Blogger's Disclaimer

I came across A Blogger's Disclaimer via Team Gherkin (which by the way has a marvellous post today about A Glorious Sunday of Laser sailing in the Spring).

I was struck by one paragraph in the disclaimer...

If someone writes about you and you don't appreciate it, approach them about it. Try to remain calm and polite. Explain that you are entitled to your privacy as well. There are many compromises that can be reached from using vague nicknames to protect your anonymity, or not mentioning you at all. If you are upset because they are writing negative things about you, be reasonable, try to see if there is a way to resolve the issues and mend your relationship with the writer. If that doesn't seem to be possible, stop going to the website. They will eventually get bored and move on.

I try very hard to protect the privacy of people with whom I sail. Sometimes I will use nicknames such as Alphonse, Bertie and Cedric to refer to other sailors or even something as vague as that guy. If the other person has a sailing blog too I may link to that or refer to the name they use on the blog. Sometimes as in the post on Cheating I even write about other people's behavior in the first person so that nobody will think I am pointing fingers at them.

I hope I don't ever cross the line and invade your privacy. I value the relationships I have with other sailors and I would hate to think that fellow sailors may be upset by this blog or are even avoiding me because they think I might embarrass them by writing something here about them. So please follow the advice in the disclaimer and let me know if I do cross the line. We can work it out, I am sure.

Fish on Fridays

Back in the day, before Al Gore and I invented the Interwebs, before AccuWeather and Weather Underground, before SailFlow and iwindsurf, before 24-hour cable TV and The Weather Channel, back in the old country, Blighty, Albion, this sceptred isle, this seat of Mars, this other Eden, this precious stone set in the silver sea, this blessed plot...

What? Where was I? Where am I?

Oh yes. Back in the good old days, a.k.a the 70's in England, the best source of weather forecasts was BBC television. And the most memorable face of BBC Weather in those days was the man who went on to become the longest serving weather presenter on British television, Michael Fish (photo above). No -- that's not a photo of me.

Fish who is now retired will be remembered above all for two things...

1. His dress sense. He has won accolades as both the best and worst dressed man on television. You be the judge.


"They were looking for someone young, handsome and well dressed," Michael Fish recalls of his move to the BBC in 1974. While others presented the weather in staid suits the young pretender wasn't shy of suede, wide collars or plaid.

2. The botched forecast for the Great Storm of 1987.


On 15 October 1987, he said during a forecast: "Earlier on today, apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way... well, if you're watching, don't worry, there isn't!". That evening, the worst storm since 1703 hit South East England causing record damage and killing 19 people. Oops!

Anyway, what has all this to do with sailing? Well, as I was saying, back in the day the best way for dinghy sailors to find the weather forecast prior to a weekend of thrashing around the nearest gravel pit was to tune in on Friday evening to our friend Michael's weather forecast on BBC TV.

And that is how that certain famous expression entered the sailing vernacular, the phrase which continues to be a regular feature of the work of sailing uber-bloggers Edward and Joe, the tag that to this day continues to be synonymous with excellence in weekend weather forecasting... Fish on Fridays.

Cheating

"So is there much cheating going on here?" Tillerwoman stunned me with this question one evening over dinner while we were in Roses for the Laser Masters Worlds.

Cheating? Perish the thought. Of course not. Cheating just doesn't happen at this level of sailing. At least that was my initial reaction.

Cheating? What's cheating? To act dishonestly. To deceive. To deprive by fraud. That's what the dictionary says.

Cheating? In the sailing context the word conjures up such nefarious acts as sabotaging a competitor's boat (by stealing the drain plug just before he sets sail perhaps) or paying a coach to gather wind information from up the course and transmitting it to a secret radio receiver hidden behind your ear. No. I'm as certain as I can be that such stuff doesn't go on at any level of Laser sailing. At least I've never seen it.

But then I started thinking. Well, yes maybe there is a gray area. I guess it all depends on your definition of cheating.

Another dictionary definition of cheating is to violate a rule of a game deliberately. The Laser class rules define cheating as, "doing something that you know is illegal."

Hmmm. Rules. What rules must we follow when we are racing? There are the Racing Rules of Sailing of course. And the Laser Class Rules, which mainly define what you can and cannot do to change your boat and equipment. Also the Notice of Race, and Sailing Instructions have rules that you must follow.

