In ye' olden days...

Originally posted by JimC Originally posted by Strangler and vote on who looks the most ridiculous.  Truth is that what we look like now will probably look a lot worse in 35 years time... But here's a forum participant. Fortunately I don't believe any photos exist of me sailing from the days when I had generous amounts of hair...

I had a home build wetsuit ...

What class is that?

Originally posted by Guest#260 ]What class is that?

Hmm, lets see what we can see:

Shortish boat.
Hard chine
Vertical stem
Full battened sails in the UK in the 70s
Trapeze two hander
spinnaker pole at least as long as or longer than the boom

I don't think there are a lot of candidates:-)

Edited by JimC

Originally posted by Stefan Lloyd I'd say "some" not "loads". SA is overwhelmingly male and certainly has its share of neandertals. Less of the creche than here though, probably because it's a tough audience.

Okay, I'll retract my "loads". Maybe "a good number of" or indeed "some" would have been a better quantifier.

Any sailing website or forum will always have an overwhelmingly male readership I would suggest and perhaps on reflection it's just the larger overall number of users on SA which mean more females and actually the proportion is similar. Not sure how you'd find out for sure though.

The main difference I've noticed is that most top sailors avoid here like the plague and the threads always seem to deteriorate into a pointless discussion about who's got the biggest bowsprit wheras SA sees regular contributions from world champions, olympic hopefuls, sailmakers and other industry pros and so on.

I think my point is that the tough audience doesn't seem to put people off, female or otherwise, and that a call for better manners or harsher moderation on this forum is in my opinion a measure that would not do a damned thing to increase its popularity.

I have to say my interest in the forum is lacking no I kepp telling myself not to bother looking at it these days ...

My woooden ramp thread I think was a sad reflection on the way this are going ...

Originally posted by JimC I don't think there are a lot of candidates:-)

Do you know which boat it is Jim or have any photos of it sailing (possibly worth putting in a different thread/class forum to avoid accusations of turning this into "yet another" cherub chat)?  Love the way they stood out even then.

Think it'd be really cool to have a couple of the development classes with the 70s/80s boats next to there modern equivalents.  There was a photo in dinghy sailor of all the boats, side by side, that have gone for the doublehander olympic selection since the 50s.  Was cool to see how they'd got bigger rigs, shallower hulls and much wider.

On another note, how does a home build wetsuit work?