Yotty Snobbery

[TheBoatman]

I\'m a snob

Having ploughed through this thread, I admit I'm a snob?

I like all boats what ever construction, material, age, type or style and look down on anyone that doesn't like boats?

So there

As our US cousins say "Go figure"

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[duncan]

Re: no you\'re not........

if you accept, at least until they prove otherwise, that all those who do have a boat (of whatever type/size/power etc) are your 'equals' out there on the water?

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[alec]

Experience Snobbery ?

Some people cannot seem to construct a thread without listing their entire life story in sailing every time.



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[Mirelle]

Catch 22?

I don't think that's quite fair, Alec!

How else was Violetta going to record the fact that she has not experienced snobbery, without referring to the amount of sailing that she has done?

If she had taken up sailing last year, her experience (that she has not experienced snobbery!) would not tell us as much as it does with the knowledge that she has done rather a lot of sailing, over many years? She mentioned three boats. The grander sort of marina or Club might be less than welcoming to a leaky Dauntless, but would presumably be delighted to see a 70ft schooner?

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[AuntyRinum]

"Snooty Yotties

Fall into a number of categories:-
1) Wooden Yot owners, anything not wood cannot be considered a proper yot.
2) Traditional Yot owners, anything that is not long keeled and un-manageable in a confined space cannot be considered a proper yot."

I own a 44 year old wooden yacht complete with long keel, but my first experience of cruising yachts was on a Westerly 26 and my last boat was a GRP Jaguar 25. When I race I crew a modern GRP X yacht. They are all proper yachts - horses for courses. The snobbery in this post seems to be inverted.
Who was it who said, "You may think you are thinking, but you are actually rearranging your prejudices"?

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[Jeremy_W]

Re: Experience Snobbery ?

And Your problem is?

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[Ohdrat]

Re: I\'m a snob & Trying to end the thread..

Well I shall attempt to stir it up again as looking at the original classes of yotty snobishness I wish to add another class.. which is based on size..

Those with LOA over 40 ft look down on anything less and so on/forums/images/icons/wink.gif

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[Birdseye]

Re: No I haven\'t

Enjoy your sail in a multihull - I can never understand why more people dont sail them. You dont meet snobbery / prejudice too often, but you definitely do meet it in a multi.

The Blue Ensign? Well, if having three ensigns for leisure sailors isnt all about snobbery / class distinction, then I would like to know what it is about. Seriously. A rational explanation, as opposed to a history lesson, is called for.

Mind you, you could perhaps pay for the warrant because the colour matches your oilies better. /forums/images/icons/wink.gif





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[AuntyRinum]

Re: No I haven\'t

Blue ensigns for leisure sailors denote membership of a particular yacht club. What's wrong with that?

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[oldgit]

Re.Pretty blue flags.Get on e hear

Want to start up Old Git Isle of Sheppey Sailers and Drinking club.Est 2003,can we go ahead and order nice blue flags?Anyone want to join.we have some strict rules .Which we can make up as we go along.
Ps.Some nice EEC stars on it as well if at all poss please.

<hr width=100% size=1>Two boats please one here n one in the Med

 

[oldgit]

Re.Pretty blue flags.Get one hear

Want to start up Old Git Isle of Sheppey Sailers and Drinking club.Est 2003,can we go ahead and order nice blue flags?Anyone want to join.we have some strict rules .Which we can make up as we go along.
Ps.Some nice EEC stars on it as well if at all poss please.

<hr width=100% size=1>Two boats please one here n one in the Med

 

[alec]

Re: Catch 22?

Are you two a double act ?

Violetta pops up , gives us a damn good telling off for thinking the way we do and then lectures us on why she must be right and us wrong because of her unnecessary and vain list of sailing achievements. Yes snobbery, and one upmanship again. All that was missing were orders for 500 lines.

This kind of stuff just won't wash anymore.








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[longjohnsilver]

Catch 22? Eh?

Have just re-read the thread, must have missed the snobbery and lecturing as well as the vanity.

Don't see any reason for unpleasantness.

