Is sailing becoming an old man's game?

[Guest]

Is sailing becoming an old man\'s game?

At the Boat show I met an old Danish friend who runs a chandlery at a marina not far from Copenhagen. We were chatting about the Round Zealand Race which used to be the biggest yacht race in the world attracting 2,300 boats at its height in the mid Eighties. When I did the race with an English crew in 1996 there were 800 entries. Last year, my chandler friend lamented, only 300 boats took part in the race.

He says that although Denmark has always been a nation of sailors, young people are now turning away from it preferring silly computer games or flash cars. He said the average age of sailors in Denmark is now about 50plus. He is still selling plenty of kit but has very few new young customers.

Are things going the same way in Britain? Is sailing losing its appeal among the young or is it getting too boring or too expensive?


My chum, who always attends the London Boat show, reckons it could be the case. He has noticed that the shows are not so crowded, have fewer dinghies and that the majority of people attending are middle aged.

 

[DanTribe]

Re: Is sailing becoming an old man\'s game?

Cheeky young whippersnapper! 50 + is not old

 

[longjohnsilver]

50+

Oh yes it is (might not be saying the same in 4 years time!!)

There are still plenty of youngsters who start sailing but suspect most of them give up when they leave school/home as we all know it is an expensive hobby and they will have other priorities in their 20's.

 

[Guest]

Re: Is sailing becoming an old man\'s game?

Sorry Dan..no offence meant. In fact, I am over 50 and most of the people I crew for or who crew for me, are well over 50 and I often feel the young whippersnapper myself ;-D.

I do not mean to provoke an ageism debate, simply to find out if more should be done to attract young people in the hobby.

When I was at school in the Sixties we built dinghies and canoes in woodwork classes and later in our spare time at school. We also went on sailing courses and took part in regattas against other schools. My three children have never been offered the chance to do the same at their primary and secondary schools.

Admittedly schools on the coast do have plenty of watersports, but here in central Essex there is not much to be seen at the local comps.

Tin hat on ..flak incoming

 

[Miker]

I took it up at 60+

Like many others, I suspect, I could only afford a boat and find the time to sail it when I retired. Before then, it was at the back of the fleet in dinghies until I got too old to continue putting my arse in the water

 

[DanTribe]

Re: Is sailing becoming an old man\'s game?

I also started sailing at school in the 60s,starting to get the hang of it now.However I ca'nt agree about lack of youth sailing opportunity.My wife & I have spent many years trundling sprogs and boats around the country to open meetings and championships, the youth sailing scene is very active.Also a big demand for youthful gorillas on bigger racers once they can leave their mums.Admitted you don't see so many sailing cruising clunkers like I now have.

 

[LadyInBed]

It’s all down to costs . . .

People want all the creature comforts in the home, and who can blame them? That doesn’t leave much left over to buy, let alone run even a modest boat. And we haven’t even touched on mooring costs!
So its only when you get to 50+ and the kids leave home, and the mortgage is paid off, and the insurance policies pay out, that you have the bucks.

 

[Nikolai]

Re: Is sailing becoming an old man\'s game?

I write from Russia, and hope that my opinion on that thing will interest you...
I'm now 37 (not so young already), and there are very few young people sailing here around me (I mean private boats). Funny, but earlier in the USSR it was even simplier to obtain a boat than nowadays, when the prices on boats are grown too high, and people who really WANT to sail can't do it. Those guys ("novyye russkiye") who have money enough DON'T want to sail (as we understand the process)!

Nikolai, Moscow

 

[Guest]

Re: Is sailing becoming an old man\'s game?

When I worked in Essex a few years ago they had an exellent school/youth sailing centre at Bradwell, is it still there, and if so kick the school into organising trips! If parents shouted more about education and less about exam results maybe more would happen.

Roly, Voya Con Dios, Glasson, Lancaster

 

[Guest]

Re: Is sailing becoming an old man\'s game?

Ther seem to be some new people comming into sailing on the west coast, but then you can get a creek mooring for £300 per year, and the people next to me put a 45 footer on it! I also saw someone redeck a 50 year old boat with T&G from DIY shop to get sailing - but you won't meet him at the boat show, his total boat budget was £500pa. Just proves it can, and sometime is, still done.

Roly, Voya Con Dios, Glasson, Lancaster

 

[Guest]

Re: Is sailing becoming an old man\'s game?

If you are like me and a few others I know who have always sailed, there is definately a period of time from about 17 till about 28 where beer/motorbikes/girls (in that order) were far more interesting than sailing so it was dropped. Once Wife1 and Child1 & 2 were installed, sailing suddenly became Hobby1 again as Motorbike4 was sold and replaced with Boat1........(beer1,000,000 seems to have survived fortunately). The removal of Wife1 means a Boat2 is possible and is usually larger.

 

[rogerroger]

...and time

sailng tends to swallow as much time as it does money. Yes you can dinghy sail for a couple of hours but even this might involve a 3 hour round trip to the coast and back so takes the whole day.

Yachting is rarely worth it for the day, and even a weekend is too short.

I'm 32, my girlfriend is 26 and a teacher so we managed to take a month's sailing last summer and don't think we saw anyone under 50 apart from people's kids!!

