The Club Champion

Who can resist a Tillerman writing project – a tried and true cure for writer’s block? My nomination for the worst ever sailing invention is the concept of the season series Club Champion.

Most local yacht clubs run one or more regular series of races over the sailing season. They are convenient, usually great fun, and get a lot of us out for frequent sailing. It’s all good until there is a need to crown a winner for the series. Because the series runs for a substantial period of time, everyone misses some (usually quite a few) days of racing. All the players do not compete against all the other players throughout a season. So lots of people can qualify, there are usually numerous throw outs.. In terms of a serious competition, it is inherently an unequal playing field.

Does the randomness of it somehow level things out? Is there some kind of scoring system that can make this as equitable as head to head competition? Not in my admittedly limited experience.

Is winning a three boat race against a couple of second tier guys while the best guys are off at a regatta the same as winning the day against all the best ten guys? Should the light air wizard be the champ because he picks all the light air days to sail and goes white water rafting on the windy ones? Should the heaviest sailor or crew be the winner when he sails on days it howls and plays golf when the wind won’t blow his ball around? Is it a fair competition when some guys sail more often, get more throw outs, and more chances to do well?

So why do we need to call someone a champion in a series with all these screwy irregularities that we would not tolerate in a serious regatta? We seem so juiced on competition that someone has to prove his thingie is bigger than the other’s guy thingie, even if the other guy just got out of an icy swimming pool. Can’t we get more women in this sport to stop this nonsense?

It can’t be good to take this Club Championship with anything less than a whole shaker of salt. If the champ is so far superior to the rest of his fleet that he wins all the time at the local level, he should move on to bigger or more challenging events. Should we respect the narcissistic egotist who, year after year, aspires only to be the big fish in the little pond? And when the series winner is one of several relatively equal sailors, the issue is probably decided more by the serendipitous variations in attendance than any differences in skill. Is that a champion or the winner of a raffle?

Valid competition only exists when all competitors have an equal chance in equal conditions, an impossibility during an extended series. Winning the day (or the regatta) produces a great feeling for us competitive junkies. Can’t we be satisfied with that? Why can’t we just celebrate our moments?

Cabarete Waves

Cabarete Waves

When I was first introduced to Laser sailing four years ago, Yarg, the creator of this blog, correctly told me that I would have to go through a painful initiation with a lot of capsizing before Laser sailing would become fun. I think there is a second painful learning process for us lake sailors when we try to start sailing in waves.

Last fall I took part in the New England Masters (age 35 and over) Laser Championship Regatta off Third Beach in Newport. There were light to moderate winds on Saturday, but Sunday brought 20 plus knot winds in open water with waves measured in feet, not inches like the ripples we have at our local lake. I capsized once in the first race, twice in the second (all on mistimed tacks), and three more times trying to get back to the beach (all death rolls). It was obvious that if I wanted to be able to sail and have fun at the major Laser regattas which are necessarily held on large bodies of water, I would need to get some experience sailing in waves.

Cabarete, on the north coast of the Dominican Republic, is a tourist town with a beautiful beach, dozens of beachfront restaurant/bars and resort hotels with a focus on windsurfing and kiteboarding. The main drag just behind the buildings on the beach is a loud, smoky scene with speeding cars and motorbikes. About every 30 seconds someone on a motorbike will shout to ask if you want a ride, price negotiable, no helmet.

Cabarete is also the home of the CaribWind Laser Training Center, an amazing facility, unique in the world. It seems to be focused on Laser Training for very advanced sailors including many Olympians, but it also worked out well for me despite my, shall we say, less advanced skill level. I recently attended a four day Laser clinic there, followed by a three day regatta. A typical clinic day included an hour or more of onshore class with videos and diagrams, three to four hours of sailing with a variety of drills, a quick and very welcome meal at the EZE-Bar/Restaurant on the property, and finally another hour or more of class. My hotel, the Velero Beach Resort, was excellent with all the amenities, great water views, an open air beachfront restaurant, and a very friendly and helpful staff. It was just a five minute walk down the beach to CaribWind.

About a dozen sailors from all over the world attended the clinic portion. At least seven countries were represented. There was a wide age range from the twenties to sixties with most at the higher end. It was definitely the most skilled group with which I have ever sailed. It included an Olympic sailor, and I believe a Laser Masters world champion. They were all very friendly and helpful to me despite my less experienced status.

