Little Guy

He was only 7 years old that summer. He had learned to sail an Optimist a few weeks earlier and so I took him and his elder brother on a week long Optimist sailing camp at our home sailing club on Rutland Water in the UK.

My role was to be a sailing instructor and coach for a group of about 8 or 10 kids. Neither of my own sons was in that group, which was probably just as well for all concerned. My little guy was in the beginners' group. His big brother was in the top group working on his racing skills and all that good stuff.

It was a fun week. One day we organized a treasure hunt where the kids had to sail from place to place around the reservoir picking up clues. For the older kids it was a good challenge; as for the little ones they probably sailed further and over more open water on that day than they had ever done before.

As luck would have it, the treasure hunt was held on the windiest day of the camp. Some of the younger kids were struggling to handle the windier conditions. At the second or third stop for clues around the lake, about a couple of miles up the lake from the club, some of the kids in my little guy's group came over to me and told me he was freaking out. He didn't want to sail any more.

I wasn't sure how to handle it. Part of me wanted to be the protective parent and tell my son that he could forget sailing and that he could ride in the rescue boat with me; part of me wanted to encourage him to face his fears and tough it out; part of me felt that the adults in charge of his group should deal with the situation as they felt best.

I probably wasn't a very good Dad or a very good coach that day. I refused to intervene and he had to sail all the way back to the club in his Optimist just like all the big kids did. He sailed straight back to the beach and didn't participate in the climax of the treasure hunt, some hokey thing to do with a ghost appearing on a moored boat to "scare" all the kids.

I don't suppose the experience did the little guy too much permanent harm. He didn't give up sailing. He went on to sail all kinds of boats, learned how to kayak and windsurf too, won his share of races, turned out to be a better sailor than me.

He's not a little guy any more. That Optimist camp was 21 summers ago. Little guy is getting married this weekend to a wonderful woman whom we all love.

I'm so proud of him.

Those Guys

I've written here at length about some, perhaps mythical, sailor I call "that guy". He's the one I'm always trying to beat on the race course but never do. (Well hardly ever.)

The truth is that there isn't just one "that guy". There are a whole bunch of them... "those guys." Old geezers like me who I'm always meeting at Laser regattas up and down the east coast. I've been crossing tacks with them for years. They are all tough competitors on the race course and good fun afterwards.

Here are photos of three of my "those guys" at the Laser Masters Worlds in Canada this week thanks to capizzano.com.

John Bentley

Alain Vincey

Amnon Gitelson

Good luck to all "those guys".

Hot Laser Masters Worlds Interviews

So far we have been following action at the Laser Masters Worlds in Canada by catching up on some of the blogs of participating sailors. But hey, look at this, now we have a YouTube video interview with six of the sailors, including some of the guys who are racing in the Grandmasters Standard Fleet, my fleet if I'd actually been able to go to the Worlds this year. Kudos to our intrepid video reporter at the Worlds, LauraLee Symes, for this scoop.



The thing that makes me chuckle about this video is the varying reactions of the sailors when LauraLee sticks the camera in their faces and asks one of those hard-hitting reporter-type questions like, "What are you going to do today?"

Mark Bethwaite is the coolest and most relaxed of the bunch. But then he has been winning major sailing championships for decades and so probably has lots of experience in dealing with the "press".

But some of the others have that "deer in the headlights" look, and deal with the question in a variety of different ways. Tracy Usher is politically correct, as always, and tells the reporter he is going to "have fun". Poor Rob Hodson is caught as he is lathering up with sunscreen and spends most of the interview trying to rub the sunscreen out of his eyes and mumbling incoherently.

But best of all is the last interview with LauraLee's husband Bill Symes. After LauraLee asks him the delightfully vague question, "What are you doing here?" he silently maintains a clenched teeth grin for all of ten seconds... what is he thinking?

But then, amazingly, he goes on to predict that he's going to beat Bethwaite and Gerz and win the race. Which is exactly what he did!

Thanks LauraLee. Maybe we will see some more video reporting before the week is over?

Picture Contest

I found this photo on a sailing blog yesterday. Where was it taken?

Prize for the first correct answer - 5% discount off the price of the fabulous amazing awesome Proper Course: The Laser Experience!

Bullet

I have a stupid question?

Why do people say, "he scored a bullet," when somebody wins a sailing race?

Where does it come from? Does it have anything to do with the expression "bite the bullet"? Can you only say "score a bullet" or is it OK to say "did a bullet" or "got the bullet" or other variations?

Anyway my compatriots from Laser District 7 (aka New England in non-Lasering circles) were doing bullets all over the place in the Laser Masters Worlds on Monday.