Young people work longer hours now and are probably just too knackered! (not to sail perse, but to learn maybe).

However, I don't reckon sailing is "ageist" - when I played golf in my early twenties we were always looked down upon my the "old buggers", I've never come across this in sailing.

You can understand why sailing appeals to the retired as they have time to do more of it and get more out of their boats by taking them further...

Roger Holden
www.first-magnitude.co.uk

 

[chrisc]

Re: Is sailing becoming an old man\'s game?

it is very difficult for most people to combine sailing and
working ,and most of us are working 60+ hours a week
it means that you either go out for the weekend -which i
always find too short to bother with. or you stop working for
some time and go sailing. This option is only open to the
self employed and wealthy.or unemployed and poor.most
in both these categories are over 50 except the young
unemployed sailors who are all in the sun somewhere.

 

[kingfisher]

Not if you\'re a sea-scout

We've got 200+ kids on the water, from rafting boats (7) to dingy's(12) to gaff schooners (3), and that's just one unit.

Same for
Bruges
Antwerp
Oostend
Blankenberge
Nieuwpoort

It's even more popular in the Netherlands.

If you're under 25, go to Sneekweek in the Netherlands. Imagine Cowesweek, with a club 18-25 attitude

Obi-Wan

 

[LadyInBed]

Re: DIY

Yes, go for it and do it, in whatever shape or form of boat.
But as rogerroger pointed out, you need time. A lot of people these days want the shiny new jobby now and the instant gratification.

 

[oldharry]

Re: DIY

Seems to me the problem boils down to work pressures, cost, and the 'salesmans' image of boating - which IPC fosters as much (and as little) as anyone else.

Employers demand far more from their 'up-and-coming' youngsters, leaving little time for time consuming recreational activities like sailing (or hiking, climbing, camping etc etc). Add to that the demands of a young family, and the financial pressures of the present housing market - sailing comes a long way down the list for many younger people.

Over 50s at least tend to have paid the mortgage off, and finished eductaing the children, and are further up the incremantal salry scales, so often have a lot of extra cash available for boating activities.

And the 'salesmanship' aspect? Reading most modern publications, and visiting the boat shows, it is easy to get the impression that you need around £5000 just to get afloat in say, a Wayfarer or whatever, and between £15 and £20k for a boat with basic accomodation. MDL and others cash in on this with hefty mooring fees, so that sailing can easily appear to be the preseve of those of us lucky enough to have a decent amount of cash left after everything else has been paid for.

This of course is not so: there is a whole community of boating people who simply cannot afford to buy in to the Yottie market, and yet quite happily spend their time pottering around in a huge fleet of smaller older boats, living on 'creek' moorings, rarely entering Marinas, and doing pretty well all their own maintenance - and probably getting every bit as much fun from their boats as MDLs clients.

There must be thousands of older boats at prices that most people on modest incomes could afford, knocking around the coasts. Its just a matter of knowing where to find them. An older but sound Corribbee, Jag 20, Alacrity, Prelude or Pirate - to name but a few - can be picked up for between £1500 and £3000, and if you are prepared to put a bit of work in, neglected examples may change hands for a few hundred quid.

PBO used at one time to include the bottom end of the market. I do not know of any magazine now that does - but there would be surely a large and avid readership for any Editor who took this one on and gave us regular practical advice on the care, repair and management of smaller older boats, and would publish information about the early Nomads, Matildas, Caprices or whatever, together with information about their known weaknesses, and shortcomings.

 

[DanTribe]

Re: DIY [re Oldharry]

Hear hear to that.There used to be a thriving market in yacht clothing and equipment from army surplus stores.Nowadays you are made to feel foolhardy if you dont fit the very latest safety gismo.Magazines of course have to promote sales of their advertisers goods, so we can't expect them to focus on people yachting on a budget.

 

[Guest]

Re: Is sailing becoming an old man\'s game?

when I first started sailing in the late Sixties I used to buy ex Services kit from a wonderful shop called Foulkes, under the railway arches in Leytonstone, east London.

It was a magical place, an absolute Aladdin's Cave for up to date gear but also lovely old but reliable rescue gear once intended for use by the Services. They even sold ex RAF parachutes that could be used for making spinnakers and huge great boxkites that had once been part of kit on RAF liferafts.

As a skint student I followed the Bodge Marine style of boating, except when it came to safety. My clapped out old cars were serviced by Bodge Autos, and meals aboard wetre provided by Bodge Catering...you get the picture?

I suppose it is possible to do some boating on a budget these days but nothing like it was when Foulkes had a mass of ex MoD gear.

 

[Chris_Rayner]

Re: Foulkes

Omigod! A real madeleine in lime tea moment ((c) M. Proust). I had a couple of sleeping bags and an ex-army bivvy off them in the late sixties. Unwisely went camping with my then girlfriend, now wife, in Devon in Easter. Camped on Jennicliffe head and got snowed on. Bivvy collapsed in wee small hours, and sleeping bags were not of adequate Tog value. Spent night with one sleeping bag inside the other and locked in shivering intimate but deeply unpassionate embrace.

Eeeeeeeh!! Them were t'days!

 

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