You would
not believe how useful these
pull tab soup cans are when
sailing. After having lost the can opener in the
bilge (
gravity always wins), we were left with vast quantites of
sealed soup.
So desperate were we for hot food, we ended up using a knife designed for sawing through thick nylon warp (rope by any other name) in order to literally slice the lid off. You have not lived until you watch a tin can being cut open the ol' fashioned way with a razor sharp knife - it was disturbing how little the metal held up to the assault, although it was probably not the most sensible thing to do while bouncing around at sea.
Ever since, we always check that our chicken soup & our baked beans have ring pulls, just in case...
The idea of being stuck in a liferaft with all the Heinz 57 varities and then no can opener is just too stupid a way to die.