Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Beer and Sailing

Regular readers of this blog (all four of you) will have noticed that I write about beer almost as often as I write about actual sailing. Beer and sailing just seem to go together so well. Whether it was beer and pizza after Wednesday night sailing at my old club in New Jersey, or beer and dinner in Bristol after Tuesday night sailing these days, or the infamous Hangover Bowl at my old frostbite fleet in Connecticut where beer actually featured in the racing, there almost always seems to be beer involved when I go sailing.

So as I we were chilling out after racing in Squantum Yacht Club this weekend, over a couple of beers of course, imagine my shock and horror when one of our number who had spent a couple of decades in Sweden reported that beer is not allowed in Swedish yacht clubs!!!

What???

A yacht club with no beer??? That's just not right. Beer goes with sailing just like hot dogs go with baseball, and Gatorade goes with football.


A yacht club with no beer? That's terrible. It would be like a Starbucks with no Wi-Fi. Why would anyone ever go there?

I bet the Australians wouldn't stand for it.



15 comments:

Doc Häagen-Dazs said...

Beer & sailing! This takes me back, way back, to my Laser days. So far back, I now forget a rather important detail. In those days, I was drinking of Schlitz and Olympia. On one occasion I learned one of the two of them sank like a rock, and the other was as buoyant as a capsized Laser. This was a critically important discovery.

Tillerman said...

On my first trip to America one of my American colleagues was making fun of my accent and particularly the way that we English pronounce the word "schedule." We say "shed-yool" not "sked-yool" like Americans do.

We were in a bar drinking a few beers at the time so I looked at the label on the beer bottle in front of me and asked, "So how do you pronounce the name of this beer, Sklitz?"

Baydog said...

I'm betting the Sklitz was the beer that sank. Doc, did they have pop-tops yet?

WV: inout. Sklitz is definitely an inout beer

Bursledon Blogger said...

More likely to see a club with no yachts than no beer in Blighty

bonnie said...

I'm actually quite frustrated over my trip reporting for City of Water Day - the camping was fantastic but the funniest moment was driven by the fact that Water Taxi Beach, the summer bar that almost all of us had been looking forward to patronizing in the evening was hosting a "private" event. I put quotes around "private" because the gates were open to anybody who wanted to pay eighty bucks to rub shoulders with the Jersey Shore reality show. None of us wanted to do that, the island was otherwise dry, something had to be done and something WAS done, I was up to my neck in it and the doing was hysterical, but I cannot even mention it on my blog because officially, it didn't happen. Going out on a bit of a limb even bringing it up here but shoot...paddlers like beer just as much as sailors do!

Baydog said...

Come see me, Bonnie, and I'll give you some free Jersey Shore reality.
And free beer too.

bonnie said...

Oh, man, I'd take hanging out with the Baydog family over hanging out with whatsersnookface and co. any day!

bonnie said...

PS...totally random observation...boy can you carry a lot of stuff in a canoe.

Doc Häagen-Dazs said...

I think Baydog is right. I seem to recall a protracted preference for Olympia.

jnelson09 said...

I'd bet there is a different standard for vodka. Remember it is cold at that latitude and stronger juice is required.

Pat said...

Aquavit? Schnapps?

Tillerman said...

Like any reputable journalist who has found a snippet of information by phone hacking I thought I had better try and substantiate this terrible news about Swedish yacht clubs by doing a Google on "Sweden yacht club beer."

I discovered...

a) the first hit is for this post.

b) there is a club in England called the Beer Sailing Club.

c) I found one reference to some sailors gathering "outside" a Swedish yacht club for hamburgers and beer.

d) I get many more comments when I write a post about beer than when I write about actual sailing.

Baydog said...

Just goes to show you: Beer goes with sailing posts.

Doc Häagen-Dazs said...

Beer goes well with everything, except chocolate!

Doc Häagen-Dazs said...

Baydog! You're right! But they've always had pop-tops.....?

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