Sunday, October 28, 2007

Lura pensionärshemmet, dö i din Laser

You may wonder where that tongue-in-cheek piece of advice to older sailors, "Cheat the nursing home, die on your Laser" comes from...

As well as posting it in the title bar of this blog, I also have it as a bumper sticker on my car and occasionally have to explain it to curious gas pump attendants. The bumper sticker was created and mailed out
many years ago to Laser class members of a certain age by Fred Schroth who was at that time Executive Secretary of the North American Laser Class. Fred was an enthusiastic and tireless promoter of the Laser class who was always dreaming up new ideas to grow the class and encourage more people to join the game of Laser sailing.

Actually Fred (now ex-officio) still is one of the best cheerleaders for the Laser game. He runs a famous Easter Regatta and you can find him posting as gouvernail on Sailing Anarchy and The Laser Forum.

But I only discovered last week that Fred didn't actually dream up the nursing home slogan himself. That honor goes to Nils Andersson who contacted me this week via email about an item he read in this blog, and who told me about the origin of the slogan.

Nils was from Sweden and sailed in the 1983 Laser Masters Worlds in the USA. On his return to Sweden he wrote an article about the Worlds for the Swedish Laser Magazine (no blogs in those days). His article ended with the slogan "Lura pensionärshemmet, dö i din Laser" which, you guessed it, is Swedish for, "Cheat the nursing home, die on your Laser." Later he posted the article in English which is how the phrase entered the English-speaking Laser world.

Nils traveled to the US again to sail in the Florida Masters and eventually moved here. He turns 70 in May and is still sailing his Laser around the San Diego area.

Lura pensionärshemmet, dö i din Laser.


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