SaltIre
Well-known member
Have you ever had Klingons on the starboard bow at a race start?
Hailing "We Are Racing", in the Solent
- Thread starter Channel Sailor
- Start date
Greenheart
Well-known member
Chiara’s slave
Well-known member
No. But there is one who is referred to only as The Dark Lord, and his boat as Princess Leia?
dunedin
Well-known member
If Cowes Week was a cycle race, the nautical “roads” would be closed to all other boats from an hour or so before the first start till after the finish. Saying “I live here and need to get in” doesn’t cut it when, for example, the Tour de France does one of its stages in the UK.
awol
Well-known member
Aye, but they are doing something that anyone with a bike in the shed can identify with and it has a television audience of millions.
Chiara’s slave
Well-known member
I don’t understand. Do you cruisers not want to bash yourselves up, get soaking wet and knackered having sailed past a few lumps of plastic and finished up where you started? What strange people you are.
budgester
Member
Had something similar recently when motoring along, due to not being able to get very close to the wind with my knackered old cruising sails at about 4 knots, a racer decided to ram the back of my boat at about 4.2 knots I've already tried to avoid the fleet but this boat seemed to want to take a really long tack after all his other mates had buggered off... When they were within 4 ft of my stern. there were shouts from the racers of "Were racing" to which I replied "I'm not, and your the overtaking boat please keep clear." , followed by "Your motor sailing you have got no rights", Just checked on the clubs website and it appears the boat came towards the very bottom of the table. So although I think they may have thought they were racing I get the feeling they weren't very good at it. Luckily no damage or injuries. Do I send an email to the club letting then know the conduct of their members ?
michael_w
Well-known member
Overtaking boat has to keep clear irrespective of propulsion. Shop'em.
flaming
Well-known member
yes.
Chiara’s slave
Well-known member
Ah, poor buggers were having a hard day. I agree they were out of order, I daresay it was a shouting match on board all the way round.
flaming
Well-known member
I feel really strongly about this.
Fleet numbers for just about every class / event are declining sharply at the moment. New owners are just not coming into the sport in any number. If we want to still have a worthwhile sport of yacht racing in a decade's time we really need to be doing everything we can to encourage anyone who might be tempted to try racing to give it a go.
Shouting at the person who today is sailing a cruising boat, and telling him to "get out of the way, we're racing" is not exactly going to make him think "that looks like fun, maybe I should give that a go..." And as we see here, he then tells his friends, or an internet forum in general, about "those arrogant racers" and now more people have a negative impression of racing and racers.
I'd like to see more protests brought by race committees about this sort of thing, until the message really is drummed home that we aren't special when it comes to the COLREGs, and that it DOES matter how the racing community is perceived by the rest of the people on the water.
Fleet numbers for just about every class / event are declining sharply at the moment. New owners are just not coming into the sport in any number. If we want to still have a worthwhile sport of yacht racing in a decade's time we really need to be doing everything we can to encourage anyone who might be tempted to try racing to give it a go.
Shouting at the person who today is sailing a cruising boat, and telling him to "get out of the way, we're racing" is not exactly going to make him think "that looks like fun, maybe I should give that a go..." And as we see here, he then tells his friends, or an internet forum in general, about "those arrogant racers" and now more people have a negative impression of racing and racers.
I'd like to see more protests brought by race committees about this sort of thing, until the message really is drummed home that we aren't special when it comes to the COLREGs, and that it DOES matter how the racing community is perceived by the rest of the people on the water.
budgester
Member
Update, message sent, and a reply from club saying they will investigate.
I've been sailing for 10+ years done an atlantic crossing, and decent amount of cruising, and managed to keep out of the way of the hundreds of races in that time, until this one incident. I've considered entering a local cruising race in the past, but it does all seem a bit fraught. Even if I was to just follow the fleet around and come in last I'd thought it'd be a good reason for getting out of the marina and doing some sail tweaking as the missus calls it,
And then there is the feeling of if I was going to join on a boat as crew at a local club that I'd end up with one of these clueless skippers and get shouted at, it doesn't sounds to appealing to be honest.
