Rich Yacht Club Poor Yacht Club

by Monique de la Vela on 20 Apr 2007 There were two sailing clubs in the same Bay. Both had been there for a very long time, longer than anyone in the Bay could remember.

One sailing club had a large yacht club building, and the yachts were long and expensive, so everyone who lived in the Bay thought the members of this club were rich. The other yacht club had no building, so everyone thought they must be poor, but in fact they didn’t think much about them anyway.

In the Rich Yacht Club, they were very competitive and ran many races. The races had strict rules, more than the international rules: rules that had been developed over the years and everyone knew they had to be obeyed. For instance, if you hit a buoy, you had to do two 720’s, instead of only one as the international rules stipulated. There were many other rules like this, and people accepted them happily. As they practised their skills continually, everyone in the Bay who was not a sailor thought that they must be very good sailors, and the members of the yacht club thought so too.

When anyone broke these rules, it caused horror within the yachting club, and it was much discussed, even among those who were not sailors. So that everyone knew who had broken what rule, and what the punishment was. Because it was a democratic club, there was also much disagreement about the degree of punishment, and the members – even the non-sailors who lived in the Bay – spent a lot of time in discussion about these matters.

All this time, everyone went on not thinking much about the ‘Poor’ Club. They were probably having races, but the yachts seemed to be very old, and there was not much discussion about any races that they had. No one knew whether there were any special rules formed by this club, or even whether they followed the international rules. But it didn’t seem to matter much, and no one even wondered about this, neither the members of the rich Yacht Club, nor the other people who lived in the Bay.

Then one day, when the rich Yacht Club were engaged in a race, just at the end, a yacht from the ‘poor’ yacht club sailed the last leg beside the winning boat, and beat it soundly to the finish line. The members of the yacht club were horrified, as this was their winning boat, the fastest in the fleet, and it was beyond belief that such a small yacht, from this unknown club, could beat it.

So the Rich Yacht Club challenged the ‘poor’ yacht club to a competition – a series of races. After all, it was unthinkable that, after so much practise, and so many competitions, and the development of so many rules to make their sailing fairer, that they could be beaten.

On the given day, the rich yacht club sent its best boats to the starting line, and a motley collection of yachts from the other club turned up. Well, the race was a shambles according to the Race Committee, who comprised members of the rich yacht club only. Some of the yachts from the poor yacht club were seen leaving the race, to be replaced by other identical boats a little further along the track. The rich yacht club boats went on obeying their own rules, but the other club didn’t even obey the international rules. However, at the end of the day, the Finish Boat recorded that the ‘poor’ club had won.

Then started a series of races, where the rules were mostly thrown aside, because the Race Committee of the rich yacht club were determined to win and prove their superiority. However, the Race Committee didn’t want the other members, and especially not the non-sailors who lived in the Bay, to know that they were breaking their own rules, so they kept it quiet. However, word got out somehow, as it usually does, and the strategies were just as much discussed as ever. There was a lot of criticism about the new strategies of the rich Yacht Club, and they lost a lot of their high standing among both their own members, some of whom left the club, and among the other people in the Bay. Of course, one could assume that the ‘poor’ club could find out what the rich club were doing, just by going to the local pub and listening to the conversation.

But no-one ever talked about what the ‘poor’ club was doing. So every time the rich club developed a new strategy to beating the ‘poor’ club, the ‘poor’ club seemed to know, and always had a new strategy developed to beat their competitors. As the rich club were so used to operating in this way, with all and sundry discussing their strategies, that they found it impossible to change, and so the poor club kept on being secretive and kept on winning.

However soon, the word started to spread far and wide beyond the Bay, so that it seemed that the whole world knew about the war between the Clubs, and everyone had an opinion, and discussed it at length, even those who knew nothing about sailing at all. More and more people came to be spectators at the finish line, until the crowd numbered the thousands, and the news networks picked it up and television commentators interviewed many experts about what the rich club was doing wrong. But no one ever discussed much about the tactics of the poor club, because no one ever knew quite what they were going to do next. All everyone knew, no matter how many times the rich club cried foul, that it was a ‘poor’ club boat that finished first.

By now the rich club has become enmeshed in the mire of its history and lost both its way and its standing, not only in its own Bay but in all the Bays of the world. They have spent money on new boats, and they practise more than ever, but they are continually flummoxed by the secretive ways of the ‘poor’ club, who still never obey the rules and always, somehow, even though they are supposed to be poor, can come up with replacement boats and new and determined crew.

And so it is today, and the war is still going on between these two sailing clubs.

No-one knows where it will end.