14 - Yachting's Third ‘Golden Period’: Of Heroes and Heroines; Of Families and Marinas, 1965–1990

Summary

For boating people August is the height of the season, and the day after Blyth's triumphant return [6 August, 1971], in Cowes Road … hundreds of men and a number of women plunged to windward at the start of the Fastnet race … For many others that Saturday was the start of an annual summer holiday when the family would be off on some cruise … For dinghy men, it was another weekend in a points series … But suddenly everyone in Britain, who looked at a newspaper or a television screen, knew a bit about sailing. For five years, a procession of men alone against the sea had passed before their eyes: Chichester, Rose, Knox-Johnston, Blyth.

The key phrase here is ‘suddenly everyone … knew about a bit about sailing’. In the 1970s, yachting events, such as single-handed circumnavigations, became headline news. An atmosphere was created whereby yacht sailing became an important statement of a person's values and social position – in short, this was yachting's third golden period.

The late 1960s and 1970s are often characterised as a period of ‘flower power’, ‘hippies’, and taking psychedelic drugs – relatively trivial fashion and lifestyle phenomena. Economically, the key event of this era was Britain joining the European Common Market in 1973, and the key social change concerned the radical improvement in the position of women, due to a number of important medical and legal changes, namely:

• the arrival of the birth pill – in the early 1960s, for married women and then in 1967, for all women, regardless of their marital status

• relaxation of the abortion law, much decreasing the fear of unwanted pregnancies (The Abortion Reform Bill, 1967)

• thirdly, the easing and the equalisation of divorce through the Divorce Law Reform Act of 1969, providing for ‘no blame’ divorce

• the impact of this legislation was strengthened by the Legal Aid Act of 1960, which made available legal services to those who could otherwise not afford it

• finally, sexual equality in the workplace. The 1970 Equal Pay Act made it illegal to pay women lower rates than men for the same work. The 1975 Sex Discrimination Act made it illegal to discriminate against women in work, education or training. (However, unlike the Race Relations Act, 1965, the legislation did not cover private organisations, such as yacht clubs.)