Girl with patreon account goes sailing in hot place

[Israel Hands]

Jesus H Christ! Just when I started to think I missed old Two Legged, she goes off on not one but two multi-paragraph lectures about the Scottish Highlands! Will there be a quiz at 11? But hey, I did learn a useful new word today - twazzock. Thanks TL.

Being from a non-Nordic country, I find that Erik Anderaa comes off as the most genuine hawker for NordVPN. And it's hard to beat his videos for scenery and production quality. However it's tough to watch him bouncing around on the foredeck the way he does without any safety gear, and for someone who gets hospitalized from time to time with bowel problems, his diet is absolute shit.

 

[low bum]

"Twazzock" is great - thanks TwoL.

A great Highland word for you: when you shoot a stag, you have to gut it. You "gralloch" it. That means "to take the clockwork out."

What that has to do with girls in hot places, I'll never know.

 

[Raincoast]

There is a strange convergence of explicit advertising among sailing Youtubers.

The Precision Sails freebie lark has been going for years. But Precision seemed happy with a bit of name-dropping, the occasional appreciative comment, and a place on the title frame as named sponsor (or "partner").

But apart from that, and other one-off freebies on a similar show-us-and-mention-us basis, there was almost no explicit face-to-camera "buy this stuff" promotion, esp of stuff urelated to the video.

I think that SV Delos's post-2019 shift to more intense monetisation was the first to get into the random promo of stuff unrelated to sailing. They started by heavy panhandling, interrupting the video midway with a ~90second begging bowl. Then they started plugging some green-coloured magic food supplement which makes your tits glow in the dark and the gods get horny, or something.

Then Sailing Uma started plugging the Skillshare app, with cleverly-filmed but cringetastic doses of Kike spending two minutes explaining Skillshare to a doppelganger. They bristled when I posted a polite objection, but after a few months they dropped it. Maybe I wasn't the only one unplugging.

But now the more successful sailing vloggers all seem to be turning the face to camera to sell something, like a sponsored TV show in 1950s 'Murica. And they are increasingly selling the same stuff.

VPNs: I think that Gone With The Wynns started it. But now they they + Erik Anderaa + SV Delos are all plugging VPNs in their vids. Did Adventures Of Old Seadog do it too? Or am I imagining that? But the way this is going, a VPN advert may soon be compulsory. I guess there is good profit in retailing VPNs.

Knives: the first I saw was Leo Sampson of "Tally Ho", 'cos obviously a hundred-year-old Pilot Cutter from England is eternally bound to oriental kitchenware. Just obviously. But now two other channels (I forget which) have been promoting the same brand of expensive Japanese kitchen knives.

Fake Scottish Titles: MJ Sailing started this one, plugging plots of a few square feet of land which allegedly allow the owner to call themselves "Lord" or "Lady" (it's unclear whether you can make your own choice between the two, or if there is some check on whether your beer wastewater system has an internal or external discharge point). Apart from being completely cringetastic (anyone trying to use these titles in Scotland would be laughed out of town), they are simply fake: You Can’t Buy One Square Foot of Land in Scotland and Become a “Scottish Lord”.
But the titles themselves are well out-cringed by the accents which MJ Sailing uses to sell them: a sort of mockney via the Bronx. Shudder.
And now Sailing Uma has joined in, which saddens me. They used to be one of the best no- bullshit sailing channels, but this is so tacky.

It's beginning to look like some of the more successful sailing channels may disappear up their own rear ends, into a mix of look-at-cool-me-with-cool-friends-having-SUCH-FUN and buy-this-random-stuff advertorials.

That's right, it's come to this
Yes, it's come to this
And wasn't it a long way down?
Wasn't it a strange way down?​

This phenomenon is because they’re all plugged into the same digital ad agency, which is serving ads which have opted to target their ad copy to the “sailing” content bucket regardless of actual audience metrics. I can’t recall if google Adsense itself provides these in-video product placement payouts or if it’s a third party agency, but that’s the short of why it’s happening.

You see the same shit in the podcast world: ad breaks hocking the same bullshit day in and day out (usually VPN’s or whichever mail-order food service is vogue this week). I enjoy Behind the Bastards because, I’m addition to being an entertaining and informative show, they know that the ad service is an automated campaign which nobody sentient is doing due diligence on and usually outright insult the product / take the piss with it as a result. As long as an algorithm somewhere detects that they spent X minutes saying certain keywords, they get paid.

