Zephyr (sail): That Sinking Feeling...

Thursday, April 27, 2006

That Sinking Feeling...

Those of you who recieve Scuttlebutt's daily email will have already read San Diego Union Tribune journalist Bill Center's diatribe on the "sinking" appeal of international sailing events (see "Interest in top events seems to be sinking")...but I thought it worth mentioning as his thoughts involve who follow the big yachting races and our country's participation (or lack thereof) in them. He pinpoints the 1983 America's Cup in Newport, RI when ESPN made a last-minute decision to televise the final race...the ratings were suprisingly high. That led ESPN to televise the entire 1986-87 America's Cup from Australia. The exposure turned skippers Dennis Conner, Tom Blackaller, Chris Dickson and Iain Murray into sports celebrities.

Eleven years later, Center asks, does anyone care? Though you may not agree with every point he makes...I think it's a very good question.

Thanks to Jarrett and Andy Burton for their comments...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: Hey WBM -- Couldn't find your email address on the site. Thought you might dig this... www.regattadiaries.blogspot.com; 3:51 PM
WeSailFurther said...: Yeah. I have often wondered why sailing doesn't get on TV. I mean, fishing makes it on, and that is the worst kind of tv I can imagine. And with a proper/Jobson explanation racing can be very interesting.

And it was driving me crazy during the last AC that the pieces were on in the middle of the night, AND were sponsored by Lincoln cars and Lincoln only. I still have the music from the commercial burned into my head. Annoying.; 9:55 AM

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"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."
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-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"
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"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."
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"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."
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-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. "
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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

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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...

Zephyr (sail)

Thursday, April 27, 2006

That Sinking Feeling...

2 comments:

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Zephyr - May 05, 2005 - Sailors are intrinsically storytellers