Yet more solicitors-at-sea action, this time courtesy of Hilary Meredith, 49-year-old salt and partner at Hilary Meredith Solicitors in Cheshire, who recently bagged a place aboard Dame Ellen MacArthur’s yacht at the Skandia Cowes Week earlier this month.

Not only did Meredith get a personal tour of the yacht that was MacArthur’s home for 71 days when sailing solo around the world in 2003, she also raised £2,000 for the Spinal Injuries Association (SIA) in the process.

Meredith, who has been involved with SIA fundraising for more than 11 years, paid £2,000 at a charity auction earlier this year for the chance to join MacArthur’s crew at Cowes.

As a purely claimant personal injury lawyer, Meredith got involved with the SIA after she began to work on UK military cases acting for ‘young soldiers rendered paraplegic’ and – with a number of other Manchester-based solicitors – now raises around £40,000 each year for the charity by hosting gala balls and other events.

One highlight of the trip was being able to take the helm and sail MacArthur’s yacht herself. ‘Having owned a small "alley cat" catamaran when I was a teenager, it was a bit of a personal ambition to sail an ocean-going yacht. I felt even more privileged doing it with such a distinguished and professional crew,’ she says.

However, the trip did have its scarier moments. To join the crew, who were already sailing, Meredith had to leap from an inflatable boat and hurl herself aboard during rough seas ‘which was quite hairy, but the adrenalin rush was fantastic’.

Not quite what one expects to hear from a personal injury lawyer, but Obiter is all the more impressed for that. Any more salty tales from other sea-faring solicitors?