Happy Spider Day

And check out more spiders at frogma and Love & Coconuts.

It's Snowing

Conversation yesterday between myself and my 3-year-old granddaughter.

Emily: Look Grandad, I've drawn you a picture!

Me: That's very nice Emily. Who is it?

Emily: It's you Grandad!

Me: Oh yes. Now you mention it, I can see it's me. What's all this at the top of the picture?

Emily: It's snowing!

Me: What am I wearing?

Emily: Mittens!

Me: It's good to wear mittens in the snow. What else am I wearing?

Emily: A dress!

Me: A dress? Why am I wearing a dress?

Emily: Because it's snowing, of course!

Me: Oh.

Frostbite racing starts on Sunday. I'm not sure how the other fleet members will react if I show up in mittens and a dress. Even if it is snowing.

Book Review: Saving Sailing

Nick Hayes is in love with sailing. He is one of those people who believes that sailing takes us as close to God as we think we might ever be.

But he is troubled. The numbers tell him that sailing in America is in decline. And he wants to understand why something as rich and rewarding as sailing should be losing popularity. More than that: he wants to work out how to save sailing.

So he has studied sailing and sailors and sailing clubs. He has interviewed more than 1,200 sailors worldwide. He has drawn some fascinating conclusions as to why sailing is decline and what we need to do about it, and he has written all about it in his new book, Saving Sailing.

Actually, in the process of pondering what is happening in sailing, Nick has developed some theories about how people choose to use their free time generally, and how to support any challenging but rewarding inter-generational life-long pursuit. His conclusions are as applicable to making music or hunting or knitting as they are to sailing.

Saving Sailing is a book which challenges you to examine many of your own assumptions about our sport. Time and time again as I read it, I found myself thinking, "Hmmm. That's a good point. How does that relate to my experience at that club or that sailing program? Do I agree with his argument or not?" My mind is still buzzing as I mull over the ideas in this book. I suspect I may revisit some of the issues in future blog posts.

A couple of examples...

Nick argues that one of the reasons that an activity like sailing, a "life pastime" as he calls it, is deep and rich and socially meaningful is that it requires more skill and more time commitment than some "time filler" such as watching TV or surfing the web. Paradoxically fewer people are embracing a life pastime because other options are easier; but those of us who are drawn to a life pastime, like sailing, do so even though it is hard - or perhaps partly because it is hard. Nick concludes that, "If sailors hope that sailing will survive and grow, they won't try and convince others that it is easy. They will rightly call sailing what it is: difficult, time-consuming, evolving, sometimes risky and always worth it." Quite a controversial stance. One that our new president of US Sailing doesn't seem to have embraced (yet).

As someone who was once involved in teaching junior sailing classes, I have always seen the large number of kids involved in junior sailing programs as a healthy sign for the future of our sport. Nick, however, is skeptical about this view. He sees that the vast majority of kids, even those who go on to college sailing, eventually drop sailing from their lives after they graduate college and find more important things to take sailing's place, things like a career and wife and kids. He also sees that, for many families, sailing is just another one of those activities like baseball and ballet and soccer where the parents drop off their kid for some lessons, Mum and Dad are not involved themselves in their kid's sailing, and indeed they often don't even understand what the kid's sport is all about.

After ranging far and wide (and deep) and analyzing the decline in sailing from all angles, Nick develops a set of recommendations for attacking the problem based on a model of mentoring across generations, preferably within the family. He is a strong believer in parents investing in skills so as to be able to transfer skills, in parents doing things with their children not just for them, in parents making difficult time choices in order to share time with their kids in their chosen life pastime.

His vision is compelling. I have seen at least one sailing club where it is working superbly well. I am not totally convinced that Nick's vision is the only way to save sailing, but his book certainly stimulates the reader to think through all these issues.

I would recommend the book to anyone concerned about the future of sailing. If you are a parent who would like your kids to sail you should read the book; it could change your whole approach to sailing as a family. If you are in any kind of leadership position in a sailing club or a community sailing organization, then you should buy some copies of this book for all the officers of your group, read it, and then discuss as a group how you are going to use the ideas presented to improve your program. If, like me, you are just some old dude who loves sailing as much as Nick does, then you should read the book to rouse yourself to work out what you can do to make sure that our sport doesn't decline any more.

Nick's analysis of these issues is interspersed in the book with anecdotes about different people's experiences of sailing - some good, some not so good. (I'm assuming that the characters in these tales are fictional but based on reality.) As the book progresses we slowly discover that many of the people in these stories are actually connected with each other, and that Nick is writing about a complex web of relationships across genders, generations and ethnicities, a web in which memories are created and passed on and in which one generation mentors the next.

