98Sternpost
CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2015F
or much too long there has been a popular
misconception – very often promulgated by the
non-marine media – that leisure boating is
necessarily expensive. CB readers, however, will know as
well as anyone else that, while there clearly are some
people who are willing and able to lavish unimaginable
sums of money on their boats, there are many
inexpensive ways in which it is possible to get afloat.
Harrison Butler thought so too. “We must explode
the popular fallacy that to own a yacht is synonymous
with wealth,” he said when presenting a paper to the
Congress of the Small Craft Exhibition in 1923. “The
ownership of a car carries no such stigma, and yet
yachting is far less expensive than motoring.”
A decade-or-so earlier Yachting Monthly had
published a piece entitled “Economical Yachting” by HJ
Cheetham. “It is somewhat remarkable that in waterside
towns and villages yachting should be considered a
pastime only for the wealthy,” he wrote.
“The growth of this idea can be readily imagined
from the advent of someone – if we may describe it in
these democratic days – in a higher social scale.
“And yet yachting or boat sailing is not beyond the
reach of even the most plebeian, and it may be that the
less liberally endowed a man is with the world’s goods
the more enjoyment does he get out of the pleasure he
takes upon the waters. The extent of one’s enjoyment
need not be measured by the depth of one’s purse, but
rather by the amount of time it is possible to devote to
the water and to God’s air.”
F Cowper, writing in Yachting World in 1921, agreed
with the less is more philosophy: “All the elegancies and
refinements of the conventional yacht are but luxuries,
and do not tend to foster that hardihood and adventure
which is the very essence of practical boat sailing. Let allwho love the sea get what boats they can and go a-sailing
how and best they can, regardless of varnish, pumice
stone, paint and spotless sails.”
High profile events such as the America’s Cup have
never helped either: “Many disagree with your frequently
expressed view that the Cup has done a tremendous lot
of good to yachting,” J Richards wrote in a letter to
Yachting World in 1934, “for they think it has done more
harm than good – it does a lot to invest yachting with the
reputation of being a rich man’s game only.”
“Is it possible,” wondered Yachting World’s editor
EF Haylock in January 1947, in a piece about the
boatbuilding licence scheme brought about by post-war
timber shortages, “that the responsible high-government
officials are not yachtsmen and, doubtless in common
with many others, look upon all forms of yachting as the
pastime of a rich and privileged class? Far from it, many
of our keenest small boat sailors and cruising men are
comparatively poor and, taken individually, outnumber
the owners of the luxury yacht by hundreds to one.”
During the war itself, the Sunday Times published a
piece by the Marquis of Crewe who thought that
“yachting is the most costly of all pastimes, whether
cruising or racing”. This prompted AL Prynne, Hon Sec
of the RNSA, to write a letter to the Yachting World:
“Much harm can be done by columnists who write in an
authoritative manner about subjects of which they are
ignorant, and in this case a false statement might easily
choke off recruits to one of the healthiest and most virile
of all recreations.” Haylock, too, thought that “I am
hoping that we shall see an end to misrepresentation,
which must have caused many a man who could afford a
boat to think such a thing was beyond his reach.”
Sadly we have yet to see the “end to
misrepresentation”, and I wonder if we ever will.Damage limitation
Nigel Sharp challenges the notion that wealth is a prerequisite of yachting
“One’s
enjoyment
can be
measured by
the time it is
possible to
devote to the
water and to
God’s air”TIM WRIGHTSailing to your budget
High-end Elena; Mid-range Spirited Lady
and entry-level, the Harrison Butler Cora. All seen at AntiguaCB323 Sternpost.indd 98 23/03/2015 18:08