Life Coach

Sam Chapin, the esteemed blogger who writes How to Sail the Laser, has recently been writing a series of posts under the title of Laser and the Life Coach. I'm not sure what a "life coach" is -- it sounds a bit New Ageish to me -- but the series includes some great tips on how to be a better sailor.

Some of Sam's advice is pretty much the same basic material you would hear from any sailing coach...

Set goals

Run

Get strong

Use your head

But he adds a few New Age-y and Life Coach-y thing such as...

Have friends

Don't get angry - forgive - be happy

Drink green tea - have flowers around - listen to music - floss

Hmmm. Flowers? Floss? He was beginning to lose me here.

But wait, it gets worse...

Eat lots of veggies and fish

What? No hamburgers? No steaks? No pork pies? Come on Sam.

But wait, it gets even more worser...

Don't drink alcohol

Yikes. What kind of sailor are you, Mr. Chapin? Alcohol is part of sailing culture and history. I was pretty much ready to give up on Sam's advice but then he redeemed himself with....

Have sex. Have more sex. Have lots and lots of sex.

According to Sam, sex increases attentiveness, ameliorates depressive symptoms, ameliorates pain, reduces stress hormone production, and improves immune function. The more sex you have, the harder you can hike, the longer you can hike, the faster you can sail. Woo hoo!

...

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Ummm, come here dear. Have you seen this interesting blog from the life coach chappie?

Hurricane Party Songs

What are the best songs for a hurricane party? Answers in the comments please.

Storm Prep

One Hundred Mommy Boats

A few years back, Tom Paxton recorded a CD entitled One Million Lawyers and Other Disasters. The full lyrics of the title song One Million Lawyers are here.

I have to be careful what I say here because I have two lawyers in my immediate family and some of my best friends are lawyers. But here is a sample of the lyrics...

Oh, a suffering world cries for mercy.
As far as the eye can see,
Lawyers around every bend in the road.
Lawyers in every tree.
Lawyers in restaurants.
Lawyers in clubs.
Lawyers behind every door.
Behind windows and potted plants,
Shade trees and shrubs.
Lawyers on pogo sticks.
Lawyers in politics.
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers.
How much can a poor nation stand?

You get the idea.

I've written before about an even worse scourge than lawyers... Mommy Boats, those dratted "coach boats" that seem to be everywhere at major Laser regattas these days. Even worse in my opinion than one million lawyers would be to go to a regatta with one hundred Mommy Boats.

And it has happened. Although not to me. Yet. Read on...

In his report of the sailing on Day 2 of the Laser World Championships at Hayling Island, Clay Johnson commented...

It was a very tough day of sailing with some painfully light legs. The chop from 100+ coach boats doesn't help the situation either! I'm praying we get some more breeze for the rest of the regatta!

I think a better title than Light and Lumpy on Day Two for Clay's post might have been One Hundred Mommy Boats and Other Disasters.

Yikes. One hundred Mommy Boats! Can you imagine it?

It is to be hoped that there aren't that many Mommy Boats at the Masters Worlds in a couple of weeks. Master sailors are REAL Laser Sailors. We don't need no stinking Mommy Boats.

Shift

Some times I amaze myself with how much I have forgotten about sailing. If only I could remember now to do what I used to remember to do before I forgot to remember to do it... I would be amazing.

Tuesday night sailing a couple of weeks ago was a case in point.

There was a nice steady breeze out of the SW of around 10 knots when I launched around 5pm but it died away quickly to around 5 knots shortly after racing got under way. There were six of us. Mainly the usual suspects.

On these short course windward-leeward races in a comparatively steady breeze I have a very simple principle. I look on every tack or gybe as an opportunity to lose distance on the opposition. Good sailors will say the opposite. They say that they look on every tack or gybe as an opportunity to gain. But I know what I'm talking about here, people. If you saw how bad my tacks and gybes are you would agree with me.

So the game plan is very simple. Try and sail in clear air without putting in too many tacks on a short course.

My theory didn't work very well in the first few races. I was almost last in every race. I did find one strand of weed on my rudder after one race, so I rationalized that that explained everything. It wasn't me officer. It was the weed.

But then I got frustrated. How come almost everyone else was beating me to the windward mark in every race? What were they doing differently? Were they just applying my "minimize the tacks" theory, or did they have a different plan?

