Hi, Graham W
Re :- Reply #10
Thanks for that. I think you've actually made my point quite ...er...economically.
To put it in perspective £60 (your estimated all-in charge per night) is around the cost of a night at a Holiday Inn. For that you get breakfast - but no safety boat, I’m afraid.
The Semaine du Golfe is NOT comparable in any way with “our” raids. No argument there.
e.g. The first Irish raid, seven days on the beautiful River Shannon, only attracted a dozen or so boats.
So, using your figures, if I wanted to take one of my children on such an event the basic entry fee would cost me £840.00 (which, incidentally, is twice what I would pay for a week for two people in a package tour apartment on Tenerife right now – not that I’d want to.)
This means that our “cheerful and willing” volunteers have put the whole thing together on an income of around ten grand - assuming no sponsorship. Quite an achievement, I should think.
It also means that many UK households would baulk at the expense.
Add another c. £550.00 for the Holyhead/Dublin ferry, £120.00 for a couple of tanks full of petrol, £140.00 for food at £10 pp pd and you are exceeding £1,600.00 – and you haven’t bought a single pint of Guinness yet!
Getting a little more sponsorship to remove the entry fee halves this figure...and might well increase the numbers of participants.
In no way do I criticize the organisers of these events. (They are doing something I am not prepared to do and doing it for the benefit of all.)
Nor do I suggest that all Raids should be huge, corporate sponsored events.
Nor yet do I accuse anyone floundering in the mud of Milford Haven of being elitist.
What gets me all hot under the collar is the mindset that assumes that Raids and festivals should be organised around the financial capabilities of the major participants, i.e. gentlemen of mature years and matured personal pension plans. It is not, as far as I can see, an assumption made anywhere else in Europe, where sailing is a sport or pastime like any other. (With the exception, perhaps, of Tennis, which appears to be the domain of the well to do where ever you go!)
As for “Wind in the Willows” being an example of the class struggle.....words fail me - almost. (I wish I’d never used the expression “...messing about in boats..”)
As Kenneth Grahame read his cosy stories to comfort his ailing son he may have been aware of the first stirrings of revolution in the Russian Empire but I doubt he equated the plight of Russian peasants, or signs of social unrest elsewhere, with anything closer to home. His stories do, however, reflect the social mores of the time - as you would expect from a person of note at the Bank of England in an era when the British Empire was at the height of its powers. Social roles and codes of behaviour were well defined in those days.
Two quotes:-
On others in the Wild Wood:-
'Weasels and stoats and foxes and so on. They're all right in a way — I'm very good friends with them — pass the time of day when we meet, and all that..... but they break out sometimes, there's no denying it, and then — well, you can't really trust them, and that's the fact.'
On Mr. Toad’s behaviour:-
“Independence is all very well, but we animals never allow our friends to make fools of themselves beyond a certain limit; and that limit you've reached.”
Enough of the literary analysis!
To return to the point.
The outlay involved in participation in any sport obviously does not stop with the purchase of the necessary equipment. However, boats can be a particularly expensive prerequisite and so reducing the additional costs as far as possible is a desirable aim......if you wish to widen the appeal of raids and festivals in this country, that is.
Anyone disagree with that?