So if I deliberately break any of those rules, I am cheating. Or am I?

What about some of the following hypothetical examples? Are any of these cheating?

• I am at the favored end of a crowded start line. A boat comes into a gap to leeward of me that is just big enough to squeeze through. She luffs slightly,I try to respond but there is another boat close to windward of me. There is slight contact between me and the boat to leeward. Nobody protests. We both start the race and sail on as if nothing has happened.
  
  
• The sailing instructions say that the regatta will be sailed under Laser class rules but I use a "practice sail" that is made by a sailmaker who is not approved by the Laser class.
  
  
• The end of my boom just brushes the windward mark as I am bearing away. Nobody else sees it. I don't do a 360.
  
  
• The Laser class rules say that the inhaul shockcord must be attached to the outhaul cleat on the boom but I tie it to the mainsheet bain. What the hell difference does it make?
  
  
• The sailing instructions say that all sailors must wear PFDs that are US Coast Guard Approved but I use a British PFD (not USCG approved) because it's small and slim and it's easier to squeeze under the boom when I am are tacking.

I'm sure you can think of other examples. Would you ever do any of the above? What would you think if you were to see me breaking some of these rules? Am I cheating? Does it make a difference if I think I am not gaining an advantage by breaking a rule? Would you turn a blind eye? Would you call me on it?

If I Had A Boat

If I had a boat
I'd go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I'd ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
I said me upon my pony on my boat

Three Keys

OK. Enough of the woolly philosophizing about whether I was sailing faster or got lucky at the Worlds or whether it's all about winning or not. Time to get real and work out what it was that I did differently this year, what went well and what didn't, and what I need to do next.

So why did I do better in 2007 than I did at the 2003 Worlds?

Well, of course, anyone's current sailing performance is a product of everything they've done and so the answer is everywhere in this blog. But if I had to pick out three things that I think made the most difference they would be these...

1. Cabarete. The clinic in the Dominican Republic in January, and especially the experience of racing there in the Caribbean Midwinters after the clinic, gave me experience of sailing in waves that was like nothing else I had done before. I heard several of the other mid-fleet sailors in Roses complaining about how unstable they felt sailing downwind in the waves on the first couple of days of the Masters Worlds. I had to chuckle. Anyone who survived the Fifth Caribbean Midwinters will never fear waves again.



2. Focus on the Laser. For many years I have raced Sunfish and Lasers. Sunfish were the dominant class in inland New Jersey. If you wanted large fleets of top-class competition in a single-handed class they were the game. Of all the days I spent racing, probably almost half were in Sunfish.

At the end of the summer of 2006 I sold my Sunfish, and since then have concentrated purely on Laser sailing. I'm sure it's made a difference. Funnily enough Focus was almost the first thing I wrote about on this blog. Took me a while to take my own medicine.

3. Moving to Rhode Island. When I lived in New Jersey most of my sailing was on inland lakes with the occasional foray to the shore for some bay sailing. Since moving to Rhode Island in May, I have spent the whole summer sailing regattas and practising on the sea. Lake sailing is not the same. I'm sure that the past few months of sailing in waves and chop, instead of the flat water of those lakes, have made me much faster in those conditions.

Geeze Tillerman, that's not exactly brain surgery. You're saying that the way to improve your sailing is to sail a lot in the boat in which you plan to race, in similar conditions to the regatta that you want to do well in? You expect people to read this crap?

No.

Storm World

It's Blog Action Day, a day for bloggers around the web to unite in writing about a single important issue - the environment.

The last time I tried to stir up some interest among my readers about climate change it generated a healthy debate in the comments. So this time I'll try not to piss of too many readers.

All of us who live near the coast and especially those of us who set sail on the high seas surely have an interest in storms, and especially in hurricanes. The question as to how global warming will affect hurricanes is still a topic of active debate in the scientific community.

On one side of the argument, climate scientists using sophisticated computer models are finding evidence that warmer seas will fuel more intense (but perhaps not more frequent) hurricanes. On the other side, some weather forecasters who specialize in hurricanes say those climate models are inherently unreliable, and that the data to demonstrate such a connection just doesn't exist.

