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in reply to Sarah Brown

There was an inevitable picture of Rowling’s absurdly expensive yacht with “Orcas for trans rights” slogans on it. The sigh etc.
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

@Alexandra Lanes Yeah. This is pissing me off, like, a lot now. If you were Rowling, would you buy a boat for the price of tricked out MacBook?

I mean, I suspect you probably wouldn’t. If I had her sort of money and wanted a boat, I think I’d probably spend more on it than I would on a laptop.

in reply to Sarah Brown

It’s getting very tiresome. But past the first few it became an exercise in resisting the urge to argue people being infuriatingly wrong on the internet. Probably good practice for terfs. I just hope there’s not a orca to terfery brainworm pathway.
in reply to Sarah Brown

@Alexandra Lanes Also, I know quite a lot of trans people with sailboats. Most of them live on them, because they can’t afford a flat or house.

I don’t know a single one with a luxury motor yacht.

in reply to Sarah Brown

Alright, understood.

Follow-up question: How can we teach them to go for the billionaires instead?

in reply to viernullvier

@viernullvier throw fish guts at the expensive boats. Not sure if it attracts orcas but it pisses of the billionaires so it's always a win.
in reply to Sarah Brown

okay.

Everyone change your opinions and get word out to the orcas i guess

in reply to Sarah Brown

fucking finally someone is saying this, thank you
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Sarah Brown
Speaking of people who seem slow on the uptake, no Bill, it’s not. It probably cost less than your car, you fucking idiot.
in reply to Sarah Brown

BTW, if you’re sharing this, please share BOTH posts, otherwise because of the way federation works, if you only share one most people will only see that one.

reshared this

in reply to Sarah Brown

Sites like Twitter always had this thread decontextualising problem too, although they do show that a post is part of a thread at least. Some Fedi clients do the same or better, like the one I'm on at the mo:
in reply to Hughster

@Hughster I'm on Friendica, where all these comments are just comments attached to the parent post.
in reply to Sarah Brown

Oh I see. So even your own replies to yourself are shown as comments?
in reply to Hughster

@Hughster Yes. It’s like Facebook. A top level post on my wall, with people commenting on it.

Which is why the insufferable wanker thing is annoying me. It feels intrusive.

And so they get blocked with extreme prejudice.

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Sarah Brown
@Saxicola ✅ Yeah. Mine is 9 metres long. It’s my hobby. I suspect the money I spend on it is similar to the money a lot of people reading this spend on their hobby. This year I will have to run the gauntlet with these animals, and it’s kinda intimidating, TBH.
in reply to Sarah Brown

My mother-in-law’s dog groomer has a boat that was attacked by these orcas last year, and nearly sunk. For those still struggling to follow at the back, do the mega rich generally earn a living cutting the hair of other peoples dogs? Take all the time you need with that.
in reply to Sarah Brown

I know she spoils that dog something rotten but I didn’t realise it included hiring multimillionaires to give him a trim.
in reply to Sarah Brown

I'm wondering if it's got anything to do with the new toroidal propellers that have come onto the market in the past few years, that are notable for being /much/ quieter, and so expensive only a few more wealthy boat owners will be using them. Combine those with the already quiet solar electric drives used only on sailing yachts, and it's not unreasonable to assume an orca got hit by a boat with its prop spinning, because it didn't realise the boat was moving under power.

Whales have been swimming in the bow waves of and playing around all kinds of boats for as long as humans have been sailing. These new quieter propellers and solar-electric drives are the only things about boats that have changed in recent years, and they're only going to be combined in sailing yachts of about that size.

Here is an example of how quiet the toroidal props are (on 3 engines, imagine just one prop on an electric boat)

youtube.com/watch?v=b9a40Rs5Cx…

in reply to Naomi

and here is an article that includes a diagram of the scarring on the orca at the center of all this:

theguardian.com/environment/20…

in reply to Naomi

I've been facepalming at all of this misunderstanding about what constitutes a yacht, because I got my RYA 3 at high school, have been subscribed to Sailing Uma for years, and since the UK descended into outright fascism, was very seriously considering getting a sailing yacht just like the one above to live in so I could escape the UK, except covid fucked my health up so much I'm no longer physically fit enough to handle a boat solo.
in reply to Naomi

@Naomi that’s a fringe idea that the press have taken and done what the press do.

There’s no evidence at all that this behaviour is stemming from a collision. Rudders look like the tails of their favourite food: tuna. This behaviour started amongst very young males. It is more likely a hunting game. The early interactions had the orcas acting with apparent glee when hitting the rudder caused the boats to spin round.

in reply to Naomi

@Naomi They’re attacking sailboats. The props don’t make any noise at all if they aren’t spinning.

There is no evidence they are doing this in retaliation for anything. The most likely explanation is that they’re doing it as a game.

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Sarah Brown
@Charlie Owen It’s cheaper to live on a sailboat in a lot of these places than it is to rent an apartment.
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Sarah Brown

@Charlie Owen My boat is in Portsmouth, nowhere near these animals. I am wealthy, and I do not profess otherwise.

