Are the Russians Trying to Hack my Blog?

Yesterday I wrote a blog post about the selection of Tillerson as the next US Secretary of State.

Today I notice an abnormal amount of traffic to the blog, about 75% of it coming from Russia.

(There is usually not a lot of interest from Russia in my humble little RS Aero sailing blog.)

Are the Russians trying to hack my blog?

You should probably be very skeptical about any stories you see on here in the next few days.

Tacking Like a Boss

Thought you would enjoy this video of Chris Arnell in an RS 300, as he puts it, making an "almost perfect escape onto port tack last weekend ;)"

I think that semicolon and parenthesis are meant to indicate he is joking.

I assume this is the same gentleman who writes the hilarious RS300 393 - adventures of a boat and her incompetent skipper blog.

I think I have written about his blog before. It's a bit like Proper Course but a lot better because Chris is much more skilled at the self-deprecating British humour thing than I am.



I don't know much about the RS 300 except that it's another RS Sailing singlehander like the RS Aero, but it's been around a few more years and it looks a lot more difficult to sail.

Somebody even wrote a blog post suggesting that the RS 300 is a cult.



Is the RS Aero a cult too?

Throwback Thursday - sNIPEOUT...

I went searching through the archives of Proper Course to find something suitable for Throwback Thursday. After all, when you have been writing the same blog for 11 years, some of the earlier posts are positively ancient.

From March 2006, 10 years ago, I found Loaded the Woodcock, some instructions - with illustrations - about how to load a Snipe on a road trailer and what might go wrong, which I thought was somewhat amusing because I had made a very bad translation from the Italian original using what was then called Google Language Tools.

The original was from an Italian blog sNIPEOUT...

Much to my surprise I discovered that sNIPEOUT... is still going strong.

Even better, the author is clearly following this blog and has been reposting some of my RS Aero stories...

A quick check on the RS Aero Class page shows that there don't seem to be many RS Aeros in Italy yet.

Maybe these RS Aero stories on sNIPEOUT...  will change that?

Happy Birthday

Happy 11th Birthday to Proper Course.

Yes, it's 11 years ago today that I published the first post on this blog, Opening Lines.

I said in that post that it would be "a voyage with no destination and no charts."

I guess I got that bit right.



So, after 11 years of insane ramblings and random rants in 3,153 posts, here we are.

Where are we? I have no idea.

Was it worth it? I had my moments.

Maybe it's time for a change?

Top 5 Sailing Blogs of 2015

Is it too late to write a review of the top sailing blogs of 2015?

If it is, then let me say in my defense that Monday was the Chinese New Year so this is actually the perfect time to review the top sailing blogs of last year, the Year of the Goat.

1. First up we have The Final Beat.

I used to promise my readers that I would teach them how to "cheat the nursing home - die on your Laser." Lord Damian, who writes the Final Beat, has a much more challenging aim for his blog, promising that it will help dinghy sailors "Sail Faster, Quicker."

I have been following The Final Beat for quite a while now and I have picked up a lot of great advice from it such as smile - it'll make you sail faster and pulling the elastic on your toe strap can make you go faster. There was something about how George Clooney is a better sailor than me and another post on how to improve your sailing by lolling around in chairs and fondling balls.

Some guy 

who apparently would improve his sailing quicker than me

And if that's not enough there are interviews with top sailors about my feet and even a post by Lord Damian's Auntie Gill on confessions of a failed OppieMum. Brilliant!

There's no doubt about it. The Final Beat is the best sailing blog on the planet about pulling on your elastic and fondling your balls. And Auntie Gill is pretty cool too.



2. Second on my list of top sailing blogs in the Year of the Goat is Improper Course.

What's not to like about a title like that? Someone once asked me which came first, Proper Course or Improper Course. Well that's a great question.  Do you have to be improper before you can be proper? Which came first, Yin or Yang?