Head coach “Rulo” couldn’t have done a better job. He has an amazing body of knowledge about the fine points of Laser sailing in every situation, but also a great teaching style and personality. He was ably assisted by Paul on a second motorboat, a young English guy with a degree in naval architecture, and a lot of sailing experience. He was very nice to hang back with me when I would capsize as the rest of the fleet sailed away.

Launching and retrieving boats at the Cabarete beach can be challenging. Despite some protection from an offshore underwater reef, there were often pretty decent sized breakers. Retrieving boats was typically done one at a time with the assistance three young guys in the water, one at the bow with the dolly, and one on each side to lift the stern over the breaking waves. The sailor had to remove the centerboard, lift the rudder, remove the main sheet, and jump out of the boat just before approaching the retrieving team. I saw one normally very robust Seitech dolly break in the process.

The emphasis of the clinic for these very good sailors was naturally on the many fine points of speed, boat-handling, tactics, etc. My emphasis, on the other hand, was trying to learn how to keep the masthead out of the water, and staying out of everyone else’s way while sailing in large waves, typically two meters or more. Still, I learned a lot. There were some very basic but critical things, like simply steering to one side or the other when surfing down a wave to avoid plowing head-on into the next wave, turning the Laser into a submarine, and filling the cockpit with seawater. By the way, by my calculations a Laser cockpit filled with saltwater weighs about 290 pounds.

Ari Barshi, CaribWind Owner, at the Regatta

One final note which folks have been asking me about - the tragic earthquake in Haiti occurred while we were in a hut on the beach at our post-sailing class. We felt it pretty good despite being 150 miles away. The ground shifted back and forth laterally for about a minute. Lamps were swinging, but there was no damage or panic. We did talk about the possibility of a tsunami, but I’m not sure where we could have gone for shelter. Fortunately, it was not an issue.

So earthquake aside, Cabarete was a great experience which I hope to repeat after somehow getting some more practice sailing in waves. It is also a great winter vacation. There are activities like day-trips of various sorts for non-sailing family members. The folks at CaribWind were apologizing for the unusually cool weather there (highs in the 70s) and quite a bit of rain, but I had been shoveling snow the night before I left, so I was fine with it. The rain, of course, didn’t stop us from sailing, and the water temperature was about 80. We had good wind and waves every day.

Hasta luego.

Eric

Sailors Live by Higher Standards

This past week I have received an incessant barrage of emails from frostbite sailors deliberating on and working through the legal, ethical, and moral issues of a simple mark rounding. The thread began with the subject line “I love this sport and the people in it,” and went on to admire a sailor whose boom almost imperceptibly grazed a mark, and who, without a single word from a competitor, penalized himself with the appropriate turn. In a second incident, a boat taking a penalty turn was hit by another, out of control boat rounding the mark. Both sailors took a penalty. The ensuing discussion considered all the rules that might be involved and tried to sort out fault. As the subject line suggests, the people and the sport imbued with the ethical standards of the Corinthian Spirit deserve high praise and admiration. Those who can really live up to the standards to which they aspire and profess surely deserved to be honored.

Contrast this with yesterday’s Noble Peace Prize ceremony. President Obama was in the very uncomfortable position of having to defend war while receiving the world’s highest award for peace. Even being the avowed product of the ethos of Dr. Martin Luther King did not stand in the way of explaining the inexplicable and oxymoronic use of war to promote peace. He eloquently elevated doublespeak to its highest pinnacle in defending the actions of a country which almost always chooses war over peace as a methodology to achieve world stability. He may be a worthy president of the world’s latest empire, and in the end, his strategy may prove to be correct (though I am highly skeptical), but he is clearly not a man of peace. He is no Dalai Lama or Nelson Mandela, or even George Marshall.

All of this is an ironic twist on the “audacity of hope.” The Nobel Committee bestowed the prize on the sole basis of hope, and Obama truly has inspired hope on a global scale. But promoting hope over actual deeds is certainly audacity on the part of the Committee. And it may have taken even greater audacity to accept an admittedly undeserved award for peace after escalating a war.

If measured only by deeds, there is no man, woman or child on the planet who has committed more human and material resources to war in the last year than President Obama. This includes the most evil of the evil (who may have more hateful intentions, but far less power). I would have to regrettably declare that he is actually the least deserving person on earth to be awarded a peace prize this year. Such are the ironies of history and such are the impossibly difficult choices of the most powerful head of state in today’s world, that what I believe to be a fundamentally decent, peace loving man, feels compelled to make such an unpeaceful choice.

