A guide to Sailing Fashion.

Truth is beauty and beauty truth. No it sodding isn't. I've seen those nautical fashion pieces, never on a boat or even in a sailing magazine and usually miles from the nearest navigable body of water. Girls in navy and white, guys in starched white, both with little anchor motifs and braid. Damn those motifs should be prefaced with a w to my mind. Beautiful? yes, True? I think not.

Do you know what happens to white on a boat? Hell even the bullet proof gel coat on most boats becomes a sort of nicotine pub ceiling off yellow. And braid? On a yacht? It’d rust or turn green.

"Tie-Dye was discovered by accident on a yacht. The laundry bucket was inexplicably used during the procedure to change the engine oil."

The truth about the fashions of the cruising set is a bit different. You can tell by the dampness of the shorts. Dinghy rides to the shore have that effect. That and the motion of the butt on the cockpit seats wears the bum out of them.

The picture below right opposite left over-leaf shows this years (and every other year since the invention of the T-Shirt and boardshorts) yachting fashion. The primark dresser such as my self, will wear any old T-Shirt free from an SC or regatta, the more MS end of the market may actually pay for their shirts with logos like “I’d rather be in the boat with a drink on the rocks, than in the drink with the boat on the rocks” and “never judge a man by the size of his ground tackle” or even “same shit different Island” but the shade of grey will be universal.

"This isn’t just damp underwear this is damp M & S underwear"

If you want to personalise the look I recommend anchor chains (less galvanising the better), bilge water and spaghetti bolognaise as this coupled with a moving boat will give your clothes a certain Je Ne Sai Quais. For more hard core fashion victims the above can be supplemented with second hand engine oil, outboard exhaust or any thing from a rusty unlabelled tin in the cockpit locker.

Authors Note: This was conceived as an interactive, 90's, multimedia buzzword, web 2.0 clicky thing. I have finally realised Its not going to get further than a slightly dodgy drawing in flash with some even dodgier music, curtsey of the musical special episode of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, which if you haven't seen it is enough to make you cringe so badly you'll wet your pants without needing a dinghy and laugh so hard you'll wet them again.

The Dampnes of the Pants.

The Dampness of the pants is how we know.

A guide to Sailing Fashion.

Do you know what happens to white on a boat? Hell even the bullet proof gel coat on most boats becomes a sort of nicotine pub ceiling off yellow. And braid? On a yacht? It’d rust or turn green.

"Tie-Dye was discovered by accident on a yacht. The laundry bucket was inexplicably used during the procedure to change the engine oil."

the author in his younger,
more fashionable days.

"This isn’t just damp underwear this is damp M & S underwear"

The author's Fashion sense,
as it is today

The only way to survive in coloured T-Shirts is to expose them to enough sun that they fade to grey anyway. A crude measure of the day's temperature can be achieved by measuring the distance the sweat mark moves down the peak of a baseball cap, since when this dries it leaves a tide mark, you can even make comparisons.

If you want to personalise the look I recommend anchor chains (less galvanising the better), bilge water and spaghetti bolognaise as this coupled with a moving boat will give your clothes a certain Je Ne Sai Quais. For more hard core fashion victims the above can be supplemented with second hand engine oil, outboard exhaust or any thing from a rusty unlabelled tin in the cockpit locker.

Authors Note: This was conceived as an interactive, 90's, multimedia buzzword, web 2.0 clicky thing. I have finally realised Its not going to get further than a slightly dodgy drawing in flash with some even dodgier music, curtsey of the musical special episode of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, which if you haven't seen it is enough to make you cringe so badly you'll wet your pants without needing a dinghy and laugh so hard you'll wet them again.