There's even a video about proper and improper fractions on Improper Course

You don't find that on many sailing blogs

Anyway, Improper Course is written by a guy called Doug who is a seriously good Laser sailor and by his wife /Pam, so the blog is full of a lot of seriously good advice about Laser sailing from Doug and a lot of entertaining stuff by /Pam about Laser class politics and Valentine's Day. I love the variety of Improper Course. All human life is here. From a photo quiz about a stick in Korea to a fascinating post about offshore leaks. Improper Course is by far my favorite blog about sticks in Korea and offshore leaks written by a lady with a "/" in her name.



3. The third blog on my list is also written by a seriously good Laser sailor, but more to the point he is also a seriously good RS Aero sailor. Michael has been sharing his experiences sailing the RS Aero at AeroNautic. I've been picking up lots of great tips on this blog - everything from how to sail the Aero upwind,  to how to mount a GoPro on a RS Aero, to what to do about a f@#%$d outhaul.

RS Aero outhaul before Michael f@#%$d it up

If you want to learn how to sail an RS Aero well (and who doesn't?) then you need to read AeroNautic. It is undoubtedly the best blog in the solar system about what to do about a f@#%$d outhaul.



4. And while we are on blogs about singlehanded boats from RS Sailing, I must include RS300 393 - adventures of a boat and her incompetent skipper by Chris. As a very incompetent skipper myself, I love blogs by other incompetent skippers. Chris began the difficult journey from RS300 owner to RS300 sailor in July of 2014 and has been blogging about it ever since.

He went to the RS300 Inlands in 2014 and had a good time because he discovered that the RS300 sailors were "at least as friendly and certainly as alcoholic" as his old mates in the OK class,  he achieved his goal of respectfully finishing behind most of them, and he "probably felt less ill than Steve Bolland on Sunday morning."

By April of 2015, Chris had advanced to training to look more glamorous which seemed to consist mainly of trying not to look like "an elderly driver heading the wrong way up a motorway or an old lady at a supermarket checkout suddenly confronted with a request from the cashier to pay for the shopping." He also discovered that he needed to "apply more sex wax to the boat - or the boots."

Chris 

looking like an elderly driver heading the wrong way up a motorway

Chris is obviously moving up fast in the RS300 class because by October he was asked to write a report for Yachts and Yachting magazine about the RS300 Inlands. He refused and instead wrote a not an event report full of such stuff as insults about the "elderly, tubby, humourless jerks" in the Phantom fleet, complaints about the breakfast at the Bed and Breakfast where he stayed, and musings on what to do when you meet ten Facebook friends whom you don't recognize at a regatta.

This is definitely the best blog in the galaxy about tubby Phantom sailors, feeling less ill than Steve Bolland, and sex wax (whatever that is.)

5. And last, but not least, we have Take the Tiller by Deborah. Now Deborah doesn't sail some new-fangled plastic boat like an RS Aero or an RS300; she sails a Herreshoff Twelve, a design which has been sailed at her club for 100 years - and of course it's made of that stuff called "wood."

But we won't hold that against her because sailing is sailing and racing is racing, and Deborah has written many excellent posts about how to do better in sailboat races, and god knows I need every bit of help I can find in that department.

Lady sailors at Beverly Yacht Club 

some time in the last 100 years.

There is advice on Take The Tiller which I haven't seen anywhere else. Things like the correct way to swear when you make a mistake in a race, what training to be a singer teaches you about self-coaching in sailing and how to find the perfect little hat for sailing. 

Take my word for it, Take the Tiller is absolutely the best sailing blog in the universe about swearing, singing and finding the perfect little hat.

---

So there you have it. The best five sailing blogs of 2015.

Of course you disagree.

There are always some readers who disagree with me.

I just Googled "sailing blogs" and got 18,500,000 results so I admit that I might have overlooked one or two sailing blogs that might be even better than these five, hard as that is to believe.

Please tell me in the comments if you would pick other sailing blogs in your Top Five.

Two Soups

I recently discovered a new (to me) sailing blog and it's already one of my favorites.