Our blogging friend Marc Jacobi (I told you he was good) made a bullet in one of the Masters Standard Rig fleets and told us all about it in Second Day - Patience (and confidence) are virtues.




Meanwhile in the other Masters Standard Rig fleet, Scott Ferguson bulleted too. His blogging wife Kim tell the story in The "bullet" Boys! Kim also gives a shout-out for fellow Newport fleet member Peter Seidenberg who has been shooting bullets every day in the Great Grandmaster Radial Fleet.


Dr J didn't make any bullets on Monday but he was racing in Peter's fleet and tells us in Second Day how Peter crossed him by inches halfway up the first beat but after that things went downhill for Dr J.

After twenty years of experience racing against Peter, I have one piece of advice for Dr J. If Mr. Seidenberg is going right and you are going left then he is probably right and you are wrong. Tack before he crosses you and lead him out to the right. Good things will probably happen.

Tracy Usher didn't bullet on Monday either. He starts his post 2009 Masters' World, day two saying, "In summary: ugh!"

Dave Sliom had a "not bad" Day 2 but no bulleting, and is looking forward to using his Chesapeake experience in the forecast light and shifty stuff on Tuesday.

So enough about the hotshots at the Worlds. Let's get back to the real subject of this blog... me. I've done a few bullets you know, had my bullet moments, shot the proverbial B thingie. If you don't believe me check out Just One of Those Days and Marblehead. Oh yeah, I can be a real bulleter some days.

So how did this expression "bullet" originate? And have I been using it correctly?

what a plonker

This blog has many uses. Some people find it amusing. Some people find it interesting. Some people even say it has inspired them to do crazy things like take up sailboat racing or writing a blog.

In the last few days, some dudes called Anonymous (or perhaps it is one dude called Anonymous talking with himself -- there are certain similarities in the writing styles of our protagonists) have been using it to abuse some other dude called Anonymous for a helpful comment that the latter Anonymous made on a post I wrote over three years ago: Taplow Lake Sailing Club. Here is the unedited conversation in its entirety...

Anonymous said...
"I've no idea why all those cars are parked on the right side."

The local Farmer has found it more profitable to use his field for car boot sales rather than grow things - it clogs up the A4 (The main road you can see in the picture) every Saturday during the summer (just about anyway)!

Thank you for the history - TSC is one of the clubs we are looking at to join as a family.
6:55 PM



Anonymous said...
to the that idiot who says he gets stuck in the car boot sale traffic every saturday i would just like to let him the sale is on a sunday!!
5:27 AM



Anonymous said...
what a plonker if he does not know his saturdays from his sundays can you imagin what it would be like to sail with him!
5:41 AM



Anonymous said...
here here
8:59 AM



Anonymous said...
i know him he does not even know the date his son was born prat
12:40 PM




Anonymous said...
i bet he supports millwall
12:42 PM




Anonymous said...
if he knew what day they play
12:43 PM




Anonymous said...
in that prats back garden
4:29 AM




Anonymous said...
where is his garden i would like to dig it up what amoron
4:31 AM



Anonymous said...
are you sure he is not related to the captain of the titanic
3:44 PM

I guess it takes all sorts...

Where's Waldo?

Where's Waldo? No wait. I mean, where's Tillerman?

The photo above is (most of) Team USA at the Laser Masters Worlds being sailed in Nova Scotia this week. Regular readers of this blog will know that the Masters Worlds is one of my favorite events as I wrote extensively here about all the fun I had at the last two Worlds in Australia and Spain.

There are a lot of familiar faces of old sailing friends in that photo. But I'm not there.

I should be there. I qualified to enter (not actually very hard). I beat the rush and entered on time. My entry was accepted.

But then I had to withdraw because my son decided to get married next weekend. I did briefly consider whether I could make both of these major events. After all the wedding isn't until Sunday... but no, it wouldn't work. The last race on Saturday could start as late as just two hours before the rehearsal dinner which is 824 miles away from the regatta site. Not practical.

So I will go to the wedding instead and look forward to the 2010 Laser Masters Worlds in England. Only 378 days to go!

But I can follow the 2009 regatta vicariously (not often you see that word on a sailing blog) through the bloggers that are sailing in it and/or writing about it. It's a very complicated event because there are 297 sailors who are actually competing in seven different fleets depending on their age group and which rig they choose, Standard or Radial. It's actually even more complex than that because one of the fleets is so large that they have had to break it down into two fleets with a qualifying series first.

So here are the bloggers covering the event that I know of so far. Please let me know if you find any others...

