BURGEES -- or LACK OF THEM

Hugo du Plessis

Burgees are expensive and when cruising continuously wear out quickly -- especially in the tropics. This is an important practical point, particularly when on a limited budget as so many of us are. I have tried painting alternative materials. The most long lasting so far has been a piece of motor inner tube but it curls too much to be readily visible.

Without a burgee there is no way to know if a new arrival, or even a yacht seen before, is sailed by a member unless known personally already. With hundreds of yachts around one can hardly look up each one in the Members Handbook, which in any case inevitably gets out of date.

So what we need is some form of distinctive, permanent identification. What can anyone suggest?

The obvious one is a burgee on some more durable material, preferably flown at the masthead, where it ought to be and where it is most visible. Possibly even on solid substances plywood or metal but these tend to rattle, especially flown from the spreaders, and because of the inertia, swing about too much.

There are some positions where it can be painted -- eg. wind vanes -- but these are low and therefore only seen at close quarters. Higher up there are radar reflectors like the Firdell, or the radar itself. It is always recommended that radomes are not painted, but as a one-time radar engineer I see little deleterious effect provided a non-metallic paint is used, and the paint is thin.

On a more innovative note what about the mast itself, by far the most conspicuous part of a yacht. A complete burgee would be too small to see and would really need to be pointing up or down, and what the flag etiquette of that might be I do not know. Even a Flying Fish would be hard to see, but could we have a recognised colour code, say blue and yellow bands at the top of the mast? (A kind of bar code as on a tin of beans).

Would a stuffed Flying Fish (artifical of course) be too ridiculous? Perhaps wrapped round a VHF aerial like the Windex vane. Or the weathervane on a church steeple!

Membership is something to be proud of. But on a practical level a major object of membership is the exchange of information, often very useful. How can we do this if we cannot recognise other members?

So please, do identify yourself by some means. Time and again I have discovered a fellow member only by accident or in casual conversation.