Check out RS300 393 - adventures of a boat and her incompetent skipper.

That's the author, Chris Arnell - "looking awesome downwind wearing the camera hat."

I love this guy. He has everything going for him...

• He is British.
• He is a singlehanded racing sailor.
• He sails an RS Sailing singlehander.
• He celebrates his own incompetence.
• He writes with self-deprecating humor

I mean, what's not to like about someone with all those qualities?



His latest post is Not an event report. The RS300 Inlands.

Apparently he was asked to write a report about the RS300 Inlands for Yachts and Yachting magazine and he refused to do so....

OK – let’s be clear about this one. I am NOT writing a Yachts and Yachting report for an RS300 event where I was too far behind to see who won and too busy trying to stay upright to notice what the weather was like or whether the start line was good, bad or indifferent. The only thing I remember is there were never more than 6 boats behind me and even if I knew who they were I’d be accused of cyber-bullying if I mentioned them by name. Nobody needs a defeat by me mentioned in the yachting press.

Sounds fair enough to me. At least he wrote a "not an event report" blog post.

Apparently the RS300s shared a course with the Phantoms whose skippers seemed to Chris to be "elderly, tubby, humourless jerks" and he should know because he admits to being elderly, tubby and humorless himself.



There is an excellent review of the Bed and Breakfast where he stayed, complete with embarrassing revelations about his interactions with the landlady and a complaint about the breakfast. "For £95 I think a rasher of bacon, a fried egg and a chipolata would have made a nice accompaniment to the muesli."

Indeed.

Bacon is essential food for sailors of RS singlehanded classes. Beans, black pudding and fried bread are good for you too.

Chris realizes that a real event report should include a long list of names "probably in the order they rounded some marks." This challenge seems to be beyond Chris so in his "not an event report" he just provides a list of the most popular names in the fleet...

The most common name in the fleet was actually "Chris" as there were 3 of us. Just behind us, with two each, were the Steves, Alastairs, Daves, Marks, Richards and Ians. The poor guys who couldn't even muster a single namesake included Sam, Luke, Tim, Stuart and Mike. But if you sail as well as these folks it probably doesn't matter.

So creative!



Chris seems to suffer from the same problem that often plagues me. The official regatta photographer always seems to shoot me when I don't look like I know what I am doing.

Lardy marble attempts to reach high side of boat

That's Chris in 393. His caption - not mine. He does seem to be a bit obsessed with the Phantom sailors and how "lardy"he is.

Some of the Phantoms capsized while tacking; their sailors rolling like lardy marbles from the high side to the low side of their boats. I think I’m probably more of a Phantom sailor than an RS300 sailor. It’s a depressing thought.

Chris does remember to report on the prize giving. "We had one."

And in a brilliant conclusion he publishes a photo of the results which are totally illegible.

I like this guy. Go read his blog. Subscribe or follow it or whatever it is you do with blogs.




In his "not an event report" Chris mentions one sailor who has the nickname "Two Soups."  I have no idea why anyone would be called "Two Soups." Perhaps it's something to do with this classic sketch featuring Julie Walters as the waitress?

Mentors

Mentor in Greek mythology, was the friend of Odysseus and tutor of Telemachus.

You knew that, didn't you?

Nowadays, of course, a mentor is a more experienced or more knowledgeable person who helps to guide a less experienced or less knowledgeable person. The mentor may be older or younger, but have a certain area of expertise. It is a learning and development partnership between someone with vast experience and someone who wants to learn. I copied all that from the Wikipedia so it must be true.



It occurred to me recently that there are a few bloggers whom I look to as my mentors, as sources of knowledge and experience which I can use to become a better sailor. Don't laugh! I can count on these people to inspire me, to guide me, to teach me. They have become - whether they like it or not - my webby, bloggy mentors.



So I have picked out four blogs which I have found to be most useful in this regard and put them at the head of my blogroll over there, on the right, in my sidebar.

Here they are...

