On yaughting. Or yotting.

I’ve had a sudden itch to write about something. Yachting. In fact just recreational sailing of any kind really. People who don’t earn a living from being on the water yet go on about a life on the water and how it’s all that. The reason my ear is occupied with a flea about this is that on the Radio 4 Today programme sport roundup this week I’ve kept on hearing about The America’s Cup. Apparently we’re out of it now because we have a team that is slightly more shit at sitting on their arses and pulling ropes than the team that beat them, which I think was New Zealand but frankly I’m so bored already I can’t be bothered to look that up.

Also this week ‘the wife’ and I watched a documentary/interview with Mrs Lucan or whatever the woman who used to married to Lord Lucan calls herself these days. Obviously she’s still a bit miffed because her husband never came back with the milk. Sadly the interview did her no favours whatsoever and she came across as cold and stupid and somewhat empty. Frankly she should have known better because what did Lord Lucan like to do as a pastime (bear in mind his day job was professional gambler!)? He liked to get in a boat and zoom around like a prick, entering races to see who could turn up the engine highest.

So it’s basically all boat people that don’t need to be boat people that annoy me. There are a few types of people who spend an inappropriate amount of time on boats. Fisherman, members of the navy and twats. It’s the same as people who like to fly for reasons other than to get somewhere really fast. If evolution had meant for us to do these things we would have wings and gills and we wouldn’t have some pathetic desire to ‘tame’ nature. Why do some people want to ‘tame’ the skies or ‘conquer’ the seas? Where would it get you? Do we not have more pressing problems to address?

Yachting is such a crap sport it can’t even spell itself properly. Come to think of it yachting isn’t really a sport anyway. What sport lover also loves yachting? Who likes to finish off watching a game of rugby (another inexplicable pastime) by flicking over to watch 4 yachts floating past each other off the Isle of Wight in a light breeze? I suspect that unless you’re a ‘boater’ then yachting and sailing and speedboats are of very limited interest. Let’s be honest – can you imagine the owner of a powerboat being anything other than a complete cock?

Sailing/yachting/whatever is so daftly overrated that they give out honours for it. I nearly swallowed my teeth when I heard that Ellen McArthur had been made a dame. A dame!!! For snivelling her way around the world only to prove that in some instances and in individual cases women actually can be as rubbish as men. Sailing is an expensive business too but in that sense it is like the fad for spending vast amounts of cash on artwork. The more that stupid people with more money than sense get involved the more other stupid people want to get involved.

Anyway this is a bit of a directionless rant but I feel better for writing it. Don’t misinterpret me, I don’t mind going on boats, and not just as a form of transport, but I do have a few issues with the type of arseholes that get involved in The America’s Cup and I don’t particularly like the way that the word ‘yacht’ is put together. Permanent blindness or watching a yacht race? Tough call.

G B Hewitt. 11.6.2017

Canal boats I like, though I’ve never met someone who lives on a canal boat that didn’t smell a bit funny. And yes, I have met people who live on canal boats.