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[AuntyRinum]

Re: Re.Pretty blue flags.Get one hear

You can order nice blue flags but can you fly them?
I belong to two clubs, one has a warrant to fly the blue which, as I'm sure you know, is only possible as the club is of some antiquity, and the other is only 25 years older than your proposed Old Gits club and was formed after the MOD stopped issuing warrants. So what? If I'm sailing with that club I fly the red. Same boat, different ensign. What does it matter which one you fly? Why do people get so phased about it? Why this idea that boats flying the blue are trying to act in some superior way? It's a club ensign entitled to be flown by members with registered yachts, be they ever so high or ever so humble and we have more of the latter in the club than the former. How can anybody have a problem with that when any reasonable person will be granted membership and, if their boat is British registered, a warrant to fly the blue?
I dare say the Old Git Isle of Sheppey Sailers and Drinking club would have a club tie wouldn't it? If it was a blue tie wouldn't you think it was peculiar if members of clubs with red ties queried your choice of colour?
Certainly there are anarchic people about who have chips on their shoulders and they should fly the anarchist flag which is black.
However if anarchists were truly anarchic they would all fly different flags wouldn't they?


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[BlueSkyNick]

There is no snobbery.

The general trend of the thread seems to be that people either don't believe that snobbery exists, or if it does, then it shouldn't.

So in other words, all boats (and their owners) are equal .... its just that some are more equal than others.

Trust you all agree.

<hr width=100% size=1>Have a holiday on The Broads? Norfolk Enchants !!

 

[alec]

Re: REAL feeling, REALLY offended, REAL boat rage?

I wish it could be true that ‘it is all tongue in cheek’ but to me and I am sure others it is just another form of bigotry for no other reason that ‘I must be right therefore the rest of you are wrong’.

I would suspect that this has much deeper origins and majors around a general reluctance to accept change in general. The ‘average white boat’ or ‘plastic fantastic’ is so much an easy and visible reminder that things are not what they used to be. Most of us take this in an adult way, accepting life the way it is in reality and make the best of it. Again, many sailors and people cannot accept this change and make their lives ( and others) miserable when there are still so many good things in life now. I think this is why many wooden boat owners do not respond to a smile and a wave from many of us. It is an acknowledgement that change has taken place i.e. marinas, plastic boats, simplistic rigs, computers, drug addicts etc etc. They do their fellow wooden boat owners a massive disservice who do not think like this. I have a friend now who no longer waves to ANY wooden boat because of the many who show such rudeness. Close to home, in the creek, a wooden boatowner is so unpleasant because of his views on wood that people avoid him where he could be joining in the camaraderie and fun with the rest of us.
I would say that the majority of ALL boatowners love to see a fine wooden boat which very much includes myself, but all you are doing is driving people away from these forums when they could give us so much enjoyment, info, new ideas, old ideas etc etc.

REAL boatrage ?

Yes because things don't have to be this way.






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[BlueSkyNick]

Point of Order!

"but all you are doing is driving people away from these forums when they could give us so much enjoyment, info, new ideas, old ideas etc etc"

I have to strongly disagree with this remark, having remained neutral on this thread until now.

We have a 14yr old GRP boat, which we love and enjoy because it meets our specific requirements. I would not want a brand new mass-produced model. Nor would I want an old wooden boat, even if I had nothing else to do or spend my money on.

Mirelle has a personal preference for such a boat and clearly loves and enjoys her accordingly - that's entirely up to him, and I fully understand why he wouldn't want my boat.

Even though our choice of boat differs significantly, I find Mirelle's posts to be among the most interesting and informative on the forum. In fact they "give us so much enjoyment, info, new ideas, old ideas etc etc." as you suggested.

You might like to read back through them yourself, and then consider the validity of your rather sweeping statement.


<hr width=100% size=1>Have a holiday on The Broads? Norfolk Enchants !!

 

[Twister_Ken]

Alec - stick around

Any forum has a learning curve. Stick around and you'll find that both Mirelle and Violetta are about as broadminded in sailing and boat terms as it's possible to get. Both have gravitated over the years to the sort of boat and the sort of sailing they most enjoy, but you'd have to twist their arms very hard to get them to criticise any boat or boater on unjustified grounds.

