The Solent has been empty over the weekend, I saw a couple of SUP yesterday but no sailing boats.

Their has been reports of the odd windsurfer and kite boarder but nothing like normal.

 Marinas are closed and Harbour masters are apparently not letting people go out the harbours..

Whilst our club is closed you could change and launch on the public slipway, but to my knowledge nobody has. 

This is why .... :-

Still lots of sailing in the USA and angry idiots where they are not allowed. They are going to have to get serious and will remain in lockdown for months after the rest of the world. 

This is one of the issues, (sea sailing though), not very good PR.

In my state, it's officially OK to sail as it is classed as exercise. I'm not quite sure how motoring around in a yacht is "exercise", but it's officially permitted.  However, one cannot travel very far to get to the water without risking being fined at a roadblock set up to monitor travellers.

I'm not affected by any government ban personally, and as Race Officer of my club I took the initiative to propose we end our racing season early, so I'm not in any way downplaying the issue - merely pointing out that apparently reasonable people and authorities can have different views on it. 

All the clubs I have any connection with are closed and I haven’t heard even the tiniest whisper of any one sailing . 

I don't feel any need to name and shame, but it's a coastal club and the decisions to sail are not really being taken by the club en masse, just individuals with access to their boats on a public foreshore and/or swinging mooring....


Does it reflect badly on the club anyway?  Sure.

Do some members voice a concern to this?  Sure.

Do those still sailing care?  No.

Standard Operating Procedure..... a sh*tty write up in the Daily Mail with some pejorative stereotyping perhaps???

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8189057/Covidiots-rescued-RNLI-grounding-catamaran-ignoring-governments-pleas-stay-home.html" rel="nofollow - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8189057/Covidiots-rescued-RNLI-grounding-catamaran-ignoring-governments-pleas-stay-home.html

Alright accidents put extra strain on services but really, not as traffic is heavy at the moment anyway. 

I know it's a collective thing and we're should all be sharing the pain but when you look at some of the logic it is a bit sketchy to my mind.

I believe its for a number of reasons...

If you had an accident you may require someone to get nearer than 2m to help you.

If your car broke down you may require the RAC man to get nearer than 2m to you, you may also be delaying that RAC man from getting to the key worker on their way to work he has to assist next.

I work for a big insurer with its own network of accident repairers and they have struggled to get certain parts due to suppliers shutting down, if you crashed your car and required the last radiator to get you up and running you may deprive a nurse of that part a few days later so he/she couldnt get to work.

Personally I am not a good driver so cannot guarantee I wont crash and I drive a 10 year old car so cannot guarantee it wont break down so my car is staying on my driveway but everyone is free to make their own decisions....

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/16/driving-for-exercise-allowed-under-lockdown-rules-police-advised-coronavirus

Regarding social distancing and visiting friends and relatives.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-new-police-guidelines-on-reasonable-excuses-for-leaving-home-including-cooling-off-after-a-row-11974322

Some police forces are saying essential shopping only.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-police-essential-items-shops-supermarket-stock-lockdown-a9459346.html

Whole thing open to envelope stretching unfortunately, I went to my local Fruiterers Sunday morning, he had loads of plants for sale as normal, I took advantage of this, my plant pots are now full, have I been stretching the envelope ? Fruiterer said he was allowed to buy and sell plants.

It certainly offered a very timely illustration of why the policy was a good one.

Personally I wish I could go sailing, but as the club and water is closed I will have to just get what I can from running.

No one can ever be sure.

We can take extra care. The MCA, RNLI, Harbour Masters and our sailing clubs could help issue guidance in this regard. 

Based on personal history I'd expect greater risk cycling. Is expecting help from the ambulance more socially acceptable than from the coastguard? Maybe the Coastguard / RNLI could do their bit by towing a few vessels off sandbanks who's owners would otherwise be crashing in to hedges? 

As lock down continues I would expect the risks from inactivity to increase. Mental health and fitness may hold up for three weeks. But there comes a point where some time on the water is far more likely to keep us out of hospital than see us in it.

There is court of public perception though. I think the RYA are quite fearful of that. 

and rightly so. It perpetuates the myth that sailing is for people who are rich and entitled. The have-nots look on the haves and think we are c**ts and tw**ts.

