Sailing Magazine
By Richard Crockett
Recently I shared a humorous piece from John Vigor which struck a chord, so here’s another, this time about the concours d’elegance, crews union and more. Vigor was a ‘Diana K’ crewman on the 1971 Rio Race.
This is what he wrote: “Well, shiver me timbers and lay me low with a marline spike! Trample me in the bilges and scrub me with holystone! So they’re going to have a little old concorde of elegance – or whatever it is – for the yachts taking part in the Cape to Rio race, are they?
“Gonna make all them yachts line up and waggle their purty little sterns at the judges, are they? Well, scupper me! You coulda knocked me down with the spare kedge anchor when I had it read out to me from the newspaper yesterday.
“It seems that them chaps down in the Cape are gonna give a trophy to the “best-prepared and best-groomed yacht in a pre-race concours d’elegance.
“Well, heck, as shop steward of the ‘Diana K’s’ Crew Union, I gotta right to express an opinion about this here concorde thing: it is the official verdict of the DKCU that the Cape to Rio race committee has overstood the mark. (Actually, we think they’ve gone nuts, but we can’t say that because they might chuck us out of the race.)”
READ MORE HERE: 1970 10 21 – mercury – Rio 1971 – Don Pfotenhauer – S&A – 473 – OCR
