Sailing Magazine
by Richard Crockett
Now here’s a light-hearted read by John Vigor who penned a humorous and sometimes useful daily column in the Mercury newspaper. He was a yachtie, a very good Mirror sailor, who graduated to keelboats and crewed for Dave Cox aboard ‘Diana K’ in the 1971 Cape to Rio Race.
He ultimately bought a Morgan 31, and together with his family sailed it to the USA where they settled. He became a prolific author writing many books on various aspects of sailing. This is how he tackled the subject in the above headline:
“Almost everybody in this enlightened age knows something about machinery. Even women are taking cars to pieces at special courses, and their husbands have no difficulty in mastering the intricacies of the power mower.
“But comparatively few people know how a simple thing like a yacht works. You know how it is: you walk down to the yacht basin on a Saturday afternoon and there are these sailing dinghies foaming backwards and forwards.
“You see a man holding a stick in one hand and a tatty piece of rope in the other, and for no comprehensive reason the boat goes. It all looks so simple – until you try it for yourself.”
READ MORE HERE: 1969 10 16 – Don Pfotenhauer Collection – 000066 – OCR
