Ocean Cruising: A Sailing Subculture

• Published in: The Sociological Review
• Main Author: Macbeth, Jim
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publications 1992
• Subjects: Pacific; New Zealand; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954x.1992.tb00891.x; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fj.1467-954X.1992.tb00891.x; http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-954X.1992.tb00891.x

Just after dawn, an English couple in their 30's haul up their anchor and motor across the stillness of Suva harbour. The hurricane season is approaching and they are embarking on the 2–3 week trip to Bay of Islands New Zealand for the southern summer. Three months earlier, as their yacht lay aground on the fringing reef of uninhabited Suvarov atoll, they wondered if they'd ever reach New Zealand. But, with the help of other cruisers and lucky tides their steel 36 footer was clear and safe in under 24 hours. What was to be a one year trip around the north Atlantic was now happily way off course in the South Pacific and likely to remain so for some time. That is just a glimpse of one small aspect of ocean cruising, the subculture of interest here. However, throughout the paper the ethnography of cruising is developed further. A model is proposed to show how individuals come to share the subculture ideology and then to participate in the lifestyle. Subsequently, 1 will place ocean cruising in the context of subculture theory by expanding the ethnography and relating cruising to other subcultures.