oh well, at least 470 guys got the internal recognition they deserve earlier this week.  And thanks to Ocean Leisure's window display, the Embankment now has two 'Big Bens' for Lunndeners to look at.

   

as for coastal areas, I've seen quite a bit of investment into getting people to use the water for recreational purposes.  But if you were dolling out cash, would you make it available to the sport where the cost of basic entry (new) is about £4.5k for a Laser, or would you make it available to Canoeing where you can get into it for the price of a pair of Nike Air Max trainers and continue through the winter at the local swimming pool.... 

you even went to posh local school.... a Grammar wasn't it.  Although to be fair, growing up in Kent you're lucky your mum could afford to have extra fingers surgically removed, most of the kids round there had to get the butcher to do it...

A local at Hythe comparing boom blisters....

I've just done the quiz and it has told me I am not gay.  That will be a relief for the wife.

hard day down the pit?

They do a lot work themselves, use swinging moorings, the insurance is cheap and generally the annual running cost is less than a Premiership Season ticket.  And certainly less than curry, fags and booze every weekend.

Yacht racing is probably the cheapest form of sailboat racing to get involved with.... some boats pick crew up from the dock.  These guys don't even have to YC members and on some boats, oilskins are loaned and all good skippers keep lifejackets.  Compare that to crewing a dinghy at a club- cost of kit, cost of membership, cost of fuel to get to some pond in the back and beyond....  

So actually Yacht Racing isn't posh.... but like a welfare system, you do need a few 'rich c*nts' to pay for it for everyone else.

I also find there's something wonderfully surreal about the contrast of buckets of spray hurling themselves across the deck in the night, and varnish shining down below in the warm and comfy cabin.

Re class; anyone who reckons dinghy sailing is just for the upper classes hasn't visited Belmont 16 Footer Skiff Club down here!

Also noticed that by the time I was rich enough to own a nice dinghy I was too old to sail it well.

Everything...

As far as I can see at our club adult membership is quite varied. We have Solicitors, teachers and plumbers. The one thing that we all are is 'respectable' and socially responsible. We all get along very well and the atmosphere is very pleasant. We are almost child free at the moment with a distinct lack of junior members but when they do appear and join they are usually propelled by wealthy ambitious parents. When I used to take the 'boy' to junior races I was the only parent with an old car and a trailer welded up from scrap. When we were at the Ovington Inlands last year there were 60? 29 ers all sailed by youth and accompanied by motor home parents.

I believe that the posh part of dinghy sailing is the youth part of dinghy sailing, the remainder is just respectable. 

Ah well, another couple of hours in bed, last nights kebab for breakfast, down to the bookie, pub for lunch and sleep it off in the dinghy park.....bliss.

What do we mean by the word 'posh'? Do we mean affluent? Do we (in a round about way) mean motivated?

In do not see some guy stacking shelves in B & Q buying his child a newish Laser and a motorhome to follow his offspring through the squad system?

Youth sailing, on the whole, is a middle class, posh, pursuit. When we grow up it is respectable but less posh.

+1

and another reason to have one is that you can tow behind it.  When I was a kid on the Oppy circuit, once more than one boat was needing to be transported, you'd often see a family split into two cars- one pulling boats, one pulling a caravan.  We did ourselves for a while, and then realised the motorhome solution would be better.

My parents sold their motorhome for a little more than they paid for it.  Similarly any keelboat they've had has always paid itself back upon sale... the total cost of ownership (depreciation + running cost) was far less than a family saloon car from a not-particularly-special marque on a typical main dealer finance plan.  I've certainly lost more on a dinghy than they've ever lost on a family cruiser.

I love how making choices on your disposable income makes you 'posh'- another example of consumerist society that's ultimately f**ked by the need to judge oneself by how one is perceived by other people.    

Not really- one of the tricks we learned early on was to join the Caravan Club- you could get overnight stays in farm locations with basic amenities for less than a Pie and a Pint in a Weatherspoons.  

We also used ours for family holidays in France, often other people you meet who do it for the pleasure of it are not really 'that posh'... just regular folks who don't happen to waste money in hotels and or on package holidays.  

There was also quite a few in the retired category... I guess they could have spent the money on a Once in a Lifetime World Cruise or something equally unimaginative.  Instead they've chosen to go explore and pick up local produce in a farmers market whenever it suits them, on their own terms; rather than eat seabass at the Captain's Table in a tuxedo, once per week, on the way to some dump of a port town somewhere 'exotic'.    

  

So many of the affluent middle classes have no idea of the financial gulf that exists between themselves and 'ordinary' workers.

I am sure that Mr B & Q could follow the circuit but with a tent and 02 Astra, lots of adult sailors do but please do not tell me that the Motorhome coralle at Graffham was not somewhere in the region of 'posh'.

For championships we sometimes used to rent a flat/house if it turned into the yearly family holiday; much to the disgust of my sister.

Youth sailing these days seems to be run on a very different budget ... 

Posh does not equate to wealthy IMO ... posh is going back to perhaps traditional class system references and harks back to "old money" ...

I play 5 aside twice a week at goals which is £6.50 a game or £650 a year!!

My friends golf membership is a £1000

Another mate pays £550 a year to watch Sheffield Wednesday who play the worst football in all the divisions.

Yes, he probably could, if the desire was there- and some smaller motorhomes are more economical and not that impractical to run as a family car.  I know plenty of windsurfers who run converted T-5s as cars as well as sports wagons.... they'd laugh if you called them posh, but they do tend to work for themselves in one form or another, and I can only assume that means they are sufficiently efficient at whatever it is they do to make ends meet.  

