Sailing Magazine
by Richard Crockett
As we head rapidly towards Christmas and the close of 2025, I would like to appeal to ALL followers of this historical Blog to assist me in preserving our rich sailing history – especially saving it from trash cans when, as a last desperate resort, it is sometimes finally discarded and lost forever. My plea is for you to lend me your material to digitise and share.
So often families have kept scrap books, photo prints, negatives and slides (transparencies), passing them through the hands of family members in the hope that one of them will know what to do with the material, until finally in desperation it is all passed on to someone else or dumped at a yacht club. Please rather let me have this material to add to my archives and share with those who follow the history of our sport.
Yacht Clubs generally don’t keep these historical archives, rather they get stuffed in a corner until someone decides to tidy up and trash them.
My promise is that I will treat them with the utmost care, look after them carefully, and return them to you safely along with a memory stick of the digitised material.
Since starting my historical archives I have been very fortunate to have digitised and saved archives from Bruce Dalling’s family, John Martin, Vaughan Giles, Bruce McCurrach, Don Pfotenhauer; Richard Bertie; Dudley Dix; Dave Elcock; Frans Loots, Peter Goldman’s Photo Library, Brian Lello’s South African Ocean Racing Trust (SAORT) files, and more recently Bertie Reed’s archives. And lot’s more too. And, as an example to all Clubs, the Royal Cape Yacht Club continues to let me digitise all their historical sailing material.
Of interest is the fact that I have already created a stand-alone 4000+ page PDF document of Voortrekker – from idle chatter, to concept, to the formation of what ultimately became the South African Ocean Racing Trust (SAORT), to the fruition of the 1968 OSTAR Race in which Bruce Dalling and ‘Voortrekker’ excelled – and even beyond that.
Along with the material I have, there is enough for me to write books on the Cape to Rio Races, the Lipton Cup, the Agulhas Race, Rothmans Week, Mainstay Week and the NCS Regatta, the Vasco da Gama Race, and also the Mauritius to Durban Race to name just some. And along with these I have extensive photo archives too.
Add to the above is the fact that I have every issue of SA Yachting and Sailing Magazine digitised and word-searchable. That alone is 60 years’ worth of sailing history. Another 25 000+ newspaper cuttings is something else I have.
This is my personal crusade, and instead of simply archiving and keeping the contents away from prying eyes, I share my spoils in the hope that you will enjoy reminiscing as much as I do, and continue to do so every time I post new material.
I use a professional A4 photo scanner plus an A3 document scanner to archive material. Plus I have the hardware and software associated with creating and preserving over 7 terabytes (and building daily) of historical material, and various backups to ensure it is never lost.
I am still only scratching the surface in terms of archiving our historical sailing records, but the joy I get from them every time I add to them, and whenever I do some digging, makes me more determined to preserve the history of our sport and share it as far and wide as possible. It’s become a personal crusade – maybe even an obsession.
My Plea – Please Share Your Sailing History
If you are interested in preserving the rich history of sailing in RSA, my plea to you is to assist me by sharing your personal archives (however big or small) and those of family members too. Photos, newspaper cuttings, Notices of Race, brochures, minutes, sailing-related documents and whatever else you may have as they all have a place in my archives.
There are big gaps in my archives which need filling, so should you have material that you are willing to share please contact me (editor@sailing.co.za) and let’s chat.
Sharing From These Archives
Sadly there are people who regularly plagiarise my archive material, and that of people who have entrusted me with their material, and post it as if it is their own without acknowledging the source. Should you wish to copy, forward or share material from my Blog and Facebook pages, PLEASE acknowledge the source as:
Sourced From the SAILING Mag Archives & Historical Records (www.sailing.co.za)
Conclusion
I am looking forward to hearing from those who have material to share. (mail to: editor@sailing.co.za)
I will be taking a break until the new year, so wish all a happy and safe festive season – and may all your new year wishes become reality.
