Jim Vandenbos with a well deserved special award
for bloody-mindedness in racing his sailing canoe
in a Force 5 wind
Like most sailing clubs, the club we belong to focuses strongly on racing modern boats. No doubt the racers have a lot of fun, and without them the club would have no officers to run it.
But this concentration on racing and modernity leads, as always, to great conformity, with fleets of practically identical boats. (Historians of boating say that one of the great examples of how racing leads to conformity is the development and improvement of the Thames barge through the latter half of the 19th century, by the way.)
Bewl Valley Sailing Club nevertheless has a small band of eccentrics who don’t quite fit the stereotype, either because they cruise and won’t race; choose to sail old class dinghies from the days when they were typically built from plywood; are weekend craftsmen, some of whom build their own traditional boats with great skill and care while others build in plywood and epoxy; and a very few both design and build.
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Read more on this and check the photos: Continue reading “Wooden boat day at Bewl Valley Sailing Club”