Take the Tiller
Deborah sails a 100-year-old boat and writes on such diverse subjects as what makes a great sailor, cellos, marathons, the perfect little hat and one-buttock sailing. I'm learning a lot from her and she is threatening to learn to sail a Laser. Scary!

Improper Course
Doug is an old guy who has had some sailing success and /Pam is a (not as old) girl who is still learning how to sail. Doug writes posts full of ideas on how to be a better Laser sailor. Recently /Pam has been tenaciously pursuing some Racing Rules questions and reporting on the Bruce Kirby lawsuits debacle. All good stuff!

The Final Beat
Damian lives in Ireland and his aim is to help dinghy sailors get better, quicker. Recently he has been writing about what to do before you get up in the morning, morals, obsession, leeward mark roundings and racing Iain Percy in an Optimist. It says on his blog that he is "at various times thoughtful, inspirational, provocative, humorous and touching." No wait. I said that!

Center of Effort
Judy was the coach at the Laser Center of Cabarete this last winter so she knows her stuff. She has advice on what to do if you are looking at your cunningham with concern and your vang with vexation. She teaches us about starts and lay lines and why words matter. She even has a post about a Lake Sailing Love story which has a picture of someone who looks very familiar. Oh no!

Which blogs teach you the most?

Sunday Speedlink - Take the Tiller

I'm always pleased when I come across a new blog that offers writing of real depth and quality to aficionados of the sailing blogosphere. A recent find, and one of of my favorite sailing blogs right now, is Take the Tiller which is written by Deborah Bennett Elfers.

Deborah has been writing on a variety of sailing topics but one of her major themes is about how to improve as a sailor - which as my regular readers know is something I have been striving (and mostly failing) to do for 35 years now.

I particularly enjoyed her recent post  What Makes A Great Sailor — Practice, or Talent? which explores the roles of mindset, motivation and practice and includes a couple of recommendations of books that support Deborah's approach to growth as a sailor. Much inspiration and food for thought! I'm currently reading one of her book recommendations on my Kindle. I suspect I will end up writing two or three blog posts on the same theme myself as I mull over and try to apply the lessons of the post and the book.

Deborah sails a Herreshoff Twelve out of Marion, Massachusetts and her family comes from Duxbury (also in Massachusetts) both of which are among my favorite places to sail around here, so I wouldn't be surprised if our paths cross some time in the future.

In the meantime, I will continue to draw inspiration from her blog. Check it out. Take the Tiller.



I looked on Google Images for a "tiller" to illustrate this post. This is all I could find. It's really of no use to me. Please take it.

The $64 Million Video

Ten years ago this month, on February 17 2005 to be precise, I started this blog.

In those ten years I have written a lot of insane ramblings about sailing and other stuff, and made a lot of friends most of whom I have never met.

It was not, and never has been, my intention to monetize the blog. I think I have made a few hundred dollars along the way for writing reviews of some products, but I'm not really in it for the money.

It's been a lot of fun.



You may recall that, in the year before I started the blog,  a "singer" called Janet Jackson created quite a lot of excitement at Super Bowl XXXVIII, especially among young men of an impressionable age, by having what was later described as a "wardrobe malfunction." I am told that for a fraction of a second you could actually see one of her breasts!!! Oh, the humanity!

I won't bore you by posting a video of Ms Jackson's breast here. It's really not all that attractive a sight. You can easily find it on the Internet, anyway, if that's your kind of thing.

However, back in the dark days of 2004 and early 2005, it was a lot harder to find a video clip of Ms. Jackson's breast on the Internet. In fact it was pretty nigh impossible. There was no easy way for young men interested in breasts to share video clips with like-minded enthusiasts. As a result of this intolerable situation three young fellows decided to do something about it. They registered a snappy domain name which they activated on 14 February 2005, they spent a few months developing a simple video-sharing website, and on April 23 2005 they uploaded the first video to the site. It was 19 seconds long and featured one of the three young fellows, Jawed Karim, at the San Diego Zoo. Its title was "Me at the zoo."

