Sailing
Boat show blues
Oliver Stewart
The Show is likely to be interesting and entertaining. It will certainly have plenty of publicity. The optimistic attendance forecasts will probably prtive right and there will surely be, at the end of it all, the almost obligatory flourish of export orders. But however commercially effective or ineffective the Boat Show may be, yachting in this country has not escaped the troubles and worries which have 'been afflicting other activities. From dinghy sailing to cruising and ocean racing all kinds of recreational boating are becoming more expensive and more restricted. Their rapid growth is threatened and could cease.
Boat builders, particularly the smaller ones, have complained about the effects of VAT and many have gone so far as to express doubts about their ability to survive. The building of wooden clinker boats is stopping altogether and the special skills used are disappearing. There have been large increases in the cost of building, maintaining, repairing, fitting out and operating craft of all sizes. Charges for moorings are going up and are being levied in some places where moorings were previously free. There have been moves towards formalising and institutionalising sail training and towards creating and strengthening 'approved' schools and 'qualified' instructors. There has , even been an attempt to corner the teaching of general seamanship. These moves are all aimed at ending the haphazard but generally happy and adequate methods by which most people have learnt to sail in the past.
Unfortunately the Royal Yachting Association, towards which many yachtsmen look for collective representation and particularly for defence against creeping officialdom and government interference, has proved disappointingly ineffective. Its attempts to combat the VAT plans failed, it sometimes seems to be too anxious to collaborate with officialdom and to make matters much worse it is now going the way of everything else in yachting and, on January 1, making a massive increase in its individual subscription fee from £3 to £5.
The RYA has often indicated that it wanted a much increased membership so as to make the voice of the yachtsman more clearly heard. But the critics have insisted that even at the past rate of £3 it does not give its members a good return for their money. Members receive a few pamphlets free once a year and there is now a kind of bulletin called the RYA News. But if the benefits received by RYA members are compared with those received by, for example, motoring organisation members, it will be seen that in quantity and in value they fall far behind. The RAC World, for instance, is a bulletin like the RYA News, but it is a far more useful and more practical publication. And the help that motorists can obtain from RAC or AA membership is extensive and covers not only legal matters, but also the extremely valuable road services. There is nothing even faintly resembling those benefits to be obtained from membership of the RYA. So it is most unfortunate that the Association has found it necessary to increase its subscription rates at this moment. On the technical side, too, the promise .of economies to be derived from the use of plastics in place of wood is coming to nothing. The small boats which were to be turned out so easily and so cheaply have been found to have many shortcomings in service. Expanded polystyrene, moulded into shape and with built-in buoyancy, and the various forms 0' glass fibre do not at the moment seem to give, anything approaching the robust longevity 01 the traditional, clinker-built boat. The general situation, then, for all who find their recreation afloat, is increased cost and the darkening threat of increased official interference. Almost every year — and I am sure it will happen again in 1976 — there are adverse criticisms of the large number of calls made upon the rescue services by small-boat users. But licensing and official authorisations, whether by the government or by the R0Ya1 Yachting Association, are unlikely to do much to improve safety at sea. And in any event the absolute freedom of sailing is worth preserving even if it does introduce increased risk. And there is always this to remember: that increased officialdom in almost every knoWn. activity goes with increased cost and reduced entertainment value. This new Boat Show inaYf perhaps be a warning of the vulnerability 0 sailing and a reminder of the need yachtsmen, now have for a powerful and fearless an independent defensive organisation.
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