As anyone who’s worked in a high pressure job and who also sails, will tell you: getting out on the water is a great way to unwind a stressed out brain. Just harnessing the wind and tide helps you think straight again, blows away the doubts and assists with re-analysing the crippling cobwebs of insurmountable problems.

Which is why BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, should ignore the predictable cries of derision from President Obama’s talking heads. Mostly they are to do with the prejudice that yachting is a top person’s pursuit: the Round the Island Race is a ‘democratic’ yachting event and one which the oilman competed in on Saturday.

Whatever the circumstances are which surround the tragic burst vein of crude which killed 11 and is pumping a black tide into the Gulf of Mexico, having the oil rig’s boss Tony Hayward dressed in a hair shirt and attending church in Louisiana will not help.

In fact while many describe his sailing as a ‘PR disaster’, I would say the very thing which would make the blood of the crab fishermen, angling boat skippers and oyster farmers boil would be seeing the man responsible having his existence airbrushed by big payroll spin maestros.

I’m a big fan of Obama in the way he’s dealt with health care, Iran and nuclear missiles, but on the Deepwater Horizon rig he has fought below the belt. He needs to take a leaf out of another great Democrat’s logbook. Like JFK he should go sailing and iron out his problems afloat.

Picture: Daily Telegraph