Saturday, March 06, 2010

Strangest Excuse Ever for Losing a Sailing Regatta


I've sailed in a huge number of sailing regattas over the last 30 years. I have won very few of them. I have lost most of them. Usually I have had some creative excuse as to why I lost.

But I have never used the excuse that Fred Meyer, the Vice-Commodore of Société Nautique de Genève, dreamed up this week to explain why his club lost the second race and as a result the whole regatta in the 33rd America's Cup three weeks ago.

"From a rules point of view, it is not even clear whether there was truly a race or not on that day."


What?????

You sailed a race. You lost the race. Your boat made no request for redress. You lost the regatta. You handed over the trophy to the winner. Now, three weeks later, you say it's not clear there was a race?

Geeze. What's wrong with the Swiss?

Cuckoo!

15 comments:

Pandabonium said...

I know you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what your heard is not what I meant....

Andrew said...

Think Jos will have to leave a comment on this one.

Jos said...

I'm not that stupid.
My clocks have no little birds coming out every hour telling me how late the bus to the asylum is going...

bonnie said...

saaaaay WHAT?

O Docker said...

I was going to point out that there's something strange about the titles of your last six posts, but then I realized you're probably just waiting for someone to bring that up so you can spring some unholy trap on them, so I changed my mind and decided not to mention it, but then I thought, no wait, there might be some kind of prize for the one observant enough to discover this, but then it occured to me that you've been cooped up indoors for too many months now and might not even realize you're doing it and might be upset with someone who pointed it out, and, like a bear being roused out of hibernation, you might attack the one unfortunate enough to do the rousing, so I decided to go with my first thought, well, second thought, actually, and just not mention it at all.

Tillerman said...

O Docker, thanks for not pointing out how strange I am this week. I was wondering when somebody would not notice it. Tomorrow's post will not spring an unholy trap on the first person not to draw attention to my strangeness but it will explain what's going on for anybody else who isn't interested.

Carol Anne said...

Faces come out of the rain ... No one remembers your name ...

Chris Partridge said...

And well done for insulting the Swiss in the way that really get under their skin and wiggles about - the cuckoo clock was invented by the Germans and the Swiss just hate it when people blame them for it.

Tillerman said...

I wouldn't dream of insulting the Swiss. How could I be insulting them when everyone knows they didn't invent the cuckoo clock?

M said...

You are all missing the point. It's part of a clever new strategy by SNG of not suing anyone. By not doing that they are laying trap that BMO will countersue for them not suing taking the whole thing back to the NY Courts where in a fit of pre-Spring madness they will award the AC back to SNG just for the hell of it and because they have been getting lonely since the whole Valencia thing they did with the water and stuff. Obvious really

Messing about said...

by the way M=Messing about. Having finger issues toady with typing

BeachComber said...

In reference to your first paragraph about losing regattas and races, Stuart Walker is occasionally lucid and succinct. To paraphrase him, races are rarely won by the winner, they are usually lost by everyone else. Most of us make so many mistakes around the race course that we have much more to gain by eliminating mistakes than by moments of genius and athleticism.

Pat said...

Why would anything think something is strange here? It all seemed perfectly normal to me.

verification word: examell

Tillerman said...

Beachcomber - thank you for reminding me that I am not only not a genius, I also make many more mistakes than the other sailors. I feel better already.

Pat - please don't rain on my parade. I insist on being strange for 22 more days.

BeachComber said...

Tillerman, I know you're only jesting, but what I'm saying is that the excuses to yourself are in fact usually reasons.

Post a Comment