This begs the question (at least in the nearly random cross connections of my mind): If Obama had been a sailor, would he have made different choices in terms of accepting the Peace Prize. If, in addition to admiring Dr. Martin Luther King, he had experienced fellow sailors, high school and college sailing coaches, club racers, sailing judges, and high level competitors all preaching the Corinthian spirit (and for the most part living it), would he not have the good conscience to call a penalty on himself and withdraw from consideration. Even the best sailors make mistakes, but they accept a penalty and move on. I would like to think that a fellow sailor would have found a way to do the honorable thing.

Is it too late to save the Nobel Peace Prize from cynicism and meaninglessness? I say no! There is still time to RE-GIFT the award. Is there a worthy recipient in this war torn world? Did the Nobel committee have a runner-up, like the alternate chosen to do the duties of Miss America Vanessa Williams when she was deemed unworthy? Can we pick someone who worked for peace in a previous year? Can we honor someone posthumously? So who is the best person to never have won the Nobel Peace prize? Or who deserves to get it twice? Submit your nominations here.

I nominate Mahatma Gandhi. A true man of peace. And at least once, according to the poster shamelessly stolen from AllPosters.com, he was a sailor. Give the award to him, and give the money to the starving people of India. Then at least the award could maintain its integrity.

Mahatma Gandhi Indian Nationalist and Spiritual Leader Sailing from Boulogne to Folkestone

Youth Sailing and Architecture?

By way of some very random thinking, my last post brings me back to a former conversation about Saving Sailing and youth sailing.

It seems to me that our interests and passions can be very non-linear in time and space.
What was I doing writing about architecture in a sailing blog? I abandoned the professional architecture track in the middle of college. I thought there were very good reasons for this at the time. I viewed its educational process as a belittling of very talented students (not necessarily me), and perceived the profession to be one that devoured its young. (I was too immature to see that many professions work this way.) After being completely removed from it for nine years, I decided to start a business designing and building custom houses. And so I was back in for twenty years until the increasing aggravation graph line crossed the diminishing creativity line. Out for nine years again (is there a nine year itch?), I find myself writing about architecture in an unrelated context. And in my own non-linear and discontinuous way, I associate this with the way people become sailors.

In the Saving Sailing discussions and reviews – the book itself, Tillerman’s review with many comments, and my review – the topic of youth sailing programs has been often raised, much maligned, and not sufficiently defended.

Nick Hayes, the author of Saving Sailing, characterizes junior sailing programs as themed babysitting services where kids are dumped off and picked up by taxi driver parents. James, one of Tillerman’s commenters, bemoans the negative effects of over competitiveness. And Tillerman has increased his notoriety with his campaign against competition and coaching gone mad in the use of Mommy Boats.

All of these things are issues to be sure, but all of them seem like natural outgrowths of a sick consumer culture. We consume what Hayes calls “time charters” when we spend our time in activities scripted by others. Worshiping celebrity, we accept that a guy making 40K will spend $200 to take his kids to a ball game to watch players making $10 million plus. Is it any wonder that talented sailors hire private coaches and when not seeing Olympic prospects for themselves, go off to chase some other holy grail? The culture will impose itself on sailing, like everything else, despite our best efforts.

Sailing does pretty well in holding off the onslaught of a culture whose values are largely antithetical to those of our sport. We have hundreds of thousands of unpaid competitive sailors enjoying healthy, friendly competition with a Corinthian spirit. We have as many or more non-competitors enjoying the poetic, perhaps Zen-like experience of wind, water, and boat in harmony. We even have a few hardy souls challenging the oceans to become man vs. nature heroes like Hemmingway’s Santiago. We are not yet an endangered species.

It all starts with the first sailing lessons, frequently in youth sailing. I’m not completely pleased with our local junior sailing programs, and I tend toward the competitive as a high school coach, but in spite of flaws, we who are involved in youth sailing are planting the seeds that grow into future sailors. While Nick Hayes is certainly right about mentoring being the best way to accomplish this goal, we are limited to being Johnny Appleseeds. We plant the seeds, but we can’t be the farmers who nurture the orchard.