Kim Ferguson, whose husband Scott is racing in the Masters (age 45-54) Standard Rig Division, has a post about the first day's racing Some pretty good sailors comin' from little Rhody which concentrates on how well the top sailors from the Newport Laser Fleet, including her husband, are doing against some very high quality competition.

Dave Sliom from the rival Laser fleet in Annapolis, Maryland is also in the Masters Standard Division. He is one of those guys who sailed Lasers many years ago, then went off and did keelboats for a while, but came back to Lasers about 18 months ago because of the "simple beauty of the Laser". Sounds as if he is really having a blast doing Masters event. Read all about his first day at the Worlds in Day 1.

Let's see. Newport - check. Annapolis - check. Anybody there from the other top-notch Laser frostbite fleet on the east coast of the US, Cedar Point YC at Westport in Connecticut? Of course, there's a bunch, including blogger Marc Jacobi who tells us all about his First day. When I sailed at Cedar Point, Marc was regularly the fleet champion and very much the informal coach and advisor who was always helping the rest of us to improve our sailing. I think I am right in saying that Marc is one of only two Laser sailors who has qualified and sailed in every US Olympic Trials since the Laser became an Olympic boat (the other being Kurt Taulbee.) Marc is also in the Masters Standard Division and doing pretty well so far.


And here's yet another sailor in that division. Tracy Usher from the San Francisco Bay area, also by the way president of the North American Laser Class, has posted 2009 Masters Worlds Day One. Wow, this guy must have a photographic memory. His account of the second race retells every shift, every tack, every competitor ducked or crossed... or so it seems. Well I guess when you can score a second place finish in this level of competition you do remember all the details. Well done Tracy.



Finally we have Dr J, the author of Favored End, who is sailing in the Great Grandmasters (over 65) Radial Fleet, and who (I think) is also from Annapolis. He is a recent convert to Laser Masters sailing after racing other dinghies and small keelboats for most of his life. He has posted an account of the First Day of Racing but my favorite post on his blog is Couch Potato, about his unique method for getting fit for Laser sailing.

Reading all these blogs makes me wish I was out there on St. Margaret's Bay racing with these guys. Oh well. Can't be helped. I had better give some thought to that father-of-the-groom speech for the rehearsal dinner on Saturday. Anybody got any ideas?

Proper Course: The Laser Experience!

You have read the blog. Now you can experience Laser sailing Tillerman-style by signing up for Proper Course: The Laser Experience!

Exclusively for readers of Proper Course we are now offering a very special adventure. Come to a Laser sailing seminar in Rhode Island run by the one and only Tillerman.

Those other Laser clinics say they will teach you how to win races. But can you really believe them?

Proper Course: The Laser Experience! is different. We will teach you how to solidify your status as a mid-fleet mediocrity and how to relish your obscurity. With our many years of experience we have plenty of information to share and many new ideas and “secrets” that you will learn only from us.



Our coach
With vast ineffective racing experience in the Laser and Sunfish classes, and a veteran of four unsuccessful Laser Masters Worlds campaigns, Tillerman understands the needs of mid-fleet muddlers and back-of-the-fleet bozos alike. Tillerman's clumsiness and ability to spend hours on the water discovering different ways to make a Laser go even slower are legendary.

Sample Seminar Schedule

Day 1: Rigging and boat handling

21 wrong ways to rig a Laser

7 ways to screw up mark roundings including...

• hook opponent's sheet with your bow
• hook opponent's sheet with your neck
• port tack layline nowhere-to-go
• Tillerman's special auto-double-gybe followed by collision with inside boat
  

13 different wrong ways to gybe

9 different tacking technique mistakes.

Develop your own personal style for losing Laser races.

Day 2: Physical fitness

Experience Tillerman's unique approach to sailing unfitness.

Before breakfast we will practice the patented "run walk run-slower walk-even-slower stop-and-rest" workout method. Train your mind and body to "taper" your physical performance so that even if by some fluke you win the start, you will still slip back to mid-fleet or worse by the end of each race.



After breakfast we will learn how riding a bike on the back lanes of Tiverton and Little Compton will maintain your weight in the target "fatties-sail-slow zone". We will be stopping at Provender at Four Corners for mid-morning sandwiches, followed by Grays for triple scoop ice-creams, and then lunch at Evelyn's enjoying clam cakes and chowder, the special two pound fried seafood platter and their signature lobster chow mein, finishing with apple pie and ice cream all washed down with a few jars of Newport Storm beer.

(Afternoon Laser practice optional but unlikely.)


Day 3: Starting style and technique

10 ways to mess up a start at the committee boat

5 really bad techniques for pin-end starts

Be a "starboard tack shark" and learn how to deal with being OCS

Practice hiding from the race committee in the mid-line sag.


