The oldest video footage of Heron dinghies
by Magnus Smith 17 Aug 05:00 PDT
Our video archive is fully searchable, and updated weekly with the latest sailing videos, but here we look back at early cruising in the Heron dinghy class, just as popular in Australia as its native UK, back in the 1970s.
The oldest video we could find is from an unknown year, sometime in the early 1970s: Dinghy sailing at Port Hacking, Sydney. There is tiny glimpse of a Heron at 2m54s but a little more after 12m35s with a couple of boats shown for longer.
Dinghy racing on Georges River and Botany Bay 1974 covers 12ft, 16ft and 18ft Skiff classes mostly, but at 0m14s you can see a Heron fleet rigged ashore.
Our only UK entry amongst the Australian videos is Heron sailing on the Isle of Wight in the 1970s. You have to skip to 14m05s to see the relevant portion (which lasts until about 17 mins) of a cruising voyage, and then at 27m51s there is a racing fleet (more Herons than other classes) eventually rounding a buoy in close-up.
What of the rest?
This video summary is much smaller than those we have published for other dinghy classes. There must be more out there?
Do you know the location of any other old Heron videos? We would love to share these with sailors worldwide. You can submit video links for immediate review.
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