basis of his own views rather than on the teaching and discipline of the Catholic Church.He is not, as he probably describes himself, “a rebel Irish bishop”. He is a rebel Irish priest who recently had himself clandestinely ordained bishop by another clandestine bishop. And worrying to me as a psychiatrist is that the already tarnished reputation of pyschiatry as a racist and insensitive discipline that is merely a front for social control would be worsened.DR SUMAN FERNANDOConsultant PsychiatristSenior Lecturer in Mental HealthUniversity of Kent and Canterbury. Letter:

Rebel priest
Sir: Your report on Father Pat Buckley (“Rebel bishop to ordain women priests”, 3 August) includes three quotations beginning, “I think…” That is the key. And there is as yet no indication that the government has either the political will or the strategy to remedy these difficulties.Frank Dobson’s letter to Dr Graham Thornicroft does not indicate that he is looking to the committee headed by the latter for anything like a radical examination of psychiatric practice and of course he would not have given the chairmanship of the committee to a psychiatrist from the mainstream of institutional psychiatry if he had!My fear is that unless the problems inherent in current pyschiatric practice are tackled first, the proposed changes (round-the-clock crisis teams, extra hostels etc) would have little effect – and in some cases may make matters much worse both for people diagnosed as “mentally ill” and the general public. Letter:

Racist healthcare
Sir: It is well known that people who experience mental health services and many people from black and ethnic minority communities have grave reservations about the clinical practice of psychiatry.The implementation of compulsory powers under present circumstances (ie the 1983 Mental Health Act) is riddled with racism and cultural insensitivity resulting in inequality and injustice – a fact evident from reports of the Mental Health Act Commission and I believe well known to ministers.Basically, the system of (Western) psychiatry used in the mental health services is both insensitive to the cultural diversity of our society and fails to counteract problems arising from institutional racism.