The whole digital advertising ecosystem is an incestuous ponzi scheme which doesn’t generate any meaningful revenue for the client but still sucks so much money out of them that it foundationally supports the entire modern internet. I’ve been expecting it to collapse any day now for a decade, hopefully the coming revelation that everyone pulling advertising campaigns from Twitter resulted in zero change to their sales is the poison pill for it all.

 

[low bum]

Being from a non-Nordic country, I find that Erik Anderaa comes off as the most genuine hawker for NordVPN. And it's hard to beat his videos for scenery and production quality. However it's tough to watch him bouncing around on the foredeck the way he does without any safety gear, and for someone who gets hospitalized from time to time with bowel problems, his diet is absolute shit.

You should watch the video from "The Mariner" - Chris Stanwell Major who runs Spartan Ocean Sailing. He's an immensely experienced sailor with a you tube channel brimming with great content that gets almost zero views. A big video for him is 1000 watches, most are like 200. I don't know why. Probably because he doesn't own a bikini.

Anyway, while he was single handing his big 80 foot Volvo Open boat to Iceland, he did a watch/react video of Erik's "Force 10 Storm" video which has over a million views I think. He had no end of praise for his videography skills. He was very kind and supportive, but at the end he sheepishly said that it was apparent to him that Erik was just not a very experienced sailor. He also said that his boat was absolutely not engineered to be out in those conditions and he didn't sail in small boats like that because he "didn't know how to make them safe."

 

[TheDragon]

Talking of ads, Curiosity Stream is the latest one I'm seeing all the time, and they splice it into the middle of their YouTube so my YouTube Premium does not avoid them. But Acorn-Arabella recently had a relevant one, a battery power unit that actually seemed useful to a sailor with too much money.

 

[Israel Hands]

You should watch the video from "The Mariner" - Chris Stanwell Major who runs Spartan Ocean Sailing. He's an immensely experienced sailor with a you tube channel brimming with great content that gets almost zero views. A big video for him is 1000 watches, most are like 200. I don't know why. Probably because he doesn't own a bikini.

Anyway, while he was single handing his big 80 foot Volvo Open boat to Iceland, he did a watch/react video of Erik's "Force 10 Storm" video which has over a million views I think. He had no end of praise for is videography skills. He was very kind and supportive, but at the end he sheepishly said that it was apparent to him that Erik was just not a very experience sailor. He also said that his boat was absolutely not engineered to be out in those conditions and he didn't sail in small boats like that because he "didn't know how to make them safe."

I'm afraid that Erik suffers from the hubris of youth and his lifesaving boat experience that makes him feel bulletproof. Wife and I are thinking he may fall overboard one day (or night) and that'll be that.

Will check out The Mariner...

 

[robtoujours]

He had no end of praise for is videography skills. He was very kind and supportive, but at the end he sheepishly said that it was apparent to him that Erik was just not a very experience sailor. He also said that his boat was absolutely not engineered to be out in those conditions and he didn't sail in small boats like that because he "didn't know how to make them safe."

Many such cases!

 

[TheDragon]

And speaking of YouTubers, on my trip this past season I had one direct and one indirect encounter. First up was SV Delos, who turned up at Shelter Bay the same week I did. I met them at the pool and they were a little standoffish, but that's to be expected given probably everyone wants to know them. But then it turned out we were scheduled to go through the canal the same day, Friday February 25th, but they assumed they would be rafted with others. However when we got to the staging area to get our "advisors", there they were and it turned out we were rafted up on either side of a massive Leopard 48 catamaran called Wild Tribe with two American families onboard. Delos live-streamed the passage through the three Gatun locks that evening, and at one point boarded the cat to come film us briefly because viewers had asked what boat was on the other side of the cat. Afterwards they posted their more usual vlog of the passage that again included a couple seconds of us, but then again, it is their vlog.

And in French Polynesia in Fakarava at Tirifa motu in the SE corner I made friends with a guy named Jarne Schmitt who is also a kitesurfer sailing an even smaller boat than me. Later I met him again in Papeete at the downtown marina and one morning we were strolling into town chatting away and he mentioned that a friend of his was kitesurfing in Maupiti, an island in the Societies I would later visit too, and that she was a real badass sailor on an even smaller boat than him, name Holly, aka the WindHippie, and suddenly I realized he is THE Jarne, her boyfriend for a year or so who features in a bunch of her vlogs. Hilarity ensued.

 

[IStream]

You should watch the video from "The Mariner" - Chris Stanwell Major who runs Spartan Ocean Sailing. He's an immensely experienced sailor with a you tube channel brimming with great content that gets almost zero views. A big video for him is 1000 watches, most are like 200. I don't know why. Probably because he doesn't own a bikini.