And now for a surprising coincidence and a hopeful sign...

I read the last one of these sailing anecdotes in Nick's book on Monday. It was the final link in the chain of connections between all the characters, but historically it was the earliest story. It was a tale about the seminal incident that had sent ripples of relationships and memories and teaching across families and across generations. It was a story about a sailing race in a Thistle about fifty years ago. A guy whose name began with E. took his young daughter and her best school friend out sailing. Immediately after reading this chapter of the book I turned to my computer and saw that my friend Edward had just posted Sailing Camp on SF Bay, an account of a sail he had with his daughter and her friend and how they were having fun learning about sailing.

I think Nick Hayes would approve. Edward is doing his bit to save sailing. There is hope. Sailing does have a future.


Full disclosure: I was given a review copy of Saving Sailing.

Gary Jobson - Please Don't Make Sailing Easy

Gary Jobson is a good guy (he used to be a Laser sailor) but I can't agree with what he just said. He was recently elected president of US Sailing and it was reported that in his acceptance speech he said, "We want to make sailing safe, easy, and fair."

Easy? I don't want sailing to be easy. It wouldn't be any fun if it were easy.

Watching TV is easy.
Mowing the lawn is easy.
Chatting with friends on Facebook is easy.

Sailing is difficult. That's what makes it so engaging. I have spent half a lifetime just trying to learn the skills to race one relatively simple boat as well as I can, and I still feel that I have so much to learn. It's the challenge of trying to learn something that is difficult and then attempting to use my hard-won skills that keeps me involved. I don't want sailing to be easy.

Having written the above I decided that, to be fair, I ought to watch the full video of Gary's speech. It is true that the context of his first remark about "making sailing easy" does leave open the possibility that what he actually meant to say was that he wants to make access to the water easy. And then later in the speech he gives three other examples of things about sailing he would like to make easier: handicaps, racing rules and measurement. So maybe I shouldn't blame Gary for that sound bite of, "we want to make sailing safe, easy, and fair." Maybe we should blame the PR person who wrote the press release.

Whatever. US Sailing should not be trying to give the impression that they are going to make sailing easy. It ain't easy. And I, for one, don't want it to be easy.

What do you think?

We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

If you have a hankering for a bigger boat you could always try this option. Just saw your boat in half and add a new section in the middle. Of course you don't need to go to the extremes of the Royal Caribbean International cruise line who decided to add 73 feet to the middle of Enchantment of the Seas using this method.

I Want One

Photos shamelessly stolen from Sailing Anarchy

Less is More: Wrap-up

Thanks to everyone who participated in this month's group writing project Less is More. We had about 25 responses...

Andrew says Less is...
and Greg and Kris say ahem.
I predictably wrote about the Laser.
Sam added some LASER TWO WORD STUFF.
Susie Pegel gave us her Star and Laser Comparison.
And Carol Anne couldn't quite make up her mind about the Etchells.

Earwigoagin was contrary at first...
The Laser......Not!
The Sunfish...... Not!
before deciding that canoe sailing beats paddling!

Joe likes sea kayak sailing
while Pat likes kayaking and the OPB gambit.
But it was Antolin who took the "Less is More" concept of boating to its logical conclusion in Hanging.


And then we had a group of writers who took the "Less is More" idea and ran off with it in all sorts of unexpected directions...

Emily Fabpants dreamed of warm summer days on the Norfolk Broads.
Crazy Swim Dad says the more you drive the less intelligent you are.
Some_day_soling wrote about the exquisite moments in sailing.
Manfred wrote about the pleasures of a very small regatta.
Captain JP offered us some random thoughts on the topic.
Janna concludes that it's all about time in the boat.
O Docker describes minimalist boat maintenance.
Jos found a great example in The Racing Rules.
Zen offers sailing Hawaii through Zen eyes.
Edward explains why Popeye eats spinach.
Zen educates us on Wabi-Sabi.
And Yarg likes Molting.

Wow. You guys are the best. You never cease to amaze me with your ingenuity and creativity in taking a simple idea from me and spinning it into such a wide variety of nautical tales. Did I miss anybody?

Thank you.

Blogger of the Week

Welcome to the world of sailing blogging to new blogger, and my Blogger of the Week, SailFast13©.


SailFast13© is written by 16-year-old Brent J. Burrows (aka BJ) who is fortunate enough to live in the Bahamas. This past week he has been competing in the Sunfish Worlds in the Bahamas and blogging about it every day... in both text and video formats. In his profile he says, "I will discuss various regattas I have taken part in, as well as my sailing in general, and also how sailing is affecting my life. Videos and photos of my sailing campaign will also be posted." So it sounds like he is going to keep the blog going now the Worlds are over. He should.

