When you’ve 1400 sailing boats gently milling about, all in seemingly amiable confusion but with lots of warm sunshine, it’s an achievement to avoid a collision, and it’s a real breakthrough when you can recognise another participant writes W M Nixon.
For the 20 vintage Irish boats taking part in the Morbihan Festival of Sail in France – 14 Water Wags and six Howth Seventeens – yesterday’s opener with the inaugural Parade of Sail provided a flavour of what’s to come throughout the week. And last night, those whose boats didn’t provide some sort of overnight accommodation found themselves locating their homes for the week among hundreds of other shore-wandering sailors who’d spent the day being enchanted at the sight of so many boats of so many different shapes and sizes.
For that’s what the Morbihan Festival is ultimately all about. It’s an endless visual feast for all boat nuts of the true sailing kind. On the first day, you just keep gazing around you in wonderment. But after a while, you can even start on a bit of specific identification and analysis. That will begin today Tuesday – Day 2.
The 1985-built Water Wag Skee (named in honour of legendary boat-builder Skee Gray) shows a bit of racing experience with an effectively setting spinnaker and some interesting company
