An issue of perception.

[jac]

I quite like your objective, dispassionate and impartial description of a group of people

Although it is pretty accurate

 

[bitbaltic]

You’ve got my kind of dog

 

[Tranona]

Anne, our lovely Princess Royal has, to the best of my knowlege, retired from sailing her custom Rustler 36,

Way out of date. She and her Admiral husband swapped that for a new Rustler 44 many years ago and spend their summers drifting around the Western Isles

 

[Gary Fox]

I quite like your objective, dispassionate and impartial description of a group of people

Spoken like a true Belgian!

 

[Tranona]

Bear with me on this one:

just before lockdown SWMBO bought a quite hideous dog. The dog cost a grand (as a puppy); I have it on good authority that due to lockdown inflation the same dog would now cost three and a half grand.

You need to swap it for a working black Lab. Tough as old boots and cheap to feed. Good value for around 14 years of loyal companionship. Current one is my third.

 

[bitbaltic]

You need to swap it for a working black Lab. Tough as old boots and cheap to feed. Good value for around 14 years of loyal companionship. Current one is my third.

Welsh sheepdog would have been my choice (well, nothing would have been my preference). It’s a cavalier King Charles.

the downside is the thing thinks I am it’s master and it ignores my wife under almost all circumstances. I am not a dog person as you might have guessed. It follows me everywhere I go. It is a nice and wholly loving animal and I treat it as such. The kids love it. But I have absolutely no interest in the n dogs to be honest. I grew up with horses- I am very comfortable and relaxed around horses but my wife is terrified of them- and with a 4 year old daughter the last expense generator you want to introduce her to, is w horse.

 

[Kukri]

Bear with me on this one:

just before lockdown SWMBO bought a quite hideous dog. The dog cost a grand (as a puppy); I have it on good authority that due to lockdown inflation the same dog would now cost three and a half grand.

it is not impossible (difficult, but not impossible) for the knowledgeable gent to source a reasonable MAB in the 25ft range for that kind of capital outlay.

the dog attracts quite incredible maintenance costs. It costs something like 20 quid a month for the vet to worm the beast, about the same for some quite unqualified persons to shear the beast, and it eats its way through at least 100 quid of some ridiculously expensive dog food which looks undifferentiable from cheap dog food, and it goes through about 20 quid of waste leather turned into dog bones monthly.

these costs are roughly equal to the monthly cost of keeping my 30 footer in Milford Marina.

after 10 years of dog ownership my wife will have a dead dog worth absolutely nothing, if the money had been put into a 3.5k MAB she’d still have a yacht.

I’ve inferred that if you can afford a dog you can afford a modest yacht and will be much happier for it.

lots of people seem to have dogs.

Dear Moderators,

This is one of the finest and funniest posts ever made on .ybw.com, and I would like to submit it for preservation.

 

[bitbaltic]

Dear Moderators,

This is one of the finest and funniest posts ever made on .ybw.com, and I would like to submit it for preservation.

That’s ever so kind, thank you.

I need to up the quality of my commentary on boats

 

[Gary Fox]

fj

The elitist yacht club cliche exists because it is or, at least, was true. Burnham Sailing Club exists because the working blokes that actually did the sailing for the members of the Royal Burnham and Royal Corinthian were barred from membership of those organisations, so they formed their own. And I never did manage to find out how to download the membership form for the Royal Yacht Squadron

Speaking as someone that wasn’t brought up around boats, came from a working class area and had never even set foot on a yacht prior to 2007, I had a very different idea of boating before I got involved. I really liked the idea of getting on the water and learning how to sail, always did, but I couldn’t imagine that the people with boats were my kind of people. Turns out you’re all a bunch of reprobates so we get on fine, but I had to take those first steps before I found that out. Every depiction of the boating life in the media is posh blokes in blazers. Howard’s Way didn’t help, and most newspapers can’t print the word 'yacht' without prefixing it with the word 'luxury'.

@johnalison makes a very good point that our marinas are gated and exclusive, especially in the Home of Yachting (tm) in the Solent. A canal boat is expensive, but people don't perceive narrow boating in the same way because they can walk down the towpath and meet the owners, and just ask daft questions as they go through locks... an infrastructure built for an industrial past. We yotties, on the other hand, can easily be perceived as apart and aloof, and all the jargon and messing about with ropes and flappy things is just witchcraft. We're just not a very accessible bunch.

Very true, and it gives one pause for thought that little over a century ago, most UK citizens were familiar with the different types of sailing ships and their various crew, whether fisherman, merchant or military, and their culture permeated society; from royalty to the gutter, everyone knew a sailor, and their qualities and foibles were in common daily parlance.

 

[Caraway]

Verminous lefty reporter scum, ravenous for a neo-marxist class angle, continue to mention yacht possession and size as indicators of immorality, ill-gotten gains and evil exploitation of the honest taxpayer.

You didn't see post #10?

 

[prv]

A canal boat is expensive, but people don't perceive narrow boating in the same way because they can walk down the towpath and meet the owners, and just ask daft questions as they go through locks... an infrastructure built for an industrial past. We yotties, on the other hand, can easily be perceived as apart and aloof, and all the jargon and messing about with ropes and flappy things is just witchcraft. We're just not a very accessible bunch.

Yes. I was once tied up to the wall in Mevagissey, sitting on deck waiting for my friends to get back so we could leave. A lady (presumably on holiday) was strolling idly along the top of the wall, I said good morning as she looked down at the boat, and we got talking. She asked a lot of typical “clueless newbie” type questions, which I was happy to answer as I sat there in the sun. Who doesn’t like talking about boats?