Anyway, while he was single handing his big 80 foot Volvo Open boat to Iceland, he did a watch/react video of Erik's "Force 10 Storm" video which has over a million views I think. He had no end of praise for his videography skills. He was very kind and supportive, but at the end he sheepishly said that it was apparent to him that Erik was just not a very experienced sailor. He also said that his boat was absolutely not engineered to be out in those conditions and he didn't sail in small boats like that because he "didn't know how to make them safe."

I've watched and enjoyed his stuff in the past but most of his content is behind a paywall so I've stopped.

 

[low bum]

I thought Jarne went back to Belgium to learn welding? At least that was the story.

 

[low bum]

I've watched and enjoyed his stuff in the past but most of his content is behind a paywall so I've stopped.

I think he's having a hard time making a go of it. COVID destroyed several trips. I honestly just don't think that many people are intrigued with his product - high speed serious ocean racing in one of those boats. I think that's a really small wedge of the sailing charter market to make a business out of. I have no love for those boats, can't see myself ever being on one, etc. John Kretschmer and Andy Schel conversely have long standing waiting lists on their "normal" boats (if a big Swan is normal).

 

[Ajax]

You should watch the video from "The Mariner" - Chris Stanwell Major who runs Spartan Ocean Sailing. He's an immensely experienced sailor with a you tube channel brimming with great content that gets almost zero views. A big video for him is 1000 watches, most are like 200. I don't know why. Probably because he doesn't own a bikini.

Anyway, while he was single handing his big 80 foot Volvo Open boat to Iceland, he did a watch/react video of Erik's "Force 10 Storm" video which has over a million views I think. He had no end of praise for his videography skills. He was very kind and supportive, but at the end he sheepishly said that it was apparent to him that Erik was just not a very experienced sailor. He also said that his boat was absolutely not engineered to be out in those conditions and he didn't sail in small boats like that because he "didn't know how to make them safe."

I don't watch it for the same reason that I don't watch NASCAR- it's unrelatable.
I don't (and never will) own a Volvo Open 80 or a 500 mile NASCAR vehicle.

I doubt many of us measure up to Mr. Major's standard of "safety" or seamanship. No doubt he would heap that criticism upon many of us who are trying to stretch our boundaries.

That being said, I do agree that Erik's approach to sailing is to simply go to sea, strap in, and get his ass kicked while eating shitty, cold, canned food. It makes for great video but it's unnecessary and not very smart. I don't consider myself a "pussy" because I look for weather windows and heat my food.

 

[low bum]

Totally agree. I can no more see myself in Chris's world than if I were an aspiring pilot taking lessons in an F16. It's interesting in an abstract way but it's another world.

 

[IStream]

I don't need to see myself doing what he's doing to be entertained by it. It's attractive to me precisely because it's something I'm familiar with but taken to the extreme. I can appreciate the challenge of changing a torn sail at sea, re-rigging a dodgy stay, or whatever else he's doing except he's doing it all by himself at a time not of his choosing, on a giant boat subject to tremendous forces, and with no room for error.

I'd love to watch more but I'm not interested enough to pay for it.

 

[robtoujours]

I like his presentation and content, he gets straight to the point and he talks about stuff which is relevant to normal cruisers, e.g. rigging tools and lifejackets and seamanship.

I've actually seen his channel a couple of years ago when he was showing off his plans for his other boat..and his other boat is a Westerly Konsort!

 

[low bum]

I'm sure it will probably depress him when his Westerly Konsort videos get 10 times the viewership of his other ones. Especially if he refits it somehow.

 

[TheDragon]

I thought Jarne went back to Belgium to learn welding? At least that was the story.

We met up again in Savusavu in Fiji for some kitesurfing, and again in Vuda Point Marina. I left my boat there and he sailed on to New Zealand solo, where he is now. Not sure what his future plans are.

 

[TheDragon]

Speaking of Holly, her latest vlog is Fulaga east to Ogea and then west to Matuku, the same path I took two months ago now. But she did it before me and I missed meeting her, her vlogs are delayed by quite a bit. Here's my boat in Ogea, pic from a friend with a drone. On the beach I met an old man who cut and opened a young coconut for me, amazingly sweet water and flesh. Her vlog below.

 

[Elegua]

Two Legs is Clare Daley’s sock puppet

 

[Ajax]

We met up again in Savusavu in Fiji for some kitesurfing, and again in Vuda Point Marina. I left my boat there and he sailed on to New Zealand solo, where he is now. Not sure what his future plans are.

To me, the Pacific is totally "next level" sailing. It seems far more vast, far more hostile, more wild.
I admire you for doing it.