Sometimes it’s good to get a reminder
meant as a criticism of them and their sailing, just my observations and memories of keelboat sailing in general.meant as a criticism of them and their sailing, just my observations and memories of keelboat sailing in general.This post might need a bit of background for those that don’t know me very well so I’ll give a bit of an overview of my sailing history:
- Started in junior dinghies.
- Moved to intermediate/adult dinghies and a little bit of messing about in skiffs.
- Moved to sportsboats.
- Moved to offshore/keelboats.
- Moved back to sportsboats.
- Moved to skiffs while still doing some sportsboat racing.
That last point is where I currently am, and for the most part I’m pretty happy (in an ideal world I’d have unlimited funds 
). I moved on from keelboats because I found them to be pretty unexciting, 10 guys on a boat, only 1 or 2 people actually doing anything most of the time, the sportsboats are a bit this way though not quite as bad as a big keelboat. Also I’m not a great fan of the onboard culture/hierarchy that goes with keelboat sailing, I think to some extent this culture/hierarchy is also evident in sportsboats though not quite as much as when there are more crew.
I was invited to go Sydney 38 sailing this past weekend in the last race of the CYCA winter series. It was great to be out on the water, though as far as excitement goes… *YAWN*
At one point during the race we were on a tight reach with kite up in maybe 15 knots… smoking along at 9 knots! (please note lots of sarcasm there), it really made me wish that I was either on a skiff or sportsboat as both would have smoked past in a shower of spray doing around 15-16.
It really reminded me about the reasons that I’m not particularly interested in keelboat sailing, all the old stereotypical positions/people/attitudes are still very existent on keelboats… absolutely nothing has changed since I stopped keelboat sailing ~10 years ago.
Would I do it again? If there wasn’t anything better to do then more than likely yes. The guys I sailed with were a good bunch of guys (approx 50:50 skiffies:yachties) so this isn’t meant as a criticism of them and their sailing, just my observations and memories of keelboat sailing in general.
Filed by Popeye at July 9th, 2007 under Sailing