So B&Q bod, he or she could also take on more shifts, or get promoted, or aspire through searching for other jobs.  He or she could take on two jobs ... or do all the other things that people with aspirations to earn more do, which may include moving away to accept work which pay overseas, or living away from home M-F, retraining and re-skilling into a future resilient work area; or taking some bloody ugly risks by being truly responsible for their own income and setting up their own businesses.

None of that is as easy as rolling into the same stable, safe boring job for 40 years admittedly- with all its comforts, protections, unions, minimum wages and sick pay.  And you'd have to ask why anyone in retailing, at shop level (floor or managers office) would do all of that for a part of the sport which is run at weekends, and busy retailing weekends at that. 

Of course today's new parents could decide not to buy a house and rent instead.  That way they are not helping to fund the baby boomers who have seen the most monumental capital gain windfall in modern economic history through the housing market.

They would also not be nudged into the 3% (or even 4%) in stamp duty- which is helping to significantly reduce the liabilities of a previous feckless, war mongering Government that, in all likelihood, they didn't vote for either.

no, he should if he wants a motorhome and isn't prepared to cut back on other things to to get it.  Or he could take some cheap finance while interest rates are low.

Whether he defines it to an 'in crowd' is up to him.  I'd suggest living his own life, in every possible way, would be a more rewarding experience for him and his kids. 

It would help.   

If Hitler sailed a dinghy it would be Musto Skiff.

It's designed by a German.  It works well on German Lakes.  It appeals to the youth and like a 49erFX, looks good being sailed with long, flowing golden locks.  

Its powerful, and can be quite elegant and charming to the poor plebs of dinghydom looking for something different.   

It has relaxed rules about advertising therefore he could swastika that little baby up, Himmler could get his SS logo down that kite no trouble and as for Goebbals spinning something anti-Semitic, well, he could probably find an angle- like hosting all events on the Sabbath or something.

If Mussolini sailed a dinghy it would be the RS100.

Stalin would have sailed a Laser... no question.  The rig alone is soviet in the extreme.  Thanks to Glasnost, sailing would be a sport for the people, except the lakes are all frozen and the villagers are so undernourished they wouldn't have the righting moment.  However Sailing would be, according to Daily Mirror, the greatest sport there ever was, and by contrast, America would have joined in, probably with the Blaze (mk 1) rather than having a rather sullen and depleted dinghy scene- outside of preppy circles on the North East Coast.      

I like the Churchill comparison... having seen some of the gentlemen on the Finn Masters I think they'd be proud; British Pride too... whatever that is.  I guess it's like when your wife sent some flowers to Buck Palace when Diana died. 

Hirohito would have designed something that looked like a Byte, but it would have been Japanese.  His grandson would have redesigned it and it would sail itself these days, or be turned into a computer game with a globally recognised cartoon character franchise- playable on an iPhone 5S with just your thumbs.    

too damn close, makes me almost want to respond seriously....  

maybe he does, maybe he doesn't... but life is full of choices, and should someone of modest means really, really want to push their kid around a sailing circuit, then he or she could make those choices to make that happen if they so decided.  Ben Ainslie wasn't born in Falmouth.

But I agree with your sentiment- a little bit of common sense would seem to suggest there would be important things in life, and actually, a bit of local club sailing might not be such a bad way to introduce your kids to the sport.

Of course this verging on nonsense, that is what makes it perfect for this forum!  Where is Graham (I cant do the posh spelling, no one spelt it like that at Hillbrook Road Secondary School)

Had Graeme been born Graham, and chosen a different path; he would be at the Spar, getting booked for chaffing a 3L bottle of White Lightning to appease his alcohol dependency.  

and he would have done it with less resources than the RYA... inspirational bloke huh?

Why? Cos' its near Alderley Edge and hosts the sailing club of a well known local private school. For those parents sailing is an important part of Harry or Harriet's social education, a skill they will need when staying at the Abbersoch cottage.

I generalise of course, there is no fun in not being bigoted as I  am sure Booterscooter realises. 

Really? There is a sailing club teaching these posh or wannabe little s**ts how to drink too much cider, swear incoherently, have underage sex and projectile vomit over small seaside villages? 

I wondered were the early summer youth populations of Abersoch, Salcombe, Rock etc had learnt their "skills" , now we know 

Ah....wish I was young again.....

Now I'm getting visions of that classic Monty Python where JC is teaching the boys about sex.....such fun!

There's posh n' posh... Alderley Edge is still in northern monkey territory.

and it's Abersoch, with one 'B'.... jeez, good job you don't work for a cloth printers, dozens of young teens would be walking around with ski tops from Merry Bell and yotty jerseys from Saulcum.  Is Fat Face still going?  Or have Jack Wills moved in and sold out to the custom tw*t-top market yet?  

 

Even polo has its equivalent of the tatty puddle club where players keep the grass cut and do the maintenance. The first state school team to enter the schools polo tournament was captained by the son of a carpenter originally from a council estate.

 

That lad is now driving his own children all over the place for Judo sqad tournament and training and struggling to make ends meet.

 

So much of "posh" is in the mind - glitz and no substance - how many of those "posh motorhomes" are hired for the weekend?

Anyway "motorhome" is a fairly recent development. It was always "Camper van" before and I've owned them for years.