When Mr. Karim was making this video he was probably thinking about something other than exactly how to make money from it. But he did OK. The video sharing website that Mr. Karim and his friends created was called YouTube. You may have heard of it. When YouTube was sold to Google in November 2006, Mr. Karim's share of the loot was $64 million.

"And that's pretty much all there is to say."

Everything in this story is true. It must be. I read it on the Internet here and here.

Best Sailing Blog on the Planet of 2014

Some years I have published a list of the top ten (or approximately ten) of my favorite sailing blogs of the year.

Some years I haven't.

It's tough to choose only ten blogs, balancing the wishes to include old favorites while recognizing promising newcomers.

Not to mention that inclusion on my top ten list has usually been the kiss of death for at least three blogs on the list which have been abandoned by their authors within a few months.



So this year I am dong something a bit different.

I am announcing that one blog, a relatively new blog, is the undisputed Best Sailing Blog on the Planet of 2014.

Pause for fanfare…

 

And the winner is…

The Final Beat

by Damian

I could give you a long list of all the excellent posts that Damian has written this year. But please go and browse the blog yourself. There's excellent advice on how to be a better sailor. There are thought-provoking series of posts about important issues in our sport like how clubs can retain younger members and the ethics of protests. There's humor. There's poetry. There's sports psychology. There's a guest post by an Oppie Mum and hilarious advice on boat maintenance.

If I wasn't already writing a sailing blog, I think Damian's writing in the last year would inspire me to start one.

And so many times I have read one of Damian's posts and thought, "I wished I could write a post as good as that."

Subscribe to The Final Beat. Sign up to get it by email. Follow it. Read it. Leave comments.

It's the best sailing blog on the planet.

Is Blogging Dead?

There's a great article over on ProBlogger, by guest author Steff Green, titled Is Blogging Dead?

Subscriber numbers are down. Younger people aren't starting new blogs. The action has moved to other social media platforms accessed by smartphones and it's all about shorter, punchier messages than the average blog post.

I expect all of my watery blogger friends have seen the same trends.

Is it time to recognize the inevitable and organize the wildest funeral party ever to bury all our blogs?




Wait.

I confess I didn't tell you the whole truth.

OK. I lied.

The full title of Steff's blog post is actually Is Blogging Dead? How Blogs are changing and How You Can Stay on Top.

Steff is full of ideas on how to respond to the trends in the blogging world, with suggestions on how to take advantage of the swing to social media, rethink where the conversations about your blog posts will be happening, and make money from your blog in this new world.




Whether you are a blogger or a reader or both, tell me, do you think blogging is dead?

Or, if you think the patient may still be breathing, then what do bloggers need to do to resuscitate the corpse?

One Million Candles

Some time yesterday this blog clocked up its millionth visit on SiteMeter. (The number of page views is currently just below 1.8 million.)

That's a scary amount of wasted time and lost productivity by people stumbling over here to read my utter nonsense and insane ramblings.

Unfortunately I can't identify who the actual millionth visitor was. Too bad. That person deserves some kind of recognition.

I wonder if Tillerwoman could make a cake with one million candles?

WWODD?

I just received this email….

Hi Propercourse.blogspot.com Team,  

I trust you are doing splendidly,  

I have gone through your website and I comprehend that it’s well built, but can be improved in several ways to get better sales and revenue from the site. If you would like me to send you a complete list of upgrades and improvements we could do to your site then kindly let me know so that I can send you the brief quotation for your website. After in-depth research about your website and analyzing the targeted market for your business to prevail, we also execute effective online marketing campaigns by targeting not only local markets but also provincial and international markets as well. However you will be getting all-in-one services when contacting us.

It goes on in a similar vein.

How flattering!

The gentleman who went through my website must have been very impressed with it to be under the delusion that it was assembled by a "Team."

And he clearly must have got the impression that this blog is already generating some "sales and revenue" because he wants to make my sales and revenue even "better."

