Let's face it, most sailors don't race, they like sailing as a lower stress sport. Ask those who prefer to daysail or putter about why they don't race and you get, "I don't know the rules", and "There's too much yelling" and "I'm afraid I'm going to hit someone".
Well what about some racing in traditional sail boats. Surely that's got to be more genteel. Like this video of the traditional Salcombe Yawls of England.
Wow, utter mayhem! The yelling is so loud you can hear it a couple hundred meters away, against the wind. Add a major dose of the wince factor as we watch the entire fleet try to criss cross each other, short tacking inshore, against the current. There is another video of the always interesting Salcombe Yawls buried back in the archives of this blog.
Velocette
5 hours ago
9 comments:
I like to race, but I'd think twice about racing these boats in this venue. They're challenged even more maybe by poor race management, I would think. It appears to me that some of the water pictured is restricted.
Wonderful. Reminds me of racing at Goose Poop Beach SC where we had a shoreline close to the start line like that. This is why we have Rule 20.
Don't let the idyllic west country location fool you, "Chiswick on Sea" (salcombe) is a competitive place
I love to race, but don't care who wins - does that count?
Aren't they just arguing about whether to call them yawls or ketches?
Tillerman, Keep pointing me to some of your old posts. The Goose Poop Beach post was a great tribute to the joys and tribulations of lake sailing. O'Docker, the mizzen on these Salcombe Yawls looks to be like our appendix. They have them but definitely don't need them. Most of the time they don't seem to trim them upwind.
I've often thought the mizzen was originally placed on yawls mainly for the benefit of Impressionist painters.
Oh maaaaaaaan. So, so good.
I want to go nowhere fast! Great blog.
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