Sailor Neil Pryde’s swollen ego gobbles China, beats down the working man
Neil Pryde is
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
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Sailing culture for voyagers, zealots, poets and populists
About Me
- Zephyr (Sail)
- New England, United States
- "All that we do is touched with ocean, and yet we remain on the shore of what we know." Richard Wilbur
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Recent Posts
Zephyr's Sailing News
"The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective."
-Henry David Thoreau
"Sailors work like horses at sea and spend their money like asses ashore."
-Anonymous
"Never go into strange places on a falling tide without a pilot."
-Thomas Gibson Bowles
"They that go down to the sea in ships; and occupy their business in great waters; these men see the works of the Lord; and His wonders in the deep"
-Book of Common Prayer
"There was a grandeur in everything around, which gave almost a solemnity to the scene; a silence and solitariness which affected everything. Not a human being but ourselves for miles; and no sound heard but the pulsations of the great pacific."
-Richard Henry Dana
"It was with a happy heart that the good odysseus spread his sail to catch the wind and used his seamanship to keep his boat straight with the steering-oar"
-Homer
"Why is almost every robust, healthy boy with a robust, healthy soul in him, at some time or other, crazy to go to sea? Why, upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land?"
-Herman Melville - Moby Dick
"To insure safety at sea, the best that science can devise and that naval organization can provide must be regarded only as an aid, and never as a substitute for good seamanship, self-reliance, and sense of ultimate responsibility which are the first requisites in a seaman and naval officer."
-Admiral Chester W. Nimitz
"Ships are the nearest things to dreams that hands have ever made, for somewhere deep in their oaken hearts the soul of a song is laid."
-Robert N. Rose
"O Captain! My Captain ! Our fearful trip is done, the ship has weathered every rock, the prize we sought is won, the port is near, the bells i hear, the people all exulting."
-Walt Whitman
"I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, And a gray mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking."
-John Masefield
" Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. "
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
"The sea - this truth must be confessed - has no generosity. No display of manly qualities - courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness - has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power."
-Joseph Conrad
"The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting place.
-Arthur Ransome
"Confronting a storm is like fighting God. All the powers in the universe seem to be against you and, in an extraordinary way, your irrelevance is at the same time both humbling and exalting."
-Franciose LeGrande
"Men go abroad to wonder the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering."
-St. Augustine
-Henry David Thoreau
"Sailors work like horses at sea and spend their money like asses ashore."
-Anonymous
"Never go into strange places on a falling tide without a pilot."
-Thomas Gibson Bowles
"They that go down to the sea in ships; and occupy their business in great waters; these men see the works of the Lord; and His wonders in the deep"
-Book of Common Prayer
"There was a grandeur in everything around, which gave almost a solemnity to the scene; a silence and solitariness which affected everything. Not a human being but ourselves for miles; and no sound heard but the pulsations of the great pacific."
-Richard Henry Dana
"It was with a happy heart that the good odysseus spread his sail to catch the wind and used his seamanship to keep his boat straight with the steering-oar"
-Homer
"Why is almost every robust, healthy boy with a robust, healthy soul in him, at some time or other, crazy to go to sea? Why, upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land?"
-Herman Melville - Moby Dick
"To insure safety at sea, the best that science can devise and that naval organization can provide must be regarded only as an aid, and never as a substitute for good seamanship, self-reliance, and sense of ultimate responsibility which are the first requisites in a seaman and naval officer."
-Admiral Chester W. Nimitz
"Ships are the nearest things to dreams that hands have ever made, for somewhere deep in their oaken hearts the soul of a song is laid."
-Robert N. Rose
"O Captain! My Captain ! Our fearful trip is done, the ship has weathered every rock, the prize we sought is won, the port is near, the bells i hear, the people all exulting."
-Walt Whitman
"I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, And a gray mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking."
-John Masefield
" Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. "
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
"The sea - this truth must be confessed - has no generosity. No display of manly qualities - courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness - has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power."
-Joseph Conrad
"The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting place.
-Arthur Ransome
"Confronting a storm is like fighting God. All the powers in the universe seem to be against you and, in an extraordinary way, your irrelevance is at the same time both humbling and exalting."
-Franciose LeGrande
"Men go abroad to wonder the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering."
-St. Augustine
Zephyr - May 05, 2005 - Sailors are intrinsically storytellers
Technology is having a significant impact on sailing culture, particularly in how sailors communicate with one another and share information about key aspects of voyaging and cruising (weather, friendly ports-of-call, sheltered anchorages). Some of the best examples of this are found in the multitude of individual sailing weblogs being published with more popping every day. Unlike Zephyr, which focuses on a specific topic (sailing culture) and covers it broadly, these sailing blogs are written from the perspective of voyagers, boatbuilders, weekend warriors they're mostly about the individual journey and serve as a two-way, grassroots window into the sailing world. When I was mate on the Maxi in the late 90'€™s I used to punch out email updates to all my desk-bound friends back in the States, compile a mailing list and send them whenever I could find an Internet cafe when we paused in Roadtown, English Harbor, Culebra, etc. I remember people enjoyed them, forwarded them all over their offices, to friends across the country. Sailors are intrinsically storytellers and the Internet has magnified this attribute. Consider the shift from the viral, uncontrolled mass email to a narrow-casted, self published weblog. We are witnesses to this technology proliferating, evolving and beginning to virtually knit together the larger sailing community...not surprisingly the results are (like many things in life) heterogeneous - we discover compelling content side-by-side with the trite, sublime with mundane, unique with conventional...
2 comments:
Oh, get real !! There are more important and appropriate things to write about than an effigy lynching of a Sail maker hiring cheap Chinese labor in the age old quest to earn a better profit and alluding to the rich being synonymous with all that's distasteful in the world. You sound like the hollow liberals in Congress.
How about crusading for air & water purity instead of spewing the worn-out altruistic protection of the so-called disadvantaged prolitariat. Let the workers decide their own fate and where and who they want to work for. Neil may be a jerk, I don't know, but his employees are probably happy to even be working at all. And for sure they are not forced to work for him.
Futhermore, are you going to rail against the untold numbers of other businesses doing the same thing? Are going to begin a crusade against the rich too? The rich are the one's who make the sailing world exciting as well as donating to alot of worthy causes.
I don't earn much, but I'm certainly not going to bite the hand that feeds me, and I suggest that you waste thousands of hours researching manufacturers and that you stop buying the thousands of products they make affordable by using cheap labor.
Jerry is spot on and I worked for Neil running his Windsurfing North America division from 92-96..
I spent many weekends with Neil putting to practice both his and my work ethics ..He was the best mentor a lower class kid could ask for!
I also had a lot of interaction with the factory and its various levels of employees as a factory(OEM) agent, this factory is one of the most respected and many a worker has waited to get this desirable position with this firm..
Neil has done very well in many a downturned market by being flexible and fast and working Seven day weeks.. Your work ethic may or may not be of this caliber. You be the judge.
Neil did note often : " Human beings are competitive by nature, just look at how aggressively folks drive their cars!"
Steve Reinehr--
Owner of Two top sporting goods companies , now.
I also grew up on Sunfish and Lasers that friends had or rented in Mpls, MN.. and Ice sailed a bit.
China is changing at a rapid rate and the ground swell of Middle class in this region will arise in our lifetime.
You and I do not want to spend, for example , $300 for high end tennis shoes. China ,Sri Lanka , Taiwan make products that Americans , Japaneese, and most developed nations populations will not.
The market is driven by consumer demand and this is our responsibility.. My neighbor growing up was a man by the name of Al Frankin. So you can see my liberal bleeding heart.
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