He thinks I (sorry I and my Team) are a "business" and wants to analyze our "targeted market." I'm not sure what my (sorry our Team's) targeted market is. People who are a bit quirky and like playing on the water? Potential RS Aero buyers? People who once knew somebody who sailed a Sailfish? I have no idea.



What should I do?

Should I reply saying I am interested in seeing the "complete list of upgrades and improvements" that my (sorry my Team's) site clearly needs.


The rest of the email has a lot of stuff I don't understand about "back links" and "white hat techniques."

And a rather ominous statement that says before they can move on they need to discuss my goals.

Unfortunately I don't have any goals.

I think I might have some cricket stumps somewhere.

I wonder if that would do?



WWODD do.

What would Oh Docker do?

Best Sailing Vlog on the Planet

To vlog or not to vlog. That is the question.

A vlog is, of course, a video blog.

They have been around for years. But, as always, I am usually at least ten years behind in catching up with the latest trends.

So should I vlog?



A lot of people have been supplementing their regular blogs with video for years. Jon Deutsch, for example, of the eponymous Jon Deutsch blog, is a past master at using video to report on his sailing exploits such as the Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters Championship and the famous Orange Coffee Pot Regatta.

And who will ever forget his classic 2014 drama, Snowblowing the Driveway?


 



But that is video as a supplement to a blog.

For me the word "vlog" means more than that.

A vlog is a personal journal. A series of video posts every day, in which the vlogger speaks directly into the camera and tells us about his or her life, thoughts, opinions, and interests. Videos in which the vlogger's personality and style and charisma shine through.



So are there any good sailing vlogs?

There are a lot.

Here, for example, is a sailing vlog which may just be the best sailing vlog on the planet - Sailing to Maui. This vlog really captures the essence, the feeling, the experience that ocean voyages are all about. You can find all nine posts in this series on the author's YouTube channel rdubadub.

My favorite in the series is Episode 3  in which our hero starts off by vlogging from his night watch.





So what do you think?

Should I vlog?

Will you vlog with me?

To vlog or not to vlog. That is the question.

Opportunity of a Lifetime for a Sailing Blogger

OK, all you watery blogger/ social media fiends.

Here is the opportunity of a lifetime.

Do you want to sail for two months on a genuine 19th century whaling ship this summer AND get paid a stipend to blog and make videos and post on social media about it?

If so, then head over to 38th Voyage Stowaway and apply to be the "stowaway" on the 38th voyage of the 1841 whaleship the Charles W. Morgan, the last wooden whaleship in the world and America's oldest commercial vessel still afloat.

Is this a dream job or what?

Go for it!

I Hate Scrapers

A fellow sailing blogger drew my attention to a certain sailing website this morning. It's a very slick website full of lots of great sailing content. It also has masses of ads.

The only problem is that much, if not all, of the content is material they have "scraped" from other sailing websites and blogs. But there are no attributions as to where the material came from, or links back to the original websites.

I see they have copied a lot of stuff from Sailing World.

They have also copied all the recent posts from Proper Course.



Now, I don't usually mind people reusing my blog posts.  Fellow bloggers and newsletters like Scuttlebutt only do that occasionally, they even sometimes ask permission first, and they almost invariably provide a link back to Proper Course.

But this new site is working on a whole different level. They are taking EVERY new post I publish. (Even ones that have nothing to do with sailing. Ha ha!) And they have so many ads it's clear that the whole venture is a commercial operation to take other people's content and make money from it. They even have the cheek to claim copyright for all the content on their site!




I have reported what is going on to the relevant authorities.

And, as I think the scraper may be taking the content from my RSS feed, I have modified the feed so that it only publishes the first few lines of each post. Anyone who wants to read the whole content of any post can click through to the blog. I'm sorry if that is an inconvenience to any of the readers of my RSS feed, but this kind of blatant, automated, large scale content scraping for commercial gain needs to be stopped.

Racing and Blogging

If you are a sailboat racer and you write a blog about your racing, does the blogging impact your racing performance?

