Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on May 22, 2003 at 19:25:44 from 195.93.32.8 user ACB.
In Reply to: Re: Death and Glory - can young people buy cheap boats? posted by Laurence Monkhouse on May 21, 2003 at 22:15:06:
Well said!
Informal access to the water and boats seems more difficult now - although yacht clubs are not very expensive to join, and usually welcome cadet members. The popularity of waterfront housing has driven up land prices, and noise abatement laws have contributed to the decline of small boat yards, where one could maintain a boat cheaply. But I am not sure that these factors are insuperable. What is very different is the obsession with Health and Safety. I was very lucky in that my father had been a boat-mad penniless youngster himself, before AR wrote "Racundra's First Cruise", so he understood the situation.
On one occasion my sister, then 12, and I, then 17, set off in my first boat, an open 18 footer, no buoyancy, no life jackets, no flares, from Woodbridge to sail to Aldeburgh. We missed the tide because of a calm, changed our minds, ended up in Goblin Creek in Secret Water and could not get ashore to telephone for the next two days because of a gale - our parents reacted in true Ted Walker style and did NOT call out the Coastguard!
Inflation took its toll even then - father's first boat cost him a fiver - mine was almost into three figures and involved an awful lot of strawberry picking (at 2d a punnet, old style!)