skiff or no skiff

We do seem to be forgetting that the original skiffs weren't sailing boats at all they were rowing boats.So if you take definition to the extreme (as we seem to be doing ) no sailing boat is a true "skiff".

Personally I don't call my 49er a skiff I call it a 49er!!( if someone asked me what sort of boat it is I call it a high perfomance sailing dinghy )

Does this mean Scottish Skiff Racing (SSR) Should become Scottish Skiff and High Performance Dinghy Racing (SSHPDR) doesnt quite roll of the tounge so easily?


P.S. I do agree with Stu and Ben on this one but its become such an accepted term

Edited by Calum_Reid

Originally posted by Strawberry I would throw into that mix: At least a century of history Unrestricted rigs Development class I think the MPS should be renmaed the MME. That's the Musto Marketing Excercise!

Seems this is destined to become a derivative of many previous SMOD bashing threads ...  yawn ...

BTW your definition means that the Cherub is not a skiff ...

Edited by Guest#260

I would throw into that mix:

At least a century of history
Unrestricted rigs
Development class

I think the MPS should be renmaed the MME. That's the Musto Marketing Excercise!

The whole term "skiff" seems to be a lot murkier than some would like to pretend. I'm not a skiffy but I'm interested in history and I hate weazel-worded marketing whackers taking a useful term and making it meaningless by chucking it at everything in sight, so here's a few observations.

* If you spend a lot of time looking through the sailing reports of papers, mags and books from the 1860s on, you may find that the use of the term "skiff" for 6s, 8s, 10s, 16s and 18s seems to come surprisingly late, and for a surprisingly long time its application was fairly rare and uncertain. It's not as if it seems to have been around as the universal term for all Aussie "skiffs" forever, and the old timers seem to have been less clear and definite in its use than some imply today.  For example, I haven't noticed any contemporary use of "skiff" for Six Footers. I'm not positive it wasn't used, but I can't find an example. There ARE examples of them racing from dinghy clubs, I think.

*  There is no "skiff shape". Not all skiffs have "unrestricted rigs"; not all had pointed bows (there were champion snub-bowed 12s, 14s and 18s, a "world" champion scow in the 18s, and snub-nosed 16s); there's no one skiff shape, as shown by the difference between a Woof 12 and a B18 and the latest narrow Moth-type 12, let alone all the historical boats, There's been as about as much difference between boats in the skiff heritage classes as there is between dinghies. Many skiffs are not flat bottomed; for years (probably till the '70s) some had deeper Vee than UK dinghies!

* If we look at entymology and rely on the original uses of words, 505s, Ents and Lasers aren't dinghies because "dinghies" were working boats used around Mumbai, not plastic racing boats on the Queen Mary reservoir or Sydney Harbour!

If we want to get strictly historical maybe the 505 or Laser are better called catamarans because "katamaram" is the Tamil word for monohull raft, not a twin-hull boat. We don't have "trapezes", but Tali Dogangs. We don't have jibs on 505s, but "genoas". We don't have assymetriical spinnakers, but "sphinxers". We don't have "Thames Raters", which some of the old authorities disliked as a term. We don't have "starboard", but "steerboard".



* Historically the term used for 18s etc seems to have changed, the skiff term has shifted, the whole English language changes, so maybe we cannot get too strict about only applying it to 12s, 16s 18s.

* Some skiffies may not like letting the term change, but the term has already evolved and the examples above show that skiffies have adopted words that rename articles (trapeze for tali dogang, catamaran, windsurfer) so how can they claim the term "skiffs" can't evolve once more?

* That doesn't mean it's fair game to call RS 500 type boats "skiffs" because that means this useful, meaningful and historic term becomes just another weazel-worded whacker's bit of BS word-of-the-month bit of trendy jargon.

PS - let me make it clear not all production skiff-type sailing marketng types are wackers!!!!!!



Edited by CT249