And, if so, is it in a positive or a negative way?



When I first started blogging about sailing, I naturally assumed that there would basically be a one-way flow of information from the sailing to the blog. But now I'm not so sure. I've become aware of all sorts of ways in which there might be feedback from blogging to sailing.

But does blogging make me a better sailor or a worse sailor? In what ways might my blogging affect my sailing?



1. Goals. If you set yourself goals for your racing and publish them on your blog, then you are pretty well committed to making a serious attempt to achieve them. It's one of those commitment devices I wrote about a few years back.

Personally I'm pretty good at NOT telling the world about my racing goals. At least not before the actual racing. But I did slip up back in 2008 and write about my goal to sail my Laser 100 days in that year. Going public on the goal certainly did serve as a motivator to get out there and sail more days. Holy Shit - it's the end of April and I've only done 23 days! But in the end I failed. Only made it to 94. So what does that prove?

On the other hand, in 2007 I did blog about my goal to finish in the top half of the fleet at a world championship. And I did it! So what does that prove?



2. Learning new skills. If you are trying to improve a certain skill and you write a few blog posts about that skill, like say "how to do a kick-ass Laser roll tack", does the mere act of writing it down help you to learn that new skill? Does it implant the technique in your memory? Does even just doing the research for those posts help you to learn how to do better roll tacks?

You would think so, but given my total failure to become a better Laser sailor in the eight years I've been writing this blog I somehow doubt how effective this method really is.



3. Mental attitude. If you read any book about sports psychology, you will learn that self talk is a big deal. What you tell yourself you are is what you become. Tell yourself that you are confident at doing killer starts and you will start doing killer starts. At least that's the theory.

My problem is that I like to write self-deprecating humor. Laugh at myself. Tell the world I am fat and old and unfit. Make fun of all my crazy mistakes on the race course. It makes for some amusing blog posts (I think) but am I sabotaging my racing performance? Can I portray myself as a clumsy, incompetent, accident-prone sailor on a Friday, and then go out and be a top-notch racer on the Saturday?



But let's turn that one around. Another thing that those sports psychology books always talk about is how to overcome an error in a performance. Apparently if some people make a major mistake in a race, say blow the start, or capsize, or hit a mark, they have enormous difficulty in putting it out of their minds. They become angry at themselves and start sailing even more atrociously.

But not me. If I do something really bad  like getting strangled and pulled out of the boat by another sailor's sheet or breaking my gooseneck when I am winning a race my immediate reaction is to laugh and think, "This will make for a really funny story on the blog." I'm so happy to have such a disaster to write about. Much more interesting than winning the race. So then I can forget about the incident and get on with actually trying to win the next race.



There are probably all sorts of other examples of how blogging feeds back into sailing but Tillerwoman almost has the dinner ready and it's Toad-in-the Hole!

Got to go.

Please feel free to complete these thoughts in the comments.

Saturday Spam-a-palooza

It's been quite a good week for comment spam at Proper Course, so here is the second in my Saturday Spam-a-palooza series. First of all we have that spam which attempts to sneak under the radar of the alert moderator with outrageous compliments. I am always a sucker for people who tell me how wonderful I am. Here are some of the best examples of that genre this week....

This is really interesting, You are an overly professional blogger. 

I do not know who you are but definitely you are going to a famous blogger if you are not already. 

You ought to be a part of a contest for one of the greatest sites on the net. I will highly recommend this web site!  

Magnificent goods from you, man. I have understand your stuff previous to and you are just extremely fantastic. I actually like what you've acquired here, really like what you are saying and the way in which you say it. You make it entertaining and you still care for to keep it smart. I can not wait to read far more from you. 

Thanks for the feedback guys. In future I will try not to be "overly professional" whatever that means, and to continue to deliver "magnificent goods", man.



Then we had the spammer who seems to be interested in my sex life. (And who isn't?)

If you have attempted to have sex recently and failed the next time could be an anxious moment and the more you think about it the more you are likely to fail again... Another excellent tip is to prevent consuming tea an time either part of getting the products and to prevent liquor if you can. 

