Proper Course: Web Orgy

Friday, December 07, 2012

Web Orgy

On Wednesday evening this week I participated in a Laser racing webinar.

For those not familiar with the term "webinar', it means a web-based seminar. An interactive presentation over the web using videoconferencing.

Tillerwoman wasn't familiar with the word "webinar." One of her most endearing features (especially to someone like me who spent all of his career in technology) is that she is an old-fashioned girl and she is into all the old-fashioned pursuits like gardening and cooking and knitting. She is not into technology. She does not use a computer. She does not have a smartphone. She never (knowingly) uses the Internet.

She seemed to have a lot of trouble with the word "webinar." On Wednesday she kept referring to is as a "webology." As in, "What time is your webology? Will you want dinner before it?"

Then on the following morning as we were driving to Massachusetts to see our grandsons, she asked me out of the blue, "So how was your web orgy last night?"

Web orgy! What is she talking about? What does she think I am doing on my computer down in my basement man cave? Having orgies????

I almost drove the car into the ditch. But just in time to save us, I realized she was talking about the webinar.

Phew!

The Laser webinar was conducted by Javier Borojovich, universally known as Rulo, who is the head coach at the Laser Center at Cabarete in the Dominican Republic. I understand that Rulo will be launching a range of sailing webinars in the near future, but this week's event was a bit of a dry run with a small group of four sailors to test out the concept and fine tune it for future sessions.

The topic was "How to sail your Laser fast upwind" concentrating especially on techniques for strong winds. God knows this is an area I need to improve.

Topics covered included...
•How to improve your hiking technique 
•How to steer on the waves 
•Torquing and body movements 
•How to trim your sail for different wind and waves conditions.
•Sailing high mode vs. Sailing on low mode

Rulo covered all these subjects in depth using bullet point slides, photographs, and a lot of video footage. Most of the videos showed top sailors demonstrating excellent technique, but there were also shots of not-top sailors demonstrating poor technique as a contrast. I kept expecting to see myself in some of the shots in the latter category.

Rulo did an excellent job of pointing out all the finer points of technique and then at the end we could submit our own questions (in a text window) for him to answer.

One of the topics was how to avoid hiking injuries, including my own bête noire, lower back pain. Rulo ran through four things to do to avoid back pain. I now understand that the reason I hurt my back in May last year (and missed out on most of the summer's planned sailing as a result) was that I had been breaking all four of Rulo's rules for avoiding lower back pain.

Hmmm. The webinar was worthwhile just for that.

If you want to know more about Rulo's future plans for webinars, check out Rulo Sailing.

I think I will go and have a web orgy now.