I've just finished reading Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming by Chris Mooney, an excellent overview of this whole issue. If you care about the topic and want to become better informed you should read this book.

Oops. Did I do the right thing for the environment? How many extra trees are going to be felled when all my readers rush out and buy the book?

Tell you what. Do what I did. Borrow it from the local library.

Strine

I'm not very good at foreign languages so can someone please answer the following question for me...

If a British sailor on starboard tack on a beat is on a potential collision course with a port-tacker he will hail, "Starboard!" when a few boat-lengths away to let the port-tacker know he is there.

I discovered at the Laser Masters Worlds that, in similar circumstances, an Australian sailor will shout something that sounds like,

"Aaaaaeeeuurrrggaaaarrrrghhhh!!!!"

What the hell is he saying?

It's Not All About Winning

One of the cool things about this sailing blogging nonsense is the interesting stuff that comes back in the comments to some of my posts. The feedback can give me a whole new perspective on some aspect of the game, especially how to approach it mentally.

So thanks to the folk who left comments on my post on Friday about how to assess my performance at a major regatta and whether or not a score relative to the rest of the fleet was a good indicator of progress or not.

I liked the analogy by the ubiquitous anonymous commenter to the measurement of business performance. To paraphrase what he or she said (and maybe to twist it a bit)... what's the point of worrying about something you can't measure such as your actual absolute level of racing skills? At the end of the day we judge racing skills by how we do in races relative to other sailors. So "pick a metric and stick to it". Sounds good to me. I went up the Worlds fleet so that's all that matters.

From a totally different perspective, Tim asks, "Did you enjoy it?" Well, yes I did, Tim. A hell of a lot. Thanks for asking.

But would I have enjoyed it as much if I had been last in every race? Probably not. So doing well relative to the other sailors is one factor in whether a regatta is enjoyable, but not the only one. So many other things contribute to having fun at an event like that.

The two perspectives for assessing performance, "stick to the metric" and "did you enjoy it?" remind me of conversations I had with a fellow sailor from another fleet at the Masters Worlds...

Before the races started he asked me, "So, are you going to win?"

My reply was, "Oh no. I'm just here to have fun."

He answered something to the effect of, "Yes. But winning is fun."

I'm sure it is. And to be fair he had a much more realistic chance of winning his fleet than I had.

After the regatta was over I bumped into him again. I knew that he had had single digit finishes all week, and had a great chance of placing in the top three in his fleet if he could keep it up on the final day.

"So how did things go today?" I asked him.

Looking a bit despondent he moaned, "Ugh. A learning experience." He didn't look like he was having fun.

So everything's relative. If we do well compared to our expectations we feel good about it.

As I write this, the two contenders for the US Laser Olympic spot for 2008, Brad Funk and Andrew Campbell, are tied on points after the 16 race selection trials. The regatta is over and they are in the protest room with protests against each other. It will all be decided in the room. One goes to China. One goes home after several years of hard work. It's a tough sport at times.

Update: It's over. Campbell won the Trials.

Mommy Boats Redux

Back in June I wrote a post on Mommy Boats, heaping scorn on the increasingly common practice of sailors' at major Laser regattas having assistance from personal coaches on support boats. (Before, between and after the races of course. Outside assistance during races would be against the rules.)

There were even some sailors with Mommy Boats at the Masters Worlds in Spain. I wonder if that's the right name though? If older sailors have Mommy Boats shouldn't they be called Grandma Boats?

Anyway, the debate on this topic rages on in two threads on the Laser Forum and Sailing Anarchy. Both threads are mildly amusing if only for the insight they give into the mysterious ways in which some people's minds work and how they attempt to debate an issue like this. Where do people learn the rules of rational argument these days? Have they all been watching too much cable TV?

Can you spot which participants in these threads...

• really want to improve the sport
  
  
• are wannabe lawyers
  
  
• are still in third grade (or at least their debating and grammar skills haven't progressed since they were in third grade)
  
  
• are just trolls trying to be provocative
  
  
• are off their medications?

Where is Tillerman?

Conversation between two Laser sailors on the water between races at Roses...

American Sailor: Have you noticed that the guy who writes that Tillerman blog seems to do exactly the same regattas as you?

Me: Yes. Isn't that strange? Wonder if he's here?