But you do seem to have some good parties in the yacht clubs.
So I'll go back to my offshore cruising, quiet anchorages, and deciding if I'm gonna tack in the space of hours rather than minutes.
It one of the things I find the RYA miss out on with their training, The cruising courses have very little about the actual sailing and the dinghy courses have very little about being a good citizen on the water.
I've been sailing for 10+ years done an atlantic crossing, and decent amount of cruising, and managed to keep out of the way of the hundreds of races in that time, until this one incident. I've considered entering a local cruising race in the past, but it does all seem a bit fraught. Even if I was to just follow the fleet around and come in last I'd thought it'd be a good reason for getting out of the marina and doing some sail tweaking as the missus calls it,
And then there is the feeling of if I was going to join on a boat as crew at a local club that I'd end up with one of these clueless skippers and get shouted at, it doesn't sounds to appealing to be honest.
But you do seem to have some good parties in the yacht clubs.
So I'll go back to my offshore cruising, quiet anchorages, and deciding if I'm gonna tack in the space of hours rather than minutes.
It one of the things I find the RYA miss out on with their training, The cruising courses have very little about the actual sailing and the dinghy courses have very little about being a good citizen on the water.
Robin
Well-known member
Back in the 70s when we were in Poole and newish cruising members of a local club, PYRA had a dreadful reputation in the area after crazy antics in various harbours post races. We personally witnessed several of these by virtue of being in same place same time but not racing. I wrote to one club complaing about a drunken crew that cast a whole raft of boats (Not all race fleet ones) in Weymouth adrift about 2am including some visitors from overseas who when asking what was going on were yelled at with comments like 'who won the bloody war for you then' . I eventually got a terse reply from the club stating the boat owner was not on board and his crew had the use of the boat that weekend, no further action taken. My then sailing club ran friendly club races (all boats sub 30 foot) and didn't join the more serious PYRA stuff though did take a turn at running race starts on a rota basis with the other local yacht clubs. When we moved up a notch in boat size from a 24 foot family cruiser we were very much put off joining in PYRA stuff. Later however we joined the very club I had complained to previously but stuck to their cruising section. We saw that the racers were mostly crewed by young rugby club types with no etiquette taught , just hired rail meat with muscle. A great shame as this promoted a certain us and them division in the club back then. Fortunately time is a great healer and things did improve and the bad PYRA reputation of old faded.
So I completely agree with your (Flaming's) analysis that one bad apple or two can have overall detrimental effects beyond one incident or three on the water.
flaming
Well-known member
One of the very greatest things that has happened to racing in the 15 or so years that I've been doing it "sort of seriously" is that the average crew has stopped being all male, and mixed crews are definitely the norm now.
As such some of the very worst "rugby club" mentality has been tempered somewhat.
flaming
Well-known member
That's a real shame. You are right that there is a risk of coming across a shouty type if you volunteer to crew. But there is a simple solution - refuse to sail with them twice. Most eventually get the message....
Robin
Well-known member
That was the case too in my then club though some ladies could party enthusiastically enough, just without the Add-ons.
I did wonder about etiquette teaching one one occasion when an idiot RO set a race course for the Juniors super hot Cadet fleet that crossed the marina entry channel. We were caught entering this shallow channel close to local LW with a draught of 7ft and a bit, all depth alarms beeping madly, by a bunch of kids 'yelling out of our way we are racing ' More the race officer's fault than the kids but it does beg the question of ethics tuition from the lowest level on up. IIRC some of those Cadet crews, ladies in this case later went on to win several Olympic medals in the grown up classes
Greenheart
Well-known member
I'm not sure that's the message we're trying to promote!
Robin
Well-known member
I did say it was the RO fault not the kids but oh boy were they competitive even in the optimists we had a mooring by one of the main channel buoys often used as a race mark and had a grandstand view of future match race champions.
sailaboutvic
Well-known member
I once joined in a race just for fun with my moody 42 , 14tons loaded and came first , I was later told that motorsailing wasn't allowed,
What a stupid rule .
What a stupid rule .
Greenheart
Well-known member
Just like golf. A good walk, spoiled.