Greatest Sailing Quotes of all Time...

SailFast13

New Member
Anyone got any good sailing quotes????

heres a few:
"Talent is a desire to practice"

"You are your best sailing coach"

"The difference between a fit and a weak sailor is that the fit sailor has the ability to think at the end of the race"

"The 2 worst ways to loose a race are equipment failure, and not following the SI, both could be prevented onshore"
 
I don't think that this one is covered in the Search feature unless it was before my time. Congrats, you've created a new topic!

There's the Elvstrom quote about you haven't won if in winning, you've lost the respect of your competitors, but I'd have to use the search feature to get the exact wording. ;)
 
I don't think that this one is covered in the Search feature unless it was before my time. Congrats, you've created a new topic!

There's the Elvstrom quote about you haven't won if in winning, you've lost the respect of your competitors, but I'd have to use the search feature to get the exact wording. ;)

The quote you are looking for is in his classic book on dinghy and keelboat racing:

You haven't won the race, if in winning the race you have lost the respect of your competitors.

As true today as when he wrote that some 50 years ago.
 
This is a slight thread diversion, but here are two quotes I ALWAYS hear when sailing ANYWHERE in North America east of the Sierra Nevada:

Its never like this here.

which is often immediately followed by:

You should have been here last week!

(which can be modified to suit the day of your arrival, e.g. "Just arrived? You should have been here yesterday!", or your day of departure: "its meant to return to normal tomorrow")

:D

(Ok, flame suit on but remember that I just spent 3 weeks sailing back east! That trip was highlighted by not only my first ever hurricane experience, but my second too!)
 
There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.
-- Water Rat, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
 
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. - William Arthur Ward
 
"Design has taken the place of what sailing used to be.”



“It basically was an art before. We're just starting to scratch it into a science.”
 
Those of us that don't remember our graduation find comfort in the quote..."old age and treachery beat youth and skill every time" ;)
 
(I'm a bit shy of saying it's a "greatest," because it is my own...)

On piloting a Laser, and not racing:
"My competition is with myself and the water planet: Sailing a Laser, you hang suspended with one hand in the ocean (tiller) and the other hand connected to the sky (mainsheet). You are the pivot point between these two great fluids, the two worlds, and you get to go along for the ride." - Dennis Olson, Tomales Bay
 
Friend of mine once said when rigging his boat at a world championship:

"Who ever said its all about the "taking part" is a lier, I didn drive 400 miles just to sail around a bay for 5 days!! Im only here to kick some ass"
 
"The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective." - Henry David Thoreau
 
If you find yourself in a heated protest hearing remember....."if you speak when you're angry... You'll make the BEST speech you'll ever REGRET!"
 
This really isn't a sailing quote - it was made by a fictitious baseball coach named Jummy Duggan, but it sums up my feelings about sailing Lasers.

"It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it great."
 

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