As to tongue-in-cheek, my estimate is that probably 50% plus of posts here are t-i-c in one way or another. Just the way this perticular cookie crumbles.

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[Mirelle]

I am probably going to regret this, but....

It is certainly true that some owners of older boats do look back to the time when their boat was new, and endue that period with some of the characteristics of a Golden Age - Adrian Morgan, for example, writing in Classic Boat, makes no secret of the fact that he thinks sailing in the 1930's was probably better than it is now.

I'm not sure that this is necessarily harmful - once surrounded by sea, or in an otherwise empty anchorage, such a boat owner can imagine himself or herself to be in another time if that is what he or she wishes to do.

Personally, whilst I "ought" to remember fewer moorings, fewer marinas and fewer boats, the change has been so gradual that I have not really noticed it, but I remember leaky sticky oilskins, weak natural fibre rope and cotton sails that blew out unexpectedly very much better, and I have no wish to have them back!

There might be something else going on, though.

I suspect that there is some underlying resentment about, but may I suggest that it is not "old boat vs new boat"?

I think that it may be mild resentment, on the part of people for whom getting into sailing was a real struggle, of people who "arrive on a fast track" and proceed to behave in an assertive way.

As the owner of a modern type GRP sloop (is that OK?) put it last weekend whilst on my boat for a coffee (see, we do talk to each other!) - "The way into cruising used to be through dinghy sailing - now, it's through share options!"

The recent thread, here, on the article, in the current YM, about the boat which ended up being towed in, off the French coast, in winter, seemed to show this unease about the "instant" Yachtmaster. The people showing this unease own all sorts of boats - many of them modern and French, but they all went on about "experience".

It is now possible to learn all that you need to know, to buy a capable cruising boat, (which, lets face it, is very likely to be made by Beneteau, Jeanneau, Bavaria or Legend) and to start making longish passages within a year of taking up sailing. The chances are very high that anyone who does this will do just fine.

This is, indeed, due to improvements in technology.

People who "learned the hard way" via dinghy sailing, small, leaky cabin boats and so on sometimes do resent people who have "bought" their way into sailing, if the latter adopt a blatantly "in your face" attitude. This is surely fairly natural and would be found in any sort of activity. Nobody minds people taking up their sport - far from it - but it is human nature to object to being told that you are a sad old git by someone who had not set foot on a boat a few months earlier!

People who have "learned the hard way" are rather more likely (with exceptions) to be aboard an older boat, whilst people who have taken up sailing very recently, done a quick YM course and bought a boat are very much more likely to be aboard a new boat made by Beneteau, Jeanneau, Bavaria or Legend, although, again, there are exceptions.

I wave at anyone, unless they have just passed too close to me making excessive wash, in which case I am likely to make another gesture, but if you want to experience hostile stares and an unwelcoming attitude, try taking an old boat into a marina full of modern ones!

Those of us who did learn the slow way had to go through several years of "being put in our place" - half the East Coast waterside pubs then contained sailing barge masters, fishermen and longshoremen who were past masters at it, and Heaven help you if you crossed one! Leave your dinghy in the wrong place, or sit on the wrong seat in the pub, or make a pig's ear of a manouvre (unreliable small engines, remember!) and hit a boat, and your life was hardly worth living!

The writings of the late JDS are full of such characters.

Those people are now dead, and some people seem take up sailing with an approach which involves flashing cash and saying "forget tradition, it is valueless" in an assertive, indeed, an "in your face", way. This is not likely to be a high road to popularity with people who did things differently, because the new equipment and techniques are just that - new equipment and new techniques, which you can buy. They do not make you a better person, just as years of sailing up and down the same stretch of coast, as I have done, does not make me a better person, either. The new wave of people in sailing are not "wrong" nor are they "right".

Lets just get on with it!

<hr width=100% size=1><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by Mirelle on 22/09/2003 00:23 (server time).</FONT></P>

 

[tcm]

Re: Definition of snobbery

heard on the radio recently:

"Some people belive that they are thinking, when in fact they are merely re-arranging their prejudices."

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