Well thanks for the advice sir, but I don't have any difficulties in that department. If I ever do, I will certainly try your suggestion to "prevent consuming tea."



And finally we have a selection of the truly bizarre, from playing basketball with some Germans in a dungeon, to a an owl gift which is also a saber-toothed tiger, and something to do with how the Bible tells you to sharpen iron in order to tone up your buttocks because raspberry ketones, or something.

These five free basketball game apps for the i - Phone will surely help you get your game on. WIFI:Als Verbindungsmoglichkeiten ins Internet stehen Ihnen WIFI wireless lan zu Verfugung. The player guides Phen through 10 levels of dungeon gameplay, finding a whole host of weapons and other items as well. 

The presentment of promotional owl gifts, which is a beautiful saber-toothed tiger cat that isn't a puzzle.  

Рrovеrbs 27:17 sауѕ Irоn sharρenѕ іron; so οften tгoublesome on univeгѕity especiallу ωhen you are taκіng antіdepгеssаnts or mediсatіоns to bоoѕt уour Raspberry Ketones goals with ease, аnd alѕo to tone up youг buttocks.

Which one do you like best?

Did you get any "extremely fantastic" spam on your blog this week?

Why Words of Wisdom Aren't Crap

Last Monday I wrote a typically rambling and incoherent post in which I questioned why the "words of wisdom" we often hear from winners of regattas are often simply well-known basic principles about boat-handling or tactics or strategy, "wisdom" that has even been published in sailing books before. They are not the super-secret magic go-faster tricks that many of us are hoping to hear. I speculated on various reasons why this may be so.

Today I was accused of asking "whether words of wisdom are just crap."

No. I don't think words of wisdom are just crap.

Having pondered the matter over a few glasses of good Scotch whisky in the intervening week, I think I have finally seen the truth.

The reason why all sailing regattas are won time and time again by the same few sailors, less than 5% of the total number of competitors, is that the rest of us non-winners simply fail to apply and execute those basic racing principles as consistently and well as the winners do.

Sure the winners may have excellent boatspeed, may even know the odd go-faster secret, but when they regurgitate the same old well-known principles such as how to get a good start, how to sail a beat in shifty, puffy conditions, or how to sail fast in waves downwind... they are really doing us non-winners a huge favor. They are telling us what we need to hear. "Get the basics right and you too will have the chance to be a winner."

Yes, it may also be true that we non-winners aren't as fit as the winners, and that we may not have practiced as much as the winners; but the fundamental reason we don't win is that we don't have the right habits, the habits of applying those basic principles every time in every race.

So how do you change habits? How do you develop good habits? Read any book on the subject or just do the 21st century thing and google it. You will get the same answers. All the experts will talk about the same things...

Write it down

Positive self-talk

Visualization

Etc.

Etc.

In other words, the more you write about and think about and imagine what you want to do, the more likely it is that you will actually do it.

So no, I don't think words of wisdom are just crap.

Actually I think I need to read and study and write about and blog about those words of wisdom even more. Because then I might actually remind myself to apply those basic principles of how to win sailboat races, and convince myself I can really do those things well.

So I'm going to start blogging even more about words of wisdom, about all the well-known advice on how to race well, about how to win.

It might do me some good. It might even do some of my readers some good.

Watch this space...

Saturday Spam-a-palooza

As you may have noticed I have been moderating comments on this blog for the last few weeks because too many spam comments seem to be have been getting past Google's spam filters. I must admit it has been an eye opener. Some of the spam is actually quite creative!

Here are few of my favorite spam comments from the last couple of weeks. It goes without saying that none of the spam comments had any connection to the topic of the post, and they all included links to websites which were nothing to do with the theme of this blog. Enjoy...

It's a shame you don't have a donate button! I'd without a doubt donate to this brilliant blog!

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Who writes this stuff?

Are robots really this funny?

Which is your favorite?