This topic is like looking at yourself in a mirror, which in my present case is always a shock.
That's the reality?
We are all members of the royal court of the monarch Bruce King, a designer who flourished when sailboats were expected to be beautiful, and if you were rich enough, to be works of art. The cathedral at Notre Dame was built for the glory of an idea, and nobody said it also ought to be good for rock concerts.
But what is a sailboat for? What does the mirror say? It says you are captive of a time-honored aesthetic, such that when I saw a neglected 32-3 hanging in straps my hand went direct to my wallet. The eye computes not only the lines of the boat, but the lines of you. I still think it is the prettiest of all Ericson models. Which tells you more about me than about a boat.
The E38, when the companionway hatch is opened, welcomes to a world of joinery and varnish, all of it laboriously stitched together like a memory quilt of dead carpenters, forests, and time cards. It has the same influence of sheer as the 32-3, and the effect is just more of more. A second Tiramisu, monsignor? Don't mind if I do.
These are happenstances of genetic predisposition to certain forms, in defiance of rational or practical considerations. Perhaps admiration for a sheerline is imprinted
a prioi, and not even a choice. But surely a sheerline was not evolved to save the race of sailors, except maybe as naval architecture, insofar as ugly boats sank! More probably it is a function of snobbish discrimination, admiration of J-Class yachts owned by railroad barons, and an ornery stubbornness born of love of tradition, as embarrassingly inhabited by Edmund Burke, who opposed the French Revolution, in addition to founding a set of political ideas so eventually political in their nature as to be forbidden here, insofar as we are a bastion of tolerance and goodwill, and not a bunch of screaming lunatics like Sailing Anarchy or the current House of Representatives. I hope last remark does not violate the forum treaty.
Now to the view seen from Nick's masthead. My god, what an ugly piece of flotsom! A wedge of pizza floating on oil! An arrowhead fallen off a utility pole! A fat-gut with a fat butt wearing a canvas hat. Compared to a Fragonard Ericson, why, the equivalent of the Mona Lisa squatting in a field relieving herself under a djellaba!
...
The reader, by J-H Fragonard. The E381, by Bruce King. The resemblance is obvious.
All of this is true and obvious, and legally actionable, and ought to be litigated by the Supreme Court of Yachting, if only there were such a thing and not populated by boobs and courtiers wearing plume hats, which by the way, you know, is what they say about us--a bunch of dandies stuck in the past who eschew all forms of convenience and dinghy-friendly transoms and vast owner's cabins where milady may take her ease pulling off her hose, and there are windows, not ports, and the essence of a French Motel 6 is so perfectly captured in their teak-free Formica-grey
salon, not saloon, with a
decor awarded by the italics it so rightly deserves.
I am appalled by convenience in all its forms, all its forms being well noted during any trip to Catalina Island , where families dangle over broad water-level stern platforms, having got there in the straight line granted by twin wheels, while all their toys float round them like a necklace of inflated indulgence and children splash irritatingly whilst grinning and wanting to do this again, soon!
I just don't like innovation. These Ozempic-free yachts slap going to windward, although nobody goes to windward anymore, and provide far too much space in the cockpit dedicated to meaningless dockside cocktail entertainment, which is why people buy sailboats nowadays, not to race Francis Chichester across the freezing Atlantic the wrong way against seven gales with self-steering that doesn't work. ,What is wrong with these people?
Give me iron men and steely women and Tarzan's children, and I tell you we will conquer this newfangled widebutt world.
Or maybe sailing alone is more my fate, which like it or not is what I mostly do, because my ass, meaning donkey, burro, etc, is too small for the load, and they say they would rather walk.
Hmmm. The mirror, again.
Well, I have nothing else to do today, since I can't see out of one eye, having just had cataract surgery which promises to be a big success. and perhaps may make me see things in an entirely new light. Or any light at all.
But don't count on it, sweetheart.
