Dear Joan,

Bulletin Changes

About the Bulletin, since you asked in your editorial this quarter for members’ views.

Digital processing is a wonderful thing and I think it should be used to its full as a tool, in so far that it relieves the good soul who devotes so much effort to producing the Bulletin of much of the laborious work involved in its preparation. I also believe that simplicity and clarity enhance good presentation and that fancy colours and designs should not be used simply because they are available. The written content of the Bulletin speaks for itself and does not need the support of commercial style advertising gimmickry. I like pictures. I particularly like the little sketches, but am slightly less keen on the obviously computer generated ones. I like the little charts drawn by hand to illustrate cruises and pilotage notes because they tend to be succinct and contain no unnecessary detail, and they also lend a pleasant personal touch.

Black and white photographs assimilated into the text are good; colour photographs are better, and colour photographs in the text would be better still, but this would greatly increase the cost of printing and I guess would not be worth it.

Splitting the text into columns seems unnecessary to me because the print size is large enough for the eye comfortably to scan across the full page width.

In short, the DCA Bulletin is one of the few publications I avidly read from cover to cover: I actually quite like it the way it is! JH

Letter to the Editor from John Catlin

Dear Joan,

Bulletin Changes

Having failed to contact you by e-mail. I am writing in response to your editorial in the DCA Bulletin.

I am very happy with the Bulletin as it is. Like you I find a continuous page much easier to read than columns of print. My only suggestion is that if it is technically possible, it would be good to have the photos printed on the pages to which they refer.

Sadly I have not been sailing this summer, as my new 15ft yawl is not finished. The hull is almost finished and soon to be turned upright. Next month I hope to go up to Fleetwood to talk to David Moss about the interior layout. At least I am sure of an early start next season. JC

Letter to the Editor from Gerald Levenson

Dear Joan,

Bulletin Changes

You ask about the format of the DCA Bulletin. I say it is good as it is. Dinghy cruising is a varied, tentative and often uncomfortable activity and a wrong impression could be given by a smart, trendy production of the Bulletin which is not a commercial magazine. While the Bulletin has remained in the same style from the outset forty-odd years ago, its quality and appearance have been greatly improved along the way by the splendid work of those responsible and to whom we owe our best thanks. There was one brief period of luxuriance when the temptation to use more of the type-faces available on the word-processor proved too strong to resist. Happily that passed. What we have now is very good and offers an easy-to-read page. Breaking up the text into columns or in other unnecessary ways will increase the area of white and either more pages will be needed or a smaller print that would be less pleasant to read.

I doubt whether anyone joins the DCA in order to pay £2.75 per copy of the Bulletin, so it does not have to appeal at that level. Apropos, there is no mention in the present Bulletin of what the membership fee is. GL

Letter to the Editor from Len Wingfield

Dear Joan,

Bulletin Changes

In your autumn editorial you suggested that after almost 50 years without much change, the format and content of our Bulletin might be reconsidered.

Regarding the content, I would personally like to see more fact and less opinion. Boat descriptions need to be more objective, disclosing the boat’s shortcomings as well as it’s advantages. (Bill Jones’s article on the Cruz was a good example). Does the boat meet the DCA safety criteria? (Many ‘death-traps’ do, many ‘proper cruising boats’ do not!). Any performance claims should state the boat’s PHR rating. (If this is not available, club handicappers can usually give a fair independent estimate). May I suggest that cruise logs begin by stating the class of boat and/or its leading details (ideally with a small scale side view), and whether the cruise was singlehanded or with a crew, and motor assisted or not. A small map of the cruise should also be an essential requirement. As one of the many members living inland and not subscribing to PBO and therefore not always in touch with developments, I would also like more dinghy-specific technical information and news. E.g. how to fix a drooping mainsail luff (apparently it involves cutting the shrunk luff-rope!). Useful subjects so far overlooked include outboard motor fault finding.

At the risk of making some of our members apoplectic, dare I suggest that we take a cool look at our beloved Bulletin cover? It starts with the DCA name haphazardly positioned, followed by a distorted section of an ancient compass rose such as might have been used by Sir Cloudesly Shovell when he steered the British fleet on to the rocks. The main feature is an unshapely shallop with a ridiculously undersized rig and horribly baggy sails, steered by a faceless Little Noddy in his bobble hat, who appears to have gone into trance and is about to have an inadvertent gybe, thereby being decapitated by the dangerously low boom. Below this is a distorted drawing of a DCA burgee on a staff with an end-button big enough to act as masthead buoyancy. All this drawn in a 17th century wood-cut kitsch style. Finally the Bulletin number and date in a grotesque type. What kind of image does this present to prospective members? Do we really sail as badly, and are our boats really as awful as our Bulletin cover design implies?

We can get it right. Our new no-nonsense introductory leaflet shows photographs of the DCA at its best (and as it quite often really is), with typography and layout of a high professional standard. Why can’t we have a Bulletin cover of similar visual quality? Of course photo-printing in colour would be significantly more expensive, but our friends (and rivals) the Wayfarer Class can afford it for their Bulletin. Even if we have to stay with the present black line printing on cheap coloured card we could at least cut out the nonsense and have a layout of the same quality as our new leaflet, perhaps featuring design drawings of interesting cruising dinghies. LW