Sailing Forefathers (Yottie Types)

[jetwake]

I think the big difference is that we are distanced from death. We even have smaller faamilies now because we accept that we can, by and large, not lose children during childhood.

Even my parents wartime generation rather expected to lose children, and ceratinly relatives, at some untimely point. I suspect nowaday most people do NOT know of a loved one snatched from them early on, and if they do it's unfair and nasty and how can God allow this.

Go back a hundred years or more and we knew that death was simply there, all the time.

So now if I sail I take ultra care and I am cautious because I know I can cheat death to some extent, so I don't tempt fate. I look after my children, possibly limiting their experiences to those where I can not tempt the fates.

If this ability to extend our lives is softer than my forebears, then guilty as charged...but I think they'd have done exactly the same in my shoes.

The further we get from frequent death the more it worries us, I think. Incidentally, I think the same is true of guns...but thats another story!

David

[Minn]

Ho, hum.

I should perhaps start by saying that I sail a pre-War boat; one that I have owned for quite a long time, and one that I have fitted with a few gadgets - echosounder, through hull log, GPS, VHF, electricity, a diesel engine, a liferaft, an inflatable tender and an outboard. I suppose I have brought her up to "state of the art, 1980"

I have taken up sailing her without using the gadgets.

The reason is that owing to family circumstances I am not in a position to go to anywhere that I have not already been, for the time being, anyway.

I do have cotton sails, but I have not gone as far as manila rope or "real" oilskins.

It's rather satisfying.

[Seanick]

Ho, hum.

I should perhaps start by saying that I sail a pre-War boat; one that I have owned for quite a long time, and one that I have fitted with a few gadgets - echosounder, through hull log, GPS, VHF, electricity, a diesel engine, a liferaft, an inflatable tender and an outboard. I suppose I have brought her up to "state of the art, 1980"

I have taken up sailing her without using the gadgets.

The reason is that owing to family circumstances I am not in a position to go to anywhere that I have not already been, for the time being, anyway.

I do have cotton sails, but I have not gone as far as manila rope or "real" oilskins.

It's rather satisfying.

I do try not to use the gps....every time I go aground I turn the plotter on and I am just in the wrong place!

[Foxy]

IMHO good points about the fear thing. It hurts to say it - and damn them for it! but, from what I've seen, it appears that the average french yachtsman would be out there sailing, with nothing but a rough looking yacht, a partly working engine, in the cold and wet and still dry out on legs on the beach - much like the stories I hear of the UK 20 or 30 years ago. Whereas I'm afraid the image I have of us brits is having lovely shiny boats which sit in marinas for 50 weeks of the year. A bit provocative I know, but I can't help but admire them for it. Perhaps it stems from being based in the solent for a while. Other areas of the Uk are perhaps a little more adventurous. I guess its just a matter of percentages, with so many boats based down there, but.......

[Woodlouse]

As said, big powerful sail plans plus towing with the tide. Also, the trawl was a beam trawl with a frame to hold the mouth of the net open - unlike modern otter board trawls that use the speed of the vessel keep the net open.

Actually otter boards were used when trawling under sail. Beams could be too big and unwieldy for the smaller boats.
There's a good description of trawling under sail during the latter parts of the first world war by Ralph Stock in The Cruise of the Dreamship.


My grandfather always wore a shirt and tie when sailing. I have to say that a lot of style has gone out of yachting since it became available to the masses.

[Minn]

If anyone has not read them already, Michael Frost's two books "Boadicea CK213" and "Half a Gale" are very good on trawling and oyster dredging under sail including the use of a sailing otter trawl (which is different to a motor vessel otter trawl).

They are actually very good books altogether; he used his own observations and a scientific turn of mind (he was my dentist as a boy!) to come to some rather striking conclusions about wind and sea. and it rather looks as if he may have been quite right, if I understand the article on Lagrangian coherent structures in the Science bit of this week's "Economist".

[glashen]

more likely they'll envy how lucky we were...being allowed to anchor, travel without lodging some electronic passage plan and not having yearly taxes to pay to use seas and waterways and for owning a boat. plus there will be the compulsory sailing licence and electronic tagging of all vessels and crew linked to a big brother satelitte system in the sky.

I think predicting the future is a fools game, and there are challenges around if you want them. Just don't take too much notice of the safety police, I've been told no sane person would cross the channel without radar. I'm happy with the electronics I have (GPS etc), I might in the future be tempted to more particularly AIS, but in the meantime I shall sail taking the equipment I have into account but no overly relying on it.

[VO5]

I never cease to be amazed that the public do not realise that the safety police are not there for the purpose of acting truly in the interest of the well being of the public. It is quite the opposite. They act contrary to the interests of the public. They encroach upon the public. They treat the public as if the public were children, with neither common sense or any sense at all for that matter. Of course the less the public actively resist such nonsense the more the other side feel emboldened to pass and enact increasingly arcane ideas. But the public, in very large measure is to blame, by resigning themselves to be subservient. And the public...remains mystified as to why these ideas are put forward and by whom. The answer is quite simple. The answer is that there is no interest in acting in the public interest at all. There is an interest in cynically pretending it is the case. The underlying reason being a well disguised objective, This objective includes dumbing down the population to make the population subservient, obedient and ultimately enslaved. This is in the hands of cynical planners who keep pushing the envelope using all sorts of excuses and silly reasons that do not stand up to intelligent scrutiny to bulldoze their way to impose their ideas and to succceed to have them implemented as law. The sooner everybody wakes up the better.

[VO5]

I think predicting the future is a fools game, and there are challenges around if you want them. Just don't take too much notice of the safety police, I've been told no sane person would cross the channel without radar. I'm happy with the electronics I have (GPS etc), I might in the future be tempted to more particularly AIS, but in the meantime I shall sail taking the equipment I have into account but no overly relying on it.

The future has already been decided and meticulously planned in advance of the event, horrifically.

The future is a society with neither love nor freedom nor privacy, is what the future is, I feel saddened to have to tell you.

If you are a thinking person, to consider the future and its implications is the greatest conscious nightmare that can be considered and imagined, really, truly....

[DogWatch]

YES !
We've gone soft in the same way that many previous "civilisations" slipped into decadence.
Jim

rubbish!

Travel forward in time, people will look back and laugh that we went to sea with such primitive equipment. Internal combustion engines, how quaint, our micro nuclear fusion caterpillar drive running on seawater is already out of date.

Imagine taking on fuel to run silly little propellers.. But they must have been braver than us, no?