1 person goes sailing and then everyone goes sailing

1 person goes golfing, and then everyone goes golfing

And before you know it, hundreds of people are travelling and doing activities because 1 person believed that they could and wouldnt cause a danger. Its not about whether you could do it safetly or not, its the snowball affect that would happen.

I know its a flippin pain not to go sailing. I have lost my contract job because of the virus and so here I am with no income (and unlikely to get any for a good 6 months), plenty of monthly expenditure, cancelled holidays and the weather is perfect to get out on the water and I have the time to do so. I have cleaned my house 100 times and all I can do is raid the fridge 20 times a day and pile on the pounds - though I do get out on my bike and also walk the dogs.

But looking at the bigger picture, putting sailing on hold for a few months, is hardly a hardship compared to what is going on  aroud us. 

Just be patient people. Sailing isnt going away, its just paused.

Re one of the posts above a young guy I sold a Laser to a few years ago went out cycling a couple of weeks ago. He ended up and I believe still is in hospital with a broken back and collapsed lung having taken a corner wrong and ending in a close encounter with a car. Not good. He is expected to recover.

AIUI - that would not comply with UK rules would it? 

I get it. I do. But it is easy to quote examples to support your narrative. 

I too am surprised that cycling is allowed, but you cant expect the Gov to go thru every single sport or activity out there and say Yay or Nay to it. It just isnt gonna happen. I am sure golfers, tennis players, badminton players, paintballers, dog agility, chess players etc etc can all say the same. The line has been drawn. It isnt an unfair line - as it is pretty much across the board -  its just one you find personally difficult with. But thats life ....

+1

It could ,it depends  on the the circumstances. Not that I would condone it unless the person was disabled and unable to exercise from home .

There is not a blanket ban on driving to exercise, this was confirmed by the CPS and the police last Thursday. 

My examples comply with the guidelines. You can drive to exercise provided that you spend significantly longer exercising than you do driving there.

I get that some us will have to agree to disagree, but I do wish some people would try to empathise with those of us who live in cities where any remotely green space within walking distance is actually busier than it would be under normal circumstances (Nobody seems to have noticed this yet). When this is over I think they should try living in a tower block for an indefinite period.

Absolutely agree - which highlights in spades the point about sailing being seen to be elistist and entitled when city people have struggled to even be allowed to walk in a park (until recently some city parks were closed)

iGRF - , we all feel the depression side of this situation I am sure - I know I do and I live on my own with little family or frinds to even Facetime. - so understand your perspective. 

However, your perspective on RNLI is simply wrong - check out any RNLI annual ops stats reports - easy to google - in 2017 RNLI launched 8436 times ...... (not all to do with sailing, but certainly marine activities played a major part). Thats why we should pause for a while ....

I think you misunderstand.

I actually don't find it hard to accept that I can't (Or rather shouldn't) go sailing. I find some of the reasons people are quoting as to why to be full of holes. I think there is an element of jealousy and "well if I cant do x, then no-one should be able to". The only one for me that holds any water is that everyone else will want to go too - but even that limps a bit as we are all bemoaning the decline of the sport 

It's not limited to sailing.

It's a very interesting social study.

Absolutely, 100% agree quite possibly for the first time ever.

mate - I am more than empathising from the third floor of our city centre apartment where the only times I've got out in the past 5 weeks was to the supermarket - 150m down the road.  My kids haven't been outside other to clap for solidarity from a juliet balcony - we're not quite sure what we're clapping for bow, but it kinda feels that someone will report us if we don't.

Rolling the bike out of the garage would be most welcome now - I can only dream of getting back on the water.  Obviously I'm grumbling about it, but from where I am, the UK has it pretty easy.... seems a shame to push it and lose what privileges you do have left.

I accept I might feel differently if we moved back

The trouble is, he's right.

Overnight ordinary people have fallen under the dire judgement of others who know absolutely nothing about them. We have people calling the police because they don't think their next door neighbour should be going to work. They don't think that guy across the road should be talking to the lady with her children walking past his gate. The group of three housemates walking round the park are too close.....

The list goes on. There was a video on the TV of the police talking to a man for playing football with his children in his own front garden. A high up police chief in the north (I think it was Yorkshire but I could be wrong) was on TV telling people if they couldn't behave he would have officers in shops checking people's shopping, a statement that was retracted very quickly.