Despite our obvious limitations, thousands, nay tens or hundreds of thousands, of these seeds somehow develop into sailors. I like to think, “if you plant them, they will grow.” Can you imagine those little kids taught by Tillerman not becoming sailors? I know I have planted some seeds that may lay dormant for periods of time, but they will eventually sprout and blossom. The seeds will grow, not as well or consistently nurtured as Nick Hayes and many of us would like, but they will grow.

Between the Coasts

Warning: another sailing blog post with virtually no sailing content.

I’ve lived in New England long enough now to have a full fledged case of East Coast snobbery. That was seriously called into question last weekend when I visited Chicago for the first time. Maybe it was because the trip was juxtaposed against an absolutely miserable evening of local sailing politics, but it seemed to me Chicago is a pretty cool place.

We only went there because we were obliged to attend a family wedding. Given the November timing and our gloomy long range weather forecast, we planned for as little time there as possible. What a mistake! Chicago is beautiful with plenty of things to do. The restaurants are excellent, the public transportation is clean and efficient, and the people are friendly – so much so that a New Englander is taken aback with every friendly encounter. And the weather – sunny and 65 degrees.

We stayed in the least swanky hotel (but very nice and surprisingly inexpensive) on the edge of the swankiest part of town, the “Magnificent Mile.” The high end shopping district in Chicago, it is a wide boulevard lined by sidewalks with areas of flowers, shrubs, and trees, as well oversized versions of all the best stores in the country.

Unlike Eastern cities, there is enough open space to afford views of the intriguing variety of creative urban architecture. The high rise buildings all seem to feature unique designs instead of the tall boxes with a few decorations at the top that characterize new Boston buildings. The older architecture features the work of world famous architects Daniel Burnham, Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Mies Van Der Rohe. It’s all interesting enough to support several architectural tour businesses. Chicago also boasts the most green buildings in the country. That seems to beat what we have here in the Hub of the Universe.

In the little free time we had, we spent a summer-like afternoon in Oak Park, 12 miles west of downtown, visiting Frank Lloyd Wright’s house and studio. It is a work from the very beginning of his career, and the neighborhood contains numerous examples of his early works as well as lovely “painted lady” Victorian houses. Mrs. Yarg was mostly humoring me in this little adventure, but afterward confessed to a visceral positive reaction to the house. The wide streets in Oak Park have sidewalks set far enough back to be lined with mature trees, giving them a welcoming and friendly feel.

It’s difficult to have anything more than a first impression of the people, but we encountered several unsolicited acts of kindness. When we asked the concierge where to buy a tie because I had forgotten to bring one, he offered me his. A stranger struck up a conversation on the subway, introduced himself and wished us well on our return trip. When walking with luggage toward the subway, another stranger asked if we were heading for the airport and offered us directions before we showed any signs of confusion. I wonder why we don’t treat each other more like this in the East.

And I hear they have a big lake with sailing! Ever heard of a sailing bachelorette party?

When we say in jest that there isn’t much between the coasts, the joke may be on us for thinking we are so smart and so cool. I would suspect that some of those Midwesterners laugh at us for being pompous asses, but they are probably too damn nice!

Windward Gates

Maybe I get bored easily. I know that high school students get bored easily. We’ve done the drills. We need to keep doing the drills and keep building the skills, but after two months, enough is enough. So after eight weeks of sailing four days a week, what can I do to make the last few days of the season interesting? The last week should be about fun.

The day planned for “Poag Ball,” a version of Ultimate Frisbee played on the water with a soccer ball, had absolutely no wind and was a complete bust. The other days had too much wind for a game where collisions were likely, but they were ideal for racing – racing that was some how different than it had been all fall.

At the end of every season, we have an intramural regatta with formal scorekeeping and a perpetual trophy for the winning pair (double handed boats). In all honesty, the competitiveness of this event is limited. There is usually a fairly clear pecking order of sailors, so the regatta is more of a jostling to swap positions with the guy just ahead of you than it is a wide open contest. Two may challenge one, but six won’t. Similarly, the new freshman will not seriously challenge seniors who are still in the middle of the pecking order. The final results for a day with many races are usually fairly predictable.

This year, my goal for the event was to make each race as competitive as possible within this framework of highly varied skill levels. My solution was to borrow an idea I have seen only once before. At last year’s 25 boat state championship regatta, Fran Charles, the sailing master at MIT, set windward leeward courses with gates at both ends, leeward and windward.

