It's not just the nautical aspect, anything that involves working at height or any sort of rope access is usually pretty laughable as well. When you see someone scale a thousand foot cliff or abseil down a thirty story building with nothing more than what's in their pocket, tends to get my jaundiced eye a-twitching. I've done a lot of tree surgery and the bag of gear required to do even a small tree wouldn't fit in anyones pocket!! Just painting a 30/40 ft samson post from a bosuns chair requires a heap of gear on deck.