Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The Snodder

I received this email today which is apparently a response to my post about The Reset Button. Certain names and other key details have been redacted to protect the innocent.

Happy to tell you I have had a "reset button" on every boat I've owned for 40 years. I call it the Snodder.

Here's the one on my last ████ that I sold a few years ago.



This must be used sparingly -- only in cases of dire emergency, such as when you've totally blown a good race and suddenly find yourself at the back of the fleet. Maybe gloom sets in, or worse, the crew starts making pointed and sarcastic remarks. It's time to adjust the Snodder. Pull it in just an inch, or maybe two inches if things are really bad. I can tell you it works every time. Never fails to brighten spirits, and the boat starts going faster, overtaking other boats, getting back into the action.

 My first Snodder was fitted to our ██████ in the seventies by my middle man, █████ ███████. We had changed some systems, and there was a spare cleat on the console, like the one pictured above. █████ was (still is) a man with a nice sense of humour. He put a line through the cleat, tied it the other side to a piece of bungee which ran forward and was tied off to the bulkhead below.

Thus adjusting the Snodder is purely a psychological ploy. You're only pulling on the hidden bungee a bit. But as I said, it really works. Of course it would be pretty hard to put one of these on a Laser. How would you hide the secret mechanism?

If you reveal this on your website, I may have to kill you.
Best, ████████████

Oh. Wait. I didn't read that last bit. He is only joking? Right? No? He is, isn't he?

2 comments:

SoxSail said...

When I was an opti instructor we had a similar reset button on "wind" days. When we couldn't sail, we'd inevitably turn to boat part trivia, and just as everyone was getting bored, I'd ask what the sprit adjuster line was called. The answer was sure to get a rise from the kids: the snotter.

Tillerman said...

I used to do that boat part trivia thing with Opti kids too, but I never knew that bit of string was called a "snotter"!

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