I am angry because of the idea that people like my mother in law’s dog groomer deserve to drown because they like sailing as a hobby.

Plenty of people who sail are rich, and you can spend stupid money on it.

But an awful lot aren’t. If people gleefully chomping at the bit for weekend sailors to die horrifically are getting “rubbed up the wrong way”, I really don’t fucking care, because to be perfectly frank, they’re cunts.

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Sarah Brown

@Charlie Owen I’d also note that since this has become “a thing” on social media, the groups sailors made to exchange safety information about this entire situation are being overrun with edgelord “trolls” telling them, again, that they’re all rich arseholes who deserve to die.

One of the guys who runs a website that collates information has to ask for donations to keep it running. It would be really nice if people could just fucking leave us alone while we try to share info aimed at not drowning.

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Sarah Brown

@Charlie Owen You’re getting a server block after this because you are clearly deeply invested in missing the point, but before that I want to note that if there was a situation that was at risk of drowning people who lived in narrowboats, then there wouldn’t be this reaction because they are coded working class.

You need a fuckton more money to own and operate one of those than you do a sailing boat.

If you are “getting rubbed up the wrong way”, then maybe that’s your conscience nagging at you. Goodbye.

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legumancer Davy

@whalecoiner not even normal rich. Sailing has a rich people hobby reputation because it *used* to be expensive, before the invention of fiberglass boats. Wood boats required a lot more labor to build, and we're way out of reach as a hobby for most people. Then in the 70s and 80s several large builders got really good at mass producing boats (Catalina and Hunter in the US, Beneteau in Europe, and a bunch of mid size makers too). They sold a ton of them to middle class people who didn't have the money for something more traditional and customized, and we're willing to gamble on whether the fiberglass boats would last.

It turns out, fiberglass hulls last practically forever if they don't have manufacturing defects or crash into anything. The market is absolutely flooded with old but seaworthy (for coastal waters) boats, from as far back as 1960s. There's a healthy used market for parts (from scrapped boats and wealthier sailors' old equipment when they upgrade), too.

in reply to legumancer Davy

@whalecoiner The boat builders hadn't expected their mass produced fiberglass boats to be as durable as they were, and in the 90s and even moreso in the 2000s they found it impossible to sell new boats to sailors on a budget when old boats that sail just fine once you scrub the mildew out could be had for a few thousand or free. So they went upmarket again, building ever fancier and more expensive boats and driving the overall industry to market mainly to the rich again. But all those shoestring sailors are still out there.

There's probably more of them in Europe than the US, too. Most American marinas ban living aboard at the dock, and anywhere warm enough that you'd want to has a state level ban. There's less of that in Europe, so people who work in coastal cities where they can't afford housing live on these sorts of boats. It's like a mobile home with less space but (if the engine still works or you know how to dock under sail) more fun.

in reply to legumancer Davy

@legumancer Davy @Charlie Owen Yeah. It's notable how overbuilt the original GRP boats were, compared to modern GRP boats where they've started to realise they needed a lot less structural integrity than they thought.
in reply to Sarah Brown

@whalecoiner that too! In discussions of ocean crossings I've seen some people prefer 80s boats because they're so dang thick. More likely to survive bumping into a lost shipping container at night and such.
in reply to legumancer Davy

@legumancer Davy @Charlie Owen I got into sailing myself because my step kids needed something to do at the weekend when we had them that took their mind off stuff I don't particularly care to talk about. Inlaws lived in an old fishing town. The local "yacht" club was dying on its arse and desperately needed new blood, and was trying to shed the image you talk about. It was trying to attract local kids to learn to sail, so we enrolled ours.

Then decided it looked fun AF, and my FIL got a 1960s GRP open day boat, which @Zoë O'Connell and I sailed more than he did, for a couple of hundred quid (literally).

And then we decided it would be nice to have somewhere to make a cup of tea, and Zoe and I bought a 1980s 23 foot day sailer/cabin cruiser. Barely more than a floating fibreglass tent with a plastic bag connected to a hand pump for water, but we learned a lot.

When it came to get rid of FILs open day sailer, we literally couldn't give it away.

in reply to Sarah Brown

@whalecoiner @zoe our first boat was an open 13 foot daysailer with a daggerboard and badly worm out sails, that we didn't know enough to know we're past usefulness. We had a great sail onto Irondequoit Bay and then had to paddle back because she couldn't tack even a little bit upwind. Another time we tried to go out onto Lake Ontario and nearly capsized in the channel out if the bay because we weren't prepared for the sudden change in wind speed - I had to stand up and yank the sail down the mast while Mike leaned out to counterbalance so we didn't flip over.

We had a blast with that $300 boat, and I'm so glad we made our mistakes on a craft small enough to paddle, tow by hand, and probably even tow while swimming if there'd been no other way to get moving. I think I'm done living on boats (not that boat, a boat with an inside) but it'd be fun to have something with a sail that fits on a jet ski trailer again.

in reply to legumancer Davy

@legumancer Davy @Charlie Owen @Zoë O'Connell The 23 footer came with an ancient 2 stroke outboard in a well, that died soon after we got it. Could only replace with 4 strokes because pollution laws, so the one that would fit was woefully underpowered.