I hope you enjoy BJ's accounts of his racing at the Worlds as much as I did. It sounds like it was a windy, fun regatta. I must admit that reading his stories made me a little nostalgic for my former life as a Sunfish sailor, and part of me wished I was out there with him thrashing around in the bottom half of a Sunfish Worlds fleet just like the good old days in Cartagena and Santo Domingo.

But it was an aside in Thursday's post that made me realize how much BJ and I are alike (even if we are separated by 45 years in age). He confessed, "The more I sail Sunfish, the more I can't wait to get into Lasers ."

Yes dude. I know exactly what you mean.

By the way is BJ the first blogger to include that little copyright symbol © in the name of his blog? Damn. Why didn't I think of that?

Anal-Retentive People Like Numbers

Anal-retentive people (such as me) like numbers.

We like to use numbers to analyze things and measure things in order to make decisions that ordinary folk would just make on "gut-feel". This satisfies our preoccupation with details and organization. It feels good to us.

One example...

How do you decide whether to go to a particular regatta? You probably take into account such factors as the likely weather, how attractive the sailing venue is, who else is going, how much fun it will be... and then just go.

Not me. Not anal-retentive people. We need to work the numbers first.

It all started after that invitation I received to sail in the Asia-Pacific Laser Masters in Thailand next year. I wrote about it in the ironically titled Small World. "Ironic" because as I wrote the post I was actually thinking, "It's not a small world at all. Thailand is a hell of a long way to travel to go Laser sailing. How many hours would I have to spend cramped up in an airplane?"

Ahah. I had asked myself a question with a number as an answer. I could put a number on the "to go or not to go" question. And for that matter I could work out how many hours of traveling vs how many hours of sailing are involved for any regatta I might be considering.

Ahah. A ratio. Even better than a number. Anal-retentive people love ratios.

So I built myself a spreadsheet to calculate the hours sailing divided by hours travelling for all the potential sailing practices, clinics and regattas that I could conceivably attend.

Ahah. A spreadsheet. Even better than a ratio. Anal-retentive people love spreadsheets.

So now I can read off the S/T ratios and decide which sailing trips I really want to do. Here are a few examples. (A higher S/T means more sailing and less travelling and is a "good thing").

As a baseline I calculated the S/T for two sailing activities I have really enjoyed in the past...

• frostbiting at Cedar Point YC in Connecticut travelling from my former home in New Jersey
• Saturday afternoon practice at Lake Massapoag in Massachusetts travelling from my current home in Rhode Island

They both came out with S/Ts of approximately 1.000. (Anal-retentive people absolutely love meaningless decimal places.)

So then I looked at a couple of other options for sailing locally...

• solo practice for a couple of hours somewhere very local
• one day regatta at one of the relatively nearby locations around southern New England

These both came out with S/Ts of approximately 4.000. Woo hoo. That's very good.

What about driving longer distances to regattas?

• One-day regatta in Vermont or New Hampshire. S/T=0.667
• Drive to Florida for Laser Masters Week. S/T=0.640

Wow. That's bad. What a shame. I really wanted to go and sail in some of those other New England locations, and that Florida Masters Week sure sounded like fun. But the numbers do not lie.

How about overseas travel to regattas? (For the sake of simplicity, in this calculation I counted airplane hours and car hours as equally painful and monotonous, and just added them together.)

• Caribbean Midwinters and pre-regatta clinic in Cabarete. S/T=1.050
• 2010 Laser Masters Worlds in UK. S/T=1.500

Hmmm. Interesting. Not bad. But not as good as doing local regattas or local practice. Perhaps less is more?

And what about the regatta that started all this anal-retentive obsessive-compulsive decision making by the numbers orgy?

• 2010 Asia Pacific Laser Masters in Thailand. S/T=0.420

Ouch!!

Of course this way of looking at the issue will only make sense to other anal-retentive people. I'm sure this post is going to attract lots of comments from so-called "normal" people who think I'm crazy to analyze things this way, and who will urge me to seize the opportunity to travel all over the world to see exciting places and meet all kinds of new people, and who will tell me how the actual physical travel is all part of the experience and not to be seen as something to be balanced against the sailing, and who will chide me that if I took my analysis to its logical conclusion I would never travel outside of my tiny little state of Rhode Island.

Of course you are right. You are normal. I am not.

My name is Tillerman and I am an anal-retentive.

Song for the Day