These are isolated incidents by overzealous busybodies, but you begin to understand how the secret police forces of 30' and Cold War dictatorships conducted their business. 

I don't like what I see. It isn't the Government that bothers me, they are doing the best that they can. Certain sections of the population really worry me. This crisis is bringing out the worst in them.

I swing from 'it'll be over soon, hang fire and watch netflix' to 'this sh*t's straight out of the shock and awe playbook'.  It stinks of human bad action, Christ knows who the real perps were, but we'll never really know and the internet is full of conspiracists already.

Gaia Theory would be a nicer explanation - gives us all space to breath and learn from the experience together as one species - but it doesn't sell newspapers, or increasingly, ad revenue on click bait.

I dunno, but in 40+ years, this seems to be the weirdest reset I've seen the world take.

People are running scared, thats all. And rightly so. My friends dad died of the virus at the weekend. You become much more aware of things when its someone you know ... (looking at you iGRF....)

Originally posted by H2 I live in Cheltenham. Before C19 people would nearly always look each other in the eye and say hi as they walked past each other like they do in most places outside of London (!). Now I have noticed that people will not look you in the eye or acknowledge your existence as you cross paths. Why is that? I think this is the micro-embodiment of what Paramedic is talking about and have found it very weird.

Exercise alone or with member of your own family

Keep 2m away from those outside your household.

Stay local. 

In practice this would mean limited or no parking. 

No rescue cover; because you can't expect members who aren't exercising to travel

No organised racing; because you can't confine people to a committee boat or race box.

No clubhouse because people may congregate and break 2m rule

If there was concern that the club would be flooded with sailors, then I'd run 'rota' of some sort for the first few weeks or so. Have 50 half day slots when people could put their name down to sail. The monitor. You could do it by which area of the boat park people are in, so you don't have people rigging up on top of each other. 

Would it though? National Parks have managed by controlling car parks and limiting space.  

The most effective way of stopping prolonged journeys or unnecessary travel is having police monitor trunk roads and popular routes to the area, just as they have done for national parks. 

The weekend before full lockdown we had essentially the above rules. And the harbour wasn't packed, there were a dozen boats out. With the addition of not being able to sail with those outside your household I think it would be less. 

A bigger problem is beach (like west witherings). But again car parking and checkpoints on trunk roads are the answer to that over crowding. 

I have not, I did call the distributor to ask if they had a demo back in 2019 and was somewhat sneered at. I was just curious really rather that genuinely interested so I did not bother to follow up. I was happy to see another singlehander that says it can carry people that are bigger than the Laser or Aero were designed for and was interested to see if it really could.

No racing around here other than Lasers, so really weighing up monohull 'beach boat' options that can carry a bit of weight and a kid or two if the weather is nice.  Aero and D-Zero don't really tick those boxes, still think a cat is probably the answer.

I was just interested in user feedback on the M14, if it's a dog I wouldn't be interested. I hadn't realised they were even really available outside of the US... 

waking up now, what did you say??

sorry - my thoughts on the OK is that I would consider one for club racing in the UK, if that were still my jam, but definitely not considering it to accompany paddleboards and caipirinha on a city beach in the med.  

the biggest drama will be the asymmetric vs the symmetric optional kite kit.... I also like the fact it can be supplied with an anchor. (sorry, I know... surely I should pimp the thing with more carbon for pointless weight saving.)

I also understand iGRFs worries about the impact of the restrictions. This is why the current government should be questioned and queried at every stage. Parliament should be in session, albeit virtually so they can be held to account. It wasn't that long ago that their emergency powers were going to be unchecked for 2 years, unless of course they decided that they didn't need it to be, but who could hold them to that? That is a step to authoritarian rule, the next is stopping the press reporting anything that criticises the government - see Hungary. The authoritarians want us to blame everyone else, think we are having stuff taken away from ourselves (whether material or thought of freedoms), anything that builds the narrative that can be exploited by them to take further control. So while I agree it is hard, do not fight amongst ourselves over this, do as asked at the moment to stymy the virus but do not let yourself be persuaded that your freedoms are really under that much threat yet as they will weaponise that. 

I personally enjoyed sailing the 'Hartley 15', only rotomould I have sailed that could go toe to toe with 'Laser', well on our lake anyway.