Once you have learned Tillerman's starting style you will never have to worry about "holding your lane" again... because you will never have a clear lane.


Day 4: Mental health day

Today we will focus on mastering Tillerman's mental approach to Laser sailing.

We will set sailing goals and then brainstorm ways to avoid achieving them.

We will look at the weather every hour during the day and invent a difference excuse why it's not time to go sailing yet.

We will inspect our boats, make lists of required maintenance, and then learn the seven excuses for never actually doing any work on the boat.

At the end of Day 4 you will be a professional procrastinator.

(Afternoon Laser practice optional but not recommended: if you sail you fail.)


Day 5: Putting it all together

Today we will practice as a group all of our new skills. Each student will be given a two minute start over the rest of the fleet in practice races and then, by using the Tillerman Laser Techniques, will be humiliated as the rest of the fleet overtake him or her. We are expecting a guest appearance from that guy who will demonstrate that however a big a lead you establish early in the race, he can always crush you before the finish.


At the end of the day you will know that you will never be a winner and be resigned to your true status as a failure and back-of-the fleet bum.

Every evening of your week at Proper Course:The Laser Experience! we have special events arranged for you...

• Visit to the Proper Course Fitness Center (aka Tillerman's basement gym) to admire the pristine condition of Tillerman's rarely used hiking bench.
  
  
• Guest lecture by renowned Boston lawyer and Racing Rules expert Litoralis on "Procedural Tricks and Head Fakes Guaranteed to Confuse the Protest Committee."
  
  
• Visit to the Proper Course Interactive Gaming Center (aka Tillerman's basement man-cave) for tactical training on Sailx. We will be racing against world-famous online sailors such as bigNeil, theycallmegod and CspotFoul. If you wish you can hire Litoralis at a special discounted hourly rate to represent you in the Sailx Protest Room.
  
  
• Trip to the bars of Newport RI to demonstrate the effects of alcohol consumption on dehydration and its impact on sailing performance the next day.
  
  
• Try the hot new work-out... pole dancing. Or, if you prefer, just watch.

We hope you will join us for an excellent time sailing in the beautiful waters of Narragansett Bay. Depending on the wind and weather conditions we can perfect our death rolls in the big waves off Third Beach, ogle the trophy wives in Bristol, or see if we can score a rare sighting in Wickford of the last surviving Force 5 sailor in New England.

This course is a lot of work for the participants, but a few days of hard work will cement your status as a loser for the rest of your life. The learning curve is awesomely shallow.



Sign up before Sep 14th for the special introductory discount price of only $3995 for the 5-day seminar. This once-in-a-lifetime price includes instruction, charter boat, and commemorative T-shirt. Beer, chow mein and tips for the dancers not included.

Coming soon, by the same people who brought you Proper Course: The Laser Experience! ...

• Proper Course: The Dating Agency!
• Proper Course: The Haiku Composition Weekend!
• Proper Course: Pole Dancing for Beginners!
  

10% discount on all seminars for previous attendees at Proper Course: The Laser Experience!

The original suggestion which inspired me to launch my new business venture Proper Course: The Laser Experience! came from a request on Captain JP's log to create "the ultimate YourBlog Experience! that captures the essence of what your blog is about and which your audience might possibly be convinced to pay to do." Thanks for the idea JP.

Thanks also (and apologies) to those other Laser training schools who inevitably provided some of the inspiration for this post, especially SailFit, Rick White's Sailing Seminars and the Laser Training Center at Cabarete. Without their help I would be an even worse Laser sailor than I actually am.

Do Old Geezers Blog?

Do old geezers blog?

Well, I do. So others might.

More specifically, are any of the sailors racing in the 2009 Laser Masters (aka Old Geezers) Worlds which starts on Sunday going to be blogging day by day about the event? I enjoyed following the recent Young Dudes Laser Worlds via the blogs of four or five of the entrants, and I posted here summaries of what they had to say along with links to their posts.

But what about the Old Geezer Laser Worlds? Are there going to be any blogs covering it?

So far the only one I am aware of is Marc Jacobi's Blog.

Three and Three Quarters

One of the reasons that I've not been sailing so much this summer is that I've been spending more time with my granddaughter Emily who is exactly 3 years and 9 months old today. We've been looking after her and her brother Aidan every Tuesday, and she has been down at our house with her family almost every weekend. We've been doing lots of kid friendly summer stuff and, frankly, it's been even more fun than Laser sailing.

This Saturday I am taking Emily to her swimming lesson. Geeze, I'm turning into the grandad version of Crazy Swim Dad.

No regrets. There won't be another summer when she's three.