Bermuda Cockleshells

Peter Roberts narrates this brief glimpse of Bermuda sailing craft, courtesy of the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club where men and children practice their skill in handling sailboat dinghies in the Bermuda waters.

The odd looking rigs make for picturesque viewing, but the film cries out for color. Sailing into the wind toward a finish line is the whole point of these races and sometimes the participants get more than they bargained for when the dinghies are upset by either a too crowded crew or lines that get snagged. Nevertheless, despite getting dumped into water occasionally, these crews of four to nine men seem to be having a good time.

It's a cooling off kind of thing to watch on a hot summer day.

THis late RKO Sportscope short -- which seems to have been released by Universal for some reason -- concerns itself with the small sailboat racing of Bermuda. Although the narrator refers to them as 'fireflies', when I was learning to pilot one a decade and a half after this was made, they weren't called that; sometimes I heard them called 'sailfishes', but perhaps that was the local name for them.

There are few sights more beautiful that a boat zipping along, the white sails bellied full of wind against the blue sky. While this is a black & white film, it's still a lovely to sight to an old sailor.