Praising the diversity within sailing

Yachting World’s Nikki Henderson ponders… Is sailing a sport? A hobby? A way of seeing the world? Is it racers, cruisers, professionals, hobbyists? Of course, it can be all of these things, sailing is a broad church.

Weighed down by a steel frame and two panniers of touring equipment and clothing (essentially my sailing kit repurposed), I rode the ‘granny gear’ up and over several famous Pyrenees Cols this August on a cycling mini-expedition to test my legs. There was one particular moment, slogging up my most arduous climb, when I counted the 50th lean Lycra-clad road biker to overtake me and I realized how objectively different our two activities were. And yet here we were on the same mountain, tackling the same gradient, both on a bike.

Sailing’s extremes aren’t so different. It reminded me of a RORC Caribbean 600 start a few years ago where an Ultim Class trimaran’s foiling hull flew high alongside, going triple the speed of the XP-50 I was racing.

It’s slightly confusing that we compete on the same course – that you can be a sailor and race an F50 catamaran around a tight inshore course, participate in the Round the Island Race on a Cornish Shrimper 19, or cruise the Baltic on a 30ft Hallberg-Rassy. And it could be easy to view the apparent fragmentation of sailing to be a weakness, that sailors, like cyclists, aren’t really sure whether we are primarily athletes, hobbyists or self-sufficient travelers.

It’s hard to explain to a non-sailor how the Vendée Globe, Cowes Week, high-latitude expeditions, Wednesday night dinghy racing and anchoring off a Caribbean Island are all the same activity. – Full story