Originally Posted by
renmure
A few fairly numptie questions re boats and boating from me to get the ball rolling from a non-boaty person
The boat above looks great. What sort of sailing does one do in something like that? Something like a 2-3 hr pleasure cruise along the coast and back or a 2-3 day cruise to (not sure where you would get to in 2-3 days but you know what I mean) .. or a 2-3 week cruise around the Med and back?
I'm crazy about high performance dinghies and racing them. It's my passion. So, my answers to these questions maybe slightly prejudiced ....
So to answer your question about the floating caravans ... sorry, I mean these lovely motorhome boat things that chug along filling the clean sea breeze with diesel fumes...
What sort of sailing does one do in something like that - One doesn't sail at all as they do not have sails. One just chugs along making lots of noise and smell.
Something like a 2-3 hr pleasure cruise along the coast and back - No, they head directly to the nearest sailing club and chug right through the middle of a race. They make special effort to ensure they bugger up someone's race by ignoring all the general maritime laws. Usually they wait until they are right in the middle of the race before handing over the helm to their 12 year old daughter.
Not sure where you would get to in 2-3 days .. - Oh not far enough. Ideally they'd all head to France 
Of course, all above are posted with a huge amount of tongue-in-cheek and I'm sure Chris is a very considerate caraboat owner 
Where I race it's an estuary and clearly when the Romford Navy come out to play in their motorhome-boats, they inevitably have to chug through the deep channel which is slap-bang in the middle of our race course. To say it's annoying when you're hiked out on the wire with a kite flying to have to suddenly dump the sail and change direction because of one of these ploughing through the water over the 8-knot speed limit, without any regard to anyone else, straight towards you....yes, it is slightly annoying ....no, actually it's hugely annoying. Races are too often decided on these events.
The problem with all boating, including sailing, is there are no tests to pass to legislate who's on the water. There's nothing stopping anyone going out today and buying an extremely powerful speed boat and heading out into the water. I suspect Essex is extra bad for this but we have a huge amount of people out there on the water that really have no clue of any of the general maritime rules.
I use to teach youngsters to sail when I was in my 20's. We had a Wayfarer with about 6 kids in it once completely demolished by a small motorboat. The guys supposedly in control were on the deck drinking....
And then there's Jets Skis ..... I'm not even going to start on that subject.
Last edited by AJ3XX; 20-05-2014 at 01:38 PM.
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