We had a mooring buoy in the estuary for a few hundred quid a year. The tides could run at 5 knots. There is no way our engine could fight them, so if returning to our buoy on a spring ebb, we either had to sail onto the buoy or, if not possible, lasso it on the way past.

One day we missed. Had to be rescued by the club motorboat, otherwise it would have been drop anchor and wait about 3 hours for the tide to slacken.

We really didn't know what we were doing. Went and took lessons from proper ocean sailors.

in reply to Sarah Brown

@whalecoiner @legumancer River Crouch is a good place to learn. Unless you’re a total muppet, only real risk is needing to buy someone a pint for towing you back in.
in reply to Gareth Kitchen

Not the first time in UK waters for sure. It happened near Scilly, either last year or the year before, but the first time in Scotland. Fuckers appear to have been learning from each other.
in reply to Sarah Brown

Yeah. I’ve been having the same conversation. Showing people photos of things like Moody 35 and have them deny its a yacht. I don’t know what they think the word yacht means!
in reply to Sarah Brown

@doot looks VERY similar to a Maxi 77. Usuall price is below 30000 sek. (2550 €).
Unknown parent

Probably Paul

You can get these old fibreglass boats for less than a second-hand car, and some of these fishermen inherited their boats, and barely make enough from their hauls to cover maintenance and feed their families. Those people are, by anyone's standards, barely scraping a living.

Oh and I'm not rich either. I have minus (-) £8 in my current account and no savings. My dad also isn't rich, but has a motorboat which he uses for fishing. He got it for free because it was too bust-up to charge anything for, and renovated it himself.

Unknown parent

@Ponygirl Do you have a laptop, or tablet computer?

Congrats. Some of the boats these animals attacked cost less than that.

Now fuck off.

in reply to Probably Paul

@Probably Paul Ah, but according to The Discourse, this means you are Teh Rich and totally deserve to drown.

I have, as you might imagine, very little time for these people, and am blocking them on sight, usually after swearing at them just because.

in reply to Sarah Brown

Hey, that's a reasonable asking price for the Sunwind... tempting 😀
in reply to Sarah Brown

@Ponygirl@mastodon.social There are complex and longstanding boating and fishing cultures in these European coastal villages and towns! The fact they have a largish boat doesn't mean they're rich or even moderately wealthy; that boat is a family asset. We also have GRT communities in the UK with huge, hundred-thousand pound mobile homes...but again, that's the main family asset in many cases. They don't have much else of value. Without it they'd be destitute.

The waterways of the UK have thousands of long boats and barges that cost upwards of £20k - perhaps considerably more - but again, many in those communities live on their boats and could only afford them because the mooring is only a few grand a year, so in the long run it's way cheaper than buying even a small terraced house. And we don't call people who live in those rich, do we? 🙄

in reply to Probably Paul

@Probably Paul @Ponygirl The point about narrow boats is well made. They are typically much more expensive than “sailing yachts”, but coded working class, so presumably the people living in them don’t deserve to drown.

Honestly, some people just have a desperate need to demonstrate their inner arsehole to the world. I’ve been blocking them on a zero-tolerance basis. The way the fediverse works means they likely still see these replies, but whatever they say back goes into the void; my server simply ignores it.

in reply to Sarah Brown

@Probably Paul And indeed, a LOT of people from Cape St Vincent to Gibraltar are living on those boats. They’re their homes. A lot do casual work to be able to pay mooring fees and suchlike.

But someone who has thought about it for 15 seconds has decided that they need to lose everything they own and maybe drown in the Atlantic.

in reply to Sarah Brown

Yeah. I've been waiting for someone to say, "What seriously, your pops got a whole fishing boat for free? Yeah right!" which is something else that needs addressing in this context. Rural and coastal communities often have barter cultures, and while my dad is skint, he's also built many of the dry-stone walls (a dying skill) in his part of Wales, and odd-jobs for people without even thinking of charging. You got a swarm of bees? Call dad, he keeps them and farms them for honey. What goes around, comes around.

It's all just a lot more complicated than The Discourse (as you put it) allows for. We should be advocating for deterants to stop an endangered species from attacking boats, not egging them on! Because at this rate people will start harpooning orcas on sight...and then it won't be "the rich" who suffer.

in reply to Probably Paul

@Probably Paul Also, there are a glut of GRP boats from the 70s and 80s that are literally worth nothing, but the hulls are still perfectly fine. These boats are often passed on for a couple of hundred euros, or even nothing, and then the interiors and rigging rebuilt as hobbies.
in reply to Sarah Brown

@Probably Paul I’ll also note that one of these orcas has turned up in a French river estuary dead, with a bullet in it. The French do not fuck about.
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Sarah Brown

@Kai und der Andere To be able to propagate posts to my server, you need to be able to fucking read.

*plonk*