Ask the Tillerman #3

Mark R asks...

I wonder if I might submit a question on behalf of my training partner, I know she would be embarrassed to ask herself.   

It is Thursday night, you have just finished racing, and beaten the other Lasers in your 4.7. You wish to celebrate using the £2.50 left in the weekly household budget, perhaps with a bottle of white wine or similar beverage. What purchase offers the best alcohol to price value, whilst befitting the Laser 4.7 sailor?

Mark R writes a blog called Slipper Musings. He sails one of those exotic boats that look all technical with fancy black carbon bits called an RS300. Apparently there aren't many of these exotic boats around in his neck of the woods because he has been writing for the last few months about how he goes out and practices sailing his RS300 with a lady called Claire who sails a very sensible boat called a Laser 4.7.  (In case you don't know, a Laser 4.7 is a Laser with a smaller sail than the standard Laser.)

Mark and Claire go out sailing on Chichester Harbor in England in all sorts of weather in the English winter.  Where they sail is not far from where I sailed the Laser Masters Worlds in 2010. The experience still gives me nightmares. I have only just stopped shivering from sailing in such frigid weather. And I was there in September!

So let's get this straight. Mark sails some oddball boat and has nobody with the same kind of oddball boat to practice with. And yet, he has a lady friend who will come out and practice with him in the miserable, rainy, cold English weather. She is a Laser sailor so she already has 200,000 other Laser sailing friends to practice with. But she obviously feels sorry for Mark and his eccentric obsession with his bizarre boat and out of the kindness of her heart she goes training with him.

So Claire beats all the other Lasers in her 4.7 in the Thursday night racing and Mark asks what she should buy to drink with the following constraints...

1. Cost no more than £2.50
2. Something like a bottle of white wine
3. Best alcohol to price ratio
4. Something befitting the Laser 4.7 sailor

I hardly know where to begin..



First of all, I'm not all that familiar with what stuff costs in Britain these days (I've only been back for the occasional vacation in the last few years)  but I seem to remember from my last trip that £2.50 does not go very far. Isn't that what they charge now for a bag of crisps?



Secondly, why is this woman buying her own drinks? She beats all the other Laser sailors. She goes training with Mark in his deviant, odd little boat in the English winter.  Clearly Claire must be pretty much a cross between Mother Theresa and Ellen MacArthur.

Every man in their oddly named Slipper Sailing Club (and especially Mark) should be lining up to buy drinks for her and to throw their cloaks down in the mud for her to walk on while she launches her Laser. Whatever happened to English gallantry? Don't they teach the story of Francis Drake and his muddy cloak in English schools any more?



Thirdly, have you people not been paying attention? What have I been teaching you on this blog all these years?

Real Laser sailors drink beer.

Check out Beer and Sailing.

Check out Beer is Better where it was conclusively proven by real scientists that beer is the best thing for you after exercise.

Above all check out Laser Sailing: The Rules and meditate on Rule #28 Drink real beer.

You should not need telling again.



White wine? At £2.50 a bottle? You have to be joking.