Leeward gates are becoming commonplace. I suppose they are intended to prevent massive pileups and reduce fouling and protests. They also change the dynamics of the race. A single leeward mark rounding rewards the winner of the contest for inside room by increasing his lead as the other boats round wide or fall a boat length or more behind each other to stay close to the mark. It also allows boats ahead to use boat on boat tactics going upwind to maintain the lead. But by having a gate, a boat that is essentially tied can remain that way by choosing the other mark. Perhaps even more important is that the two boats are now heading different directions, sailing in different wind. Boat to boat tactics are eliminated here. Each boat is sailing against the course more than against the other boat. Choosing the favored gate may be more important than getting inside room, if one has to choose. Gates give the boats behind far more opportunity to challenge the boats ahead.

A windward gate has the same characteristics, but occurs much earlier in the race. This keeps those behind much closer to the leaders as they go down wind. It also makes each sailor think about where she should be on the course to maximize wind shifts and puffs. Overall, the use of gates tends to make racing more about playing the wind, and less about tactics and raw boat speed.

I actually tried this out twice. The first was our intramural regatta, where there was a gate at the windward end only. I reasoned that the fleet would spread out so much by the leeward end of the course that a gate was unnecessary – wrong! The course was successful enough that we built on the idea the next day in a “mixed doubles” regatta. This teamed crews who had not sailed together (or not much) this fall, and put freshmen with seniors, sophomores with juniors, and girls with boys. This time we used a leeward gate as well and a closed start finish line in the middle. The first time we finished with the expected pecking order, but 8 of 11 boats has at least one top three finish for the day. The second time two edged out one, four advanced to three, a freshman (with one of the best crews) vaulted from eight to four, and 9 of 12 boats had a top three finish.

I really like that so many kids had that one good race. I love it when the newbies beat the cocky seniors once in a while. It builds confidence and motivation. If they can do it once, they can do it again! I like finding a way to emphasize the importance of reading the shifts and puffs, even in short course racing. I like mixing things up a little in a way that the kids had lots of fun. And I like that coaches and sailors alike found the windward gate made for competitive, interesting and entertaining racing.

It looks like I’m saying that I like windward gates!

RAD Sails

Thanks to the support of my Athletic Director and the town Recreation Director, my sailing team has a great new toy to play with - Intensity’s new RAD (reduced area design) 420 mainsails. In combination with a standard jib, these are a cross between storm sails and full size sails, with most of the virtues of both.

These sails are a solution to a host of problems from both the coach’s and the sailors’ perspectives.

For the sailors, there is always a upper wind limit beyond which their performance diminishes rapidly. For newer and lighter weight sailors, this limit is reached pretty quickly. For experienced sailors, the limit is higher, but there are still several days each season that excessive wind causes us to sail badly or not at all.

From the coach’s perspective, repeated capsizes by the less experienced sailors undermine or prevent other organized group activities. Leaving some sailors on the shore makes running a practice or a meet manageable, but denies opportunities for the land-bound to expand their skills in the very conditions where they can move up to the next level.

RAD sails give us an opportunity to deal with all of this. We have now used them on several occasions, and I love them! They give us just the opportunities I was hoping for. The freshman can use RAD sails while the other sailors use full sails, making many of those questionable days very productive. We had one day with a weather forecast of gusts to 40 (they were actually never above the high 20’s) in which everyone used RAD sails. We only had one capsize, and the team got some much needed time in heavy and very gusty conditions. We now choose our sails to match the wind conditions and don’t miss any sailing time.

Intensity spent some time developing these sails and seems to have gotten it just right. They are small enough to keep more boats upright but don’t just function as a survival sail. The main is still large enough to use with a standard jib without throwing the boat out of balance. They are naturally a little slower than full sails, especially downwind, but they are not dogs. All of the same sail trim techniques used for the full sails apply when using RAD sails, but they are simply easier to handle and more forgiving. I think they will be very useful in the teaching process. Kids can develop skills of ease-hike-trim, feathering, and heavy air gybing with a little more margin for error, but they are also rewarded for successful sail handling. We have found that the sails are plenty powerful enough to get the boat on a plane.


The whole team is excited that we now have so few limitations on when we can sail, and the kids love that they can have the fun of sailing in the big breeze with fewer negative consequences. The coaches love that we have the flexibility to maximize sailing opportunities for everyone, while maintaining safety and managing the potential chaos. I think Intensity did a great job of developing a product that opens up sailing opportunities to newer, lighter sailors and to all sailors in heavy conditions. RAD sails are a terrific asset to our sailing program!RAD Sails