Flotilla sailing might be big business these days but it enjoyed humble beginnings. Rod Heikell reminisces on the early days of flotillas in the Mediterranean
The genesis of flotilla sailing is tied into the era of the 1960s and 70s when the democratisation of sailing, of the idea of going on holiday in the Mediterranean, was beginning to take root, not as the prerogative of the rich or an adventure for the tough, but as something the man in street could aspire to. The very idea of sailing in turquoise waters under a blue sky with the heat of the sun on your back was to tempt many who would otherwise have turned down a sail in the muddy swatchways of Essex or the shouting and testosterone enveloping racing in the Solent. I should disclose at this point that part of this history takes a personal twist since I was involved in the early days of flotilla sailing, though I have tried to be as objective as you can with a personal history.
Flotilla sailing started in Greece in the 1970s and has proved enduringly popular ever since. Eric Richardson started the first flotilla, the Yacht Cruising Association (YCA), in 1974. The origins of the idea are somewhat lost in time, but somehow Eric developed the idea of a little fleet of identical boats shepherded by a lead boat with a skipper, engineer and hostess on board, accompanying them on a more or less set route around the Greek islands.
Up until this point it was difficult to find a yacht to sail around the Mediterranean unless you sailed your own little craft down, or you had the money to charter one of the large charter yachts dotted around various places – mostly in the western Mediterranean and a few spots around parts of Italy and Greece. In many ways the concept of flotilla sailing was to do with the democratisation of yachting and making it affordable for more people to charter a yacht around the Greek islands. The concept of flotilla sailing emerged on the back of all-inclusive package holidays which had become popular by the 1970s. Horizon Holidays and later Clarksons were the pioneers who operated all-inclusive holidays to Corsica, Italy and Spain in the 1950s and 1960s that enabled the less well-off to go on holiday to foreign places.
Marketing genius
Eric Richardson had worked in the budget flight business for a number of years, so was well acquainted with the concept of the package holiday. Still the idea of an
