This “Sailing versus golf” piece is a medley assembled and blended by our guest editor Terry Birles from different authors who’ve written on the subject with an obvious bias towards sailing….

Many of history’s most legendary figures were sailors, starting with Jonah (you know, the poor fellow who got swallowed by that whale) and spanning to Jason and his Argonauts. Every time St. Paul penned one of his epistles to the Corinthians or decided to pop over to Philippi for a quick Bank Holiday jaunt, he had to rely on his trusty sailboat. Nelson and Drake would be footnotes if they’d never sailed into the history books. Sailing, it seems, is the ancient art that’s endured the ages.

Not long ago, being the ancestor of a future dynasty meant more than just making it to the maternity ward. You had to get your genes across a substantial body of water. Imagine the Normans trying to swim across the Channel with all their battle gear—silly business it would have been! To prove how deep humanity’s maritime roots go, the late Thor Heyerdahl spent his life crafting wildly improbable boats and sailing them across vast oceans, keeping coastguards everywhere on high alert and, no doubt, entertained.

Ah, how times have changed. Now, you can be perfectly functional without knowing your port from starboard—or even port from your sherry. We’ve become landlubbers, wimps really, all thanks to that newest fad—I use the term loosely—called golf. Picture this: Papa Columbus on a Sunday morning asking young Christopher, that pimpled, 14-year-old brat, if he’d like to motor down to the local yacht club for a sail. “Bracing breeze today, lad,” he’d say (in Italian, naturally, but I’ll spare you the dialect). “How about a jaunt westward to freshen up those pale cheeks?” What if young Chris had said, “Nah, Pa, I think I’ll just hit the Royal Neapolitan for some chip shots instead”? Columbus, the great explorer, would have been so distracted by smacking a little white ball around he might never have ventured to discover America. No America means no double cheeseburgers, no ketchup, and—frightening thought—no social security for Osama Bin Laden.

Not everyone shares the view that sailing is the sport of kings. I overheard a golfer once, after being informed that golf isn’t an Olympic sport, mocking us sailors: “Sailing,” he sneered, “is the only sport where you stay seated the whole time. It’s basically chess, but with no brains required. You don’t even have to be paraplegic to be a sailor—it just helps.” Ah, yes, funny, he thought he was. Criticism, we sailors welcome, but this was pure calumny, and from a golfer, no less! The only time a golfer breaks into a sweat is when their income tax forms come due. There’s simply no comparison between sailing and golf. Sailors don’t pass the time gossiping about stock markets. They don’t need caddies to carry their clubs—or their umbrellas, just in case it rains. They don’t yell “Fore!” at each other. They don’t have handicaps in the 20s, and—thank goodness—they don’t go by ridiculous monikers like “Tiger” (why not Hippopotamus, Aardvark, or Ivory-Billed Woodpecker?).

Sailing, my friends, is a dignified pursuit. We sailors aren’t obliged by the laws of our craft to squat with knees bent 120 degrees, feet placed 18 inches apart, and wiggle our backsides like hens preparing to lay eggs. We don’t drone on about birdies and eagles and other assorted avifauna. And, most importantly, we don’t wear ridiculous tartan caps with pom-poms.

At a sprightly 400 years old, golf is still in its infancy compared to sailing, which has been around long enough to get seasick just thinking about it. Golf hadn’t even been invented when the Vikings were sailing across the North Sea and nicking the Sunday roast off the tables of the Royal and St. Andrews. The problem with golf’s tender age is that it lacks a vocabulary to match the grand traditions of its elder cousin. Sailors, on the other hand, have an eloquent lexicon at their disposal. “Starboard,” we purr. “Water at the mark,” we call cheerily. “Windward boat, keep clear,” we advise politely. There’s none of the mindless aggression associated with golf. The idea of doing violence to a little white ball would make any self-respecting sailor recoil in horror.

Golf is fine, of course, for those too old—or too sedentary—to sail. But when it comes to repelling invaders or defending your country, how useful is golf really? Think about it. When Queen Elizabeth I needed to fend off the Spanish Armada, did she call upon a golfer? Imagine Francis Drake standing on the cliffs of Dover, waving a nine iron at the fleet. And if it was a Monday, he wouldn’t have bothered at all—because that’s when golfers are busy replacing divots.

But perhaps the most important distinction between sailors and golfers is that sailors have pretty wives. We all know it’s the sailors who have a girl in every port. I once met a golfer’s wife. She had a face like a walnut that had been run over by the Orient Express. I wonder—why do they take up golf in the first place? It can’t be for fun, wandering aimlessly through bunkers and water hazards, roasting in the sun for hours on end. It was a sailor’s wife—not a golfer’s—who had the face that launched a thousand ships. It’s a rare golfer’s wife who owns a mug that would launch a kayak.

And that, my friends, is the difference between us. Sail on.

T.B.