Then it dawned on me. The wind was actually a bit shifty. And these dudes were tacking on the headers. And I hadn't even been checking for shifts. Stupid boy!

How could I have forgotten to remember what I used to always remember? In all those early years of my sailing career on little lakes it was all about tacking on shifts. Just because the shifts typically aren't so big on a bay doesn't mean they don't matter.

So for the final two races I started concentrating on the shifts and tacking on headers and always sailing the lifted tack. I was second in both races, just behind our resident world masters champion.

Duh!

Laser sailors, "Look for the shifts!"

Super Sunfish

The Super Sunfish was marketed from 1974 to 1984 by AMF, the manufacturer of the better known lateen rig Sunfish. It was clearly an attempt to compete with the Laser which was introduced in 1971 and which was rapidly growing in popularity in the 70's and early 80s. Judging by Portsmouth handicap numbers the Super Sunfish was slightly slower than the Laser. There were several other Laser clones introduced around this time but none of them ever approached the Laser's worldwide success.

Rogue Alligator on the Loose in Rhode Island

I'm not saying that it's anything to do with global warming... but who expected we would need to be wary of alligators in Rhode Island? There's a Rogue Alligator on the Loose in Portsmouth!

Yikes.

Do alligators eat Laser sailors?

Little Compton

I was in a rut. I had my favorite places to launch my Laser on the local bays... and I kept going back to the same places. Fogland Beach to enjoy the peaceful, rural atmosphere of the middle stretches of the Sakonnet; Colt State Park to stretch my legs on the wide open spaces of Upper Narragansett Bay; and Independence Park in Bristol for Tuesday night racing and solo practice in a relatively enclosed harbor.

I had had my eye on Little Compton for a while. It's at the mouth of the Sakonnet River, roughly opposite Third Beach Newport from which I had launched in the past for some epic days of sailing in the New England Laser Masters and also for that exciting day a couple of years ago with my son, documented in Fat Boy and Little Man. In my travels I had noticed a small beach in the harbor at Little Compton which would be perfect for launching a Laser; and parking spaces for cars and trailers just across the main road from that beach. What could be better? Easy parking, easy launching in a sheltered harbor, with access to wide open water renowned for fantastic wave sailing conditions when the wind has been coming from the south.

So I check it out a couple of weeks ago. It totally fulfilled my expectations for ease of access and launching. Unfortunately the wind was from the east that day so the waves were nothing special. But still... I had got out of the rut.

The junior sailors from the Sakonnet Yacht Club were just returning to the harbor as I was leaving it that afternoon. There was a couple sailing a Soling just outside the harbor mouth, but other than that very little boat traffic. I started reaching across the mouth of the river towards Newport and then got in some beating practice towards the Sakonnet lighthouse.

I mentioned a few days ago that it seemed that my propensity to make stupid mistakes in the boat had lessened a little lately. Lessened... but not totally eliminated. I was hiking hard and decided I needed to tighten the outhaul a tad. As per usual, I transferred my sheet to the tiller hand and, while still hiking, reached for the outhaul control with my front hand. Oops. Somehow the sheet slipped out of my other hand, the sail went out, the boat came over on top of me, and all of a sudden I was swimming in the Sakonnet River, all on my own, a mile from shore.

No big deal. I laughed. I took a big breath. I righted the boat and clambered back on board. I checked that nothing was broken or missing on me or the boat. All good. And went on sailing.

Life is good.

I think I will be going back to Little Compton.

By the way, did you know that Little Compton has Rhode Island's only town common?

Not many people know that.

And did you know that Little Compton is the only place in the United States with a monument dedicated to a chicken? The Rhode Island Red of course.

Not many people know that either.

And did you know that Henry Tillinghast Sisson (1831-1910), inventor of the 3-ring binder, lived in Little Compton?


Hardly anybody knows that.



I think I'll take a nap now.

Jimmy Buffet Doesn't Live in Key West Any More

Dear Sir,
Your post today of the map of Florida was a sweeping generalization about the state that has the most coastline in the lower 48 and some of the best cruising grounds in North America for sailboats. And, in case you didn't know, Jimmy Buffet doesn't live in Key West any more.

Florida

A map that finally explains Florida.

Shamelessly stolen from a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend on Facebook.