Cheesy Poofs 52nd Laser Sail of 2012

A few weeks ago my wise friend yarg wrote a brilliant post on his blog titled The Self-Imposed Agony of Defeat in which he bemoaned the fact that athletes in all sports can become so competitive and so serious that they forget that playing sports is supposed to be fun. If you are racing your sailboat and it becomes such a grind that it isn't fun any more, then why don't you decide more often to quit racing and go off on a screaming planing reach just for fun?

Good question.

Today is my thirteenth day at Minorca Sailing.

In the last twelve days I have raced a five day ten race series, a one day three race regatta, a pursuit race, and another five day ten race series. In other words I have raced every day for twelve days.

In the same twelve days, I have also attended ten sailing classes and done sailing drills for a couple of hours on eight days.

I may have lost count somewhere. You do sometimes at my age. But that's roughly right.

The amazing thing is that I'm not burned out. I've enjoyed every minute of it and wake up every morning refreshed and looking forward to more of the above.

Today we had a class about sail settings and then some starting drills. It was fun. But then the wind picked up from the southwest, the best wind we have had in the last few days, and our wise instructor decided to let us spend the rest of the morning doing screaming planing reaches. That was even more fun.

This afternoon was the scheduled weekly regatta. I won it last week so decided to skip the regatta and go off doing some more screaming planing reaches on my own. I mean, how many ecru sailing hats does one man need?

Besides, it's my last afternoon here and I think twelve consecutive days of racing is enough. It wasn't quite as windy this afternoon as this morning but there were some nice juicy gusts at times.

Life is good.

I think I'll take a nap now.


This post, about my 52nd day of Laser sailing this year, is sponsored by Cheesy Poofs. "I love Cheesy Poofs, you love Cheesy Poofs, if we didn't eat Cheesy Poofs, we'd be lame."