What's the least accurate TV/film portrayal of sailing/boats that you've seen?

Woody Allen's Casandra's Dream - an entertaining film but the sailing boat must have been tied to the pontoon or being towed for the unconvincing action scenes

The Boatnicks - great fun, the boat scenes are pure slapstick and not to be taken seriously

Wind - enjoyable action if you can suspend disbelief during poor continuity in racing scenes which are all over the place and the plot - lose the America's Cup, design a new yacht in the desert after tank testing model in both a fast running river and an inflatable swimming pool and proving a new spinnaker by powering a pick-up truck, win back the cup - is pure fantasy. Some good cliches: 'you can lead, you can follow, or you can get out of the way'; 'If you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem'.

Message in a Bottle - storm scene considerably lacking in tension or reality - sacrificing one for the other would have been excusable if both could not be achieved succesfully

Knife in the Water - would love to find such desolate waters beautiful boat and empty roads but would hate to have to remove my windscreen wipers for fear of theft of unobtainable replacement
 
Dead Calm...where shall I start. That stupid radar, the bit when Sam Neill is stuck under a hatch on the sinking boat, where the hatch is a few metres above the waterline yet the water under the hatch is also, erm, above the water line. Doesn't Nicole Kidman end up stood on the spreaders without so much as a harness or ascender in sight? And not forgetting the super accurate flare that just happens to be on deck and end up in Billy Zane's gob...

But for total, unbelievable, fabricated *******s, I have a DVD entitled "Britains Favourite Yacht Race-The JP Morgan Round The Island Race 2010". Utter bull****. There's loads of yachts, sailing along in the sunshine, apparently in the Solent. Yeah right. The crews are wearing shorts and T shirts (oh come on, pur-lease), all the sails seem to reach to the top of the mast rather than no higher than the spreaders (as if), and obviously some arty-farty director has also got them to fly these big brightly coloured things (utter *******s as everyone knows you'd never be able to fly one of those in typical 40knot Solent conditions). Oh yeah...get this...apparently it's on a Saturday, erm, that's a weekend, and we all know what the weather does in the proper Solent every fecking weekend (seriously, do they think we are daft?) and they've tried to add in some drama, showing some of the boats clearly having structural problems as the whole crew seem to be wearing these black things across their eyes, presumably to protect them from the frantic "Das Boot" style welding attempts going on down below.

So very disappointing, I think I might write a letter of complaint...
 
dancrane said:
Actually, thinking back, those Minder episodes were in the days when fivers were blue-ish, and £1 notes were green...still, that'd be cheaper than throwing fivers. This would be a strange variation of the description of sailing as standing under a cold shower tearing up banknotes. Actually going to sea, then deliberately disposing of wads of money...weird!
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Well, here in the civilised end of the UK we still have pound notes - and they are indeed green. Still legal tender, although you don't see many about any more.
 
Iain C said:
But for total, unbelievable, fabricated *******s, I have a DVD entitled "Britains Favourite Yacht Race-The JP Morgan Round The Island Race 2010". Utter bull****. There's loads of yachts, sailing along in the sunshine, apparently in the Solent. Yeah right. The crews are wearing shorts and T shirts (oh come on, pur-lease), all the sails seem to reach to the top of the mast rather than no higher than the spreaders (as if), and obviously some arty-farty director has also got them to fly these big brightly coloured things (utter *******s as everyone knows you'd never be able to fly one of those in typical 40knot Solent conditions). Oh yeah...get this...apparently it's on a Saturday, erm, that's a weekend, and we all know what the weather does in the proper Solent every fecking weekend (seriously, do they think we are daft?) and they've tried to add in some drama, showing some of the boats clearly having structural problems as the whole crew seem to be wearing these black things across their eyes, presumably to protect them from the frantic "Das Boot" style welding attempts going on down below.
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I believe they're making a sequel next weekend.
 
'Waterworld' was the most obvious - inferior - rip-off I've ever seen, I like the original, 'Mad Max 2 -The Road Warrior' !

I did read that some replica square riggers intended for film work actually motor in reverse to get the sails bellying, with a foam generator at the forefoot to give a nice 'bow wave' :eek:

I don't think that would spoof a yottie for a second, surely confuse the hell out of them though and the insurance claim diagram for a collision would be interesting !
 
I have some doubts about how easily the hole in Peppa Pig's Grandfather's boat was repaired by Grampa Rabbit nailing on a bit of metal from an old washing machine or something.
 
prv said:
I read somewhere that, pedantically, no Scottish notes are legal tender, even in Scotland.

Pete
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Well to be absolutely pedantic about it, the only completely legal tender note in the UK was the BoE £1, higher denominations being promissory notes - as are all Scottish banknotes. So on that basis, no currently circulating UK bank note is "legal tender". :)
 
jubro said:
Votes for some good sailing films: Deep Water (biog of Donald Crowhurst).

Riddle of the Sands - not perfect, but at least you can tell they were trying.

Swallows and Amazons - Ransome would have been proud.
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+1

Cruel Sea always one of my fav films (and books for that matter), and Battle of the River Plate.

Arh the days when not only did we have a Royal Navy with a cruiser or two..but they could afford to use three of them for filming!

slight skew on subject...fav 'sailing book', anything by Sam Llewleyn, but especially the Iron Hotel. He is a fab author who certainly has researched his subject matter and he certainly knows and understands boats of all sizes!
 
No doubt at all........

This series of films bears no resemblance whatsoever to any sailing I have ever done. The weather is horrible, the cuisine looks positively dangerous and the level of comfort falls into the "I would rather eat wasps" category.
 
One of the best naval warfare films ever made is...Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan !

I don't think many could fail to be stirred by the 'Enterprise leaving dock' sequence; the director deliberately gave the film a tall ship / naval battle feel & soundtrack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKogc14hHtQ

A favourite book is Douglas Reemans' 'HMS Saracen'.

I'm not a huge fan of his stuff but that one hits the nail on the head, my Dad, who was a Leading Air Mechanic on Seafires and Hellcats, read it and said " this bloke knows the real navy all right."

Great ending.
 
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The scene in the original Sabrina were Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey bogart are playing music on a record player whilst sailing a small yacht!!!
 
Worst - Spall at Sea or whatever it's called, they made out they just stopped off at Spurn Point then carried on down, but really they went up the Humber and into Hull and Grimsby.

Best - Rosie and Jim, they are just like they are on TV, and nice friendly people too.

Here they are in Goole.
 
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