by Richard Crockett
Here’s some humour as opposed to the cut ‘n thrust of serious round-the-cans sailing.
Written and illustrated by Alec Stone, he says: “Shouting on the water: a touchy subject at the best of times, but high time for a cool appraisal of this ubiquitous feature of our otherwise civilised sport.”
“I remember one day watching the Fireball Worlds at Durban, bobbing about in a rubber dinghy near the windward mark and being struck by how silently those boats peeled off one by one, set spinnakers, and diminished down on the reach almost as if, being powered by quiet concentration. All of them, that is, except for one South African helmsman who tainted the air about his boat with a fog of invective and abuse as tangible as a cloud of miggies. The strange thing was that he was moving just as fast as the others and herein lies an important lesson, but more of this later”.
READ THE REPORT HERE: Pages from 1982 09 – Yachtsman RSA – OCR