Who said "Gentlemen don't sail to windward"? And why?

[JumbleDuck]

...and as a gentleman who really enjoys the reward of cycling uphill, and of getting a boat to the place I want to be, rather than the place it would have ended up if unattended, I say this phrase is utter balls...so I wonder why we persist in repeating it?

Because it's an accurate and gently self-mocking description of how some of us enjoy our sailing?

 

[dancrane]

Grrr...I do dislike replying so soon after I'd said I wouldn't...

I'm rotten at beating...can't keep the boat upright, can't steer straight, always luffing or sheeting-out, making slow progress as a result...but the progress I make, I'm proud of...

...so if, as a policy, I refused to try, and just always settled for an easier destination, I think I'd feel...feeble. Is feeble the real meaning here, behind "gentle" in "gentlemen"?

No offence intended. I ask only in the sense of Jumbleduck's "gentle mocking". But...perhaps that should be feeble mocking? Now I'm confused. I...I must stop this...

 

[Colvic Watson]

Because it's an accurate and gently self-mocking description of how some of us enjoy our sailing?

That a few on the thread seem to have taken very personally - almost as if the very utterance of the phrase is intended to insult them. Of all the things to get irate about, a whimsical aphorism is a strange one to pick. In a perverse way it's made me love it more not less.

 

[Hydrozoan]

I said....

Because you have female company that think listing equals instent death

The gentlemen when not racing would indeed, I assume, have been much influenced by what they thought their ladies would tolerate.

But when racing would they have been the 'gentlemen' of the saying? Some may recall that Mr Alfred Haddock successfully argued (in A P Herbert’s ‘Is a Golfer a Gentleman?’) that he was not a gentleman when in pursuit of his sport - see e.g. http://theaposition.com/stephenhardygoodwin/golf/937/isagolferagentleman .