Dave Selby is the proud owner of a 5.48m (18ft)
Sailfish, which he keeps on a swinging mooring
Mad about the boat on the picturesque Blackwater estuary in EssexDave Selby
Of course he’s a new member...
Look, he’s smiling!The new member
Loafer man has all the nautical knowledge and
boaty gear – so should be eyed with suspicion
Really, there is no excuse for
smiling in a yacht club except
at someone else’s misfortune
T
here’s always one, isn’t
there? The stranger at the
bar after every laying up
supper at every sailing club
in the world, nurturing a
thimble full of bitter in a half-pint glass,
and... SMILING!
That’s downright disrespectful and I’m
ashamed to say it even happens in
Maldon, although our laying up suppers
are more correctly termed laying out
suppers because that’s how the evening
generally ends. It’s tradition, and you don’t
mess with tradition.
And that’s the basic problem: this
dapper chap is wearing leather two-tone
correspondent deck shoes that have no
business near boats. For health, safety
and style that’s plain wrong, and definitely
marks him out as an ‘interloafer’.
But even more wronger is the smiling.
Well, call it smiling... smirking more like.
That really is not what laying up suppers
are about. Come to think of it, that’s not
what sailing is about.
The laying up supper is a poignant
ceremonial wake, a communion of
recreational grief, a funeral pyre of hopes,
dreams and aspirations, a moment ofreckoning and realisation of total failure,
an opportunity for lusty self-flagellation: to
mourn the shortness of the sailing season,
which ran from July 23 to July 27, was
mostly raining and was interrupted by the
birth of a granddaughter and a faulty stern
gland; to chastise yourself for yet again
failing to get to grips with celestial
navigation; for not
making it to the
Med, or even the
Medway; for
failing to become
a Yachtmaster
intergalactic black-belt ninja; and for not
putting into practice the second part of man
overboard procedure – the recovery bit.
But that’s only the beginning. And still
this evenly tanned newcomer – with a
glinting wrist-watch the size of a Bentley
hub cap on a shimmering satin-finish
bracelet chunkier than Sir Philip Green’s
anchor chain – is smiling, well simpering
more like.
Really, there is no excuse for smiling in a
yacht club except at someone else’s
misfortune. Outright giggling is only
appropriate in the case of groundings,
ramming pontoons, ropes round props,and the like, as long as it’s someone else:
the bigger the yacht the greater the glee.
That’s tradition. Other than that, no
smiling, although hugging is permitted
after the fight.
You see, sailing is really no laughing
matter. Yet still this guy, who resembles a
mannequin of all the latest and most chic
boutique boaty brands, with not a spot of
antifouling on them, is... smiling, well
grinning more like.
He’s clearly got money, and that’s
another reason we’re not smiling, because
we haven’t got any: that’s because we’ve
got boats and we’re so poor we can no
longer afford holidays – we have to go
sailing instead.Generous to visitors
Yet that hasn’t soured us, or diminished
our generosity to ‘visiting yachtsmen’.
Like all sailing clubs our welcome is
famous (other famous things include the
Spanish Inquisition). That’s why sailing
clubs are desperate for members.
Meanwhile, a small posse of committee
members has been surreptitiously eyeing
him up from a safe distance. The geezer’s
thimble of beer has barely evaporated in
the last hour, yet still he’s smiling, gurning
more like.
Eventually the tense deadlock is broken
when the rear vice dry goods commodore
is ejected from the huddle towards the
visitor with a membership pack.
‘Just what I was looking for, may I
borrow your pen?’ the chap chirps,
adding: ‘I’d buy you a drink but I’m not
sure of your club rules.’
The mortally embarrassed rear vice dry
goods commodore buys him a pint of wet
goods as other club officers sidle up; with
another he’s
proposed; with a
third he’s
seconded; the
fourth comes with
the suggestion
that election to membership is a formality
for someone with such an impressive
watch, wardrobe and sailing CV.
Turns out the sociable soon-to-be new
member has done quite a lot offshore,
which explains why he hasn’t bought a
drink: his money’s in his wallet which is in
Bermuda. He’s also between boats right
now, but a long-standing member of the
ROPYC, that’s the Rotating Other People’s
Yachts Club, and he gets around a bit.
If you haven’t met him yet you soon will,
and when you do please tell him our rear
vice dry goods commodore would like his
pen back.