Posted by ACB on July 07, 2009 at 09:13:05 user ACB.
In Reply to: Sailing alone? posted by Pam Adams on July 06, 2009 at 22:41:59:
As a boy I was despatched to Brittany to stay with friends of my mother each Easter holiday, to ensure that I at least spoke French.
They had no children and lived in a fascinating old house in Guingamp, and to my delight they sailed and had a vast sailing library in French, which I ploughed through. The great French yachting writer of the day - the man mainly responsible for generating the French national passion for sailing - was Jean Merrien, a Breton, who owned an old pilot cutter and wrote voluminously. He wrote two books on noted singlehanders and in one of them he asks the question - why are there (this was before Sir Francis, Sir Alec and Sir Robin) so few British singlehanders, given the dominance of Britain in sailing (he was an Anglophile).
His answer was that the British did not need to sail singlehanded because we get on better with each other when cooped up together in a small boat for a long time.
And why was that?
"Car ils ne parlent pas" ("Because they don't talk")!
Anyone who has done a long voyage will recognise the wisdom in this!