As she left, she earnestly thanked me for talking to her. Maybe it was just an odd turn of phrase on her part, but I’ve never been thanked for making casual conversation before. It came across more like she was grateful for one of those “apart and aloof” yacht people deigning to speak to her, and felt very weird.

Pete

 

[Gary Fox]

Yes. I was once tied up to the wall in Mevagissey, sitting on deck waiting for my friends to get back so we could leave. A lady (presumably on holiday) was strolling idly along the top of the wall, I said good morning as she looked down at the boat, and we got talking. She asked a lot of typical “clueless newbie” type questions, which I was happy to answer as I sat there in the sun. Who doesn’t like talking about boats?

As she left, she earnestly thanked me for talking to her. Maybe it was just an odd turn of phrase on her part, but I’ve never been thanked for making casual conversation before. It came across more like she was grateful for one of those “apart and aloof” yacht people deigning to speak to her, and felt very weird.

Pete

You should have asked for a donation!
I was tied up on a town quay once, in a beautiful classic wooden gaff cutter, amongst an infestation of white plastic AWB's.

Lots of people strolling past, and a little boy pointed excitedy at my boat, and said to his mum, 'Mum! Why has he got an old boat?' and his mum, seeing me in the cockpit, whispered 'Shh! Keep your voice down and don't be so rude, the poor chap probably can't afford a proper boat!'
Some people just don't get it

 

[Concerto]

You need to swap it for a working black Lab. Tough as old boots and cheap to feed. Good value for around 14 years of loyal companionship. Current one is my third.

Could not agree more as I have just lost my 4th Lab. She loved coming out for day sails and made a good companion but sometimes wanted attention when I needed to concentrate. This is what she thought of sailing with a spinnaker on one fairly calm day.

 

[Kukri]

You should have asked for a donation!
I was tied up on a town quay once, in a beautiful classic wooden gaff cutter, amongst an infestation of white plastic AWB's.

Lots of people strolling past, and a little boy pointed excitedy at my boat, and said to his mum, 'Mum! Why has he got an old boat?' and his mum, seeing me in the cockpit, whispered 'Shh! Keep your voice down and don't be so rude, the poor chap probably can't afford a proper boat!'
Some people just don't get it

I once had a very different experience. I hadn’t owned this boat



for long (I did, later) and I had taken her into Foxes marina in Ipswich to go to the chandlery and buy a VHF set. We were surrounded by expensive white shiny plastic, making a contrast with our tarred rigging, deadeyes and ratlines.

Along the pontoon came two small children and a parent:

“Look, Mummy! It’s a Pirate Ship!”

 

[Seven Spades]

Oh come on, sailing is largely a sport of the middle and upper classes, just like golf club memberships. Yes there are a lot of old small boats around but just go down to the solent and you will see few boats less than 36 feet and many over 50.

 

[prv]

“Look, Mummy! It’s a Pirate Ship!”

I used to volunteer on a square rigger. We got that a lot

Pete

 

[jordanbasset]

Your average Joe or Joanna sees nothing of the back water boatyards with ordinary folk working away on their old boats unless thay have that on their doorstep but they may see "Sir" Ben Ainslee sailing his aerofoil flying machine on the telly. I don't think it's much to do with the RYA...

Agree, coming rom a working class/council house background sailing was seen (rightly or wrongly) as very much a hobby for rich people. When I got a boat, however much I told my family and friends it was like camping on the water, they all thought I must be super rich and it was a glamourous life. Perhaps it is different if you live very close to the sea, but for many ordinary people having a yacht is so far from their personal experience it is like another world.

 

[Gary Fox]

Agree, coming rom a working class/council house background sailing was seen (rightly or wrongly) as very much a hobby for rich people. When I got a boat, however much I told my family and friends it was like camping on the water, they all thought I must be super rich and it was a glamourous life. Perhaps it is different if you live very close to the sea, but for many ordinary people having a yacht is so far from their personal experience it is like another world.

Camping you say?

Luxury!

 

[prv]

I told my family and friends it was like camping on the water, they all thought I must be super rich and it was a glamourous life.

I always make sure to tell people whenever I have to dismantle the toilet or do something else similarly glamorous

Pete

 

[Frogmogman]

Back in the day, the RYS used to ban those who were "in trade"/"with trade" (?) from membership.

I think more specifically, the conceit was that it was a club for gentlemen. Back in them thar days, the term gentleman was specific to being a member of the landed gentry; being in trade was not considered the occupation of a gentleman (this was not specific to yacht clubs, but of society in general).

As mjcoon points out, Sir Thomas Lipton, a purveyor of tea, failing to be deemed a “gentleman” challenged for the America’s Cup under the auspices of the Royal Ulster YC.

One of the lesser discussed causes of the First World War was that the Kaiser, (who was desperate to join the squadron),was blackballed on more than one occasion on the basis that he wasn’t a gentleman (he was by all accounts a notorious cheat at racing). He was reportedly furious about it.

My late and much lamented Uncle, with whom I did much of my sailing in my youth, went in 1939 from a modest home in Yorkshire to Dartmouth, aged 13 (where his Yorshire accent was beaten and bullied out if him). Following a successful Naval career followed by an even more successful one in Law, he became a member of the RYS. For him it was a crowning glory, a validation of the success that he had made of his life.

Vanity, perhaps, but a fairly harmless one. His kids certainly took the piss out if him for it, but they weren’t the ones who had pulled themselves up by their own boot straps.