I’m an admitted consumer of “boat porn.” It’s not the salacious viewing you’re conjuring. Boat listings (both print and online), boat ‘fail’ videos (including the grainy, but always amusing trailer launch mishaps) and YouTube’s offerings of those living aboard their sailboats are the images I steal away to view. If you watch enough of this stuff, you’re left with the impression that a lot of folks do stupid things and get away unscathed, that luck favors the novice, and that nobody seems much to care about the elements of good seamanship.

Most consumer contracts, whether for rental cars, airline tickets, cruise travel or leases, have a lot of terms in a tight space. If you don’t have the time to read the whole thing, consider starting with the last page and working backwards. The corporate counsel who drafted this bloated contract probably stuck some of the bad stuff toward the end, so start there. Working from the transom, keep the acronym FAAT in mind and it’ll help you spot trouble.