Wednesday, January 20, 2010

236 Days Until 2010 Laser Masters Worlds


It's official! I'm in! The email arrived today...

Place Offer for World Laser Masters Championship 2010

Immediate action is required, this offer is time limited to Wed 3rd February 2010

A place has been offered to you at World Laser Masters Championship 2010 if you would like to accept this place please follow the link below, if you cannot attend the event please follow the alternative link which will allow the place to be offered to another sailor.


I'm one of only 18 North American sailors who have been offered places at the 2010 Laser Masters Worlds in England that starts in only 236 days.


My qualifications for being part of this select company are basically...
  • I have attended a previous Masters Worlds in the last 5 years
  • I got up early enough on the day entries opened to get my name near the top of the list.
I've written before about the byzantine method devised by the North American Laser class to decide who gets first dibs on places at the Masters Worlds. Actually it's tougher this year for average weekend warriors like me because they added a new category in the rankings ahead of us "have been to a Masters Worlds before" crowd. Now they give priority to sailors who have actually won a major Laser Masters championship in the last 5 years. Geeze, what an idea! Ranking people based on talent rather than participation!

Anyway, I guess there were less than 18 former champions who wanted to go and sail in England in September, so now bozos like me can still get in. Actually this is all rather a moot point in that I expect pretty much everyone who wants to go from North America will eventually be awarded a place. Other countries don't take up all their allocated places, so later on in the process these places get reallocated to countries that have more people wanting such places like us.

I see that that guy has a place too. And my friend with the J/30 is near the top of next group to be allocated places. The email dude from the six dudes and a sausage scene has applied to go too. Plus lots of other old friends and familiar names. It's going to be good.

Of course last year I was offered a place, but I had to turn it down because one of my sons decided to arrange his wedding for that same week. Can't happen again. All my offshoots are married off now.

Only 236 days to go. I'm excited. Better start thinking about a training plan...

10 comments:

Jolea said...

CONGRATS!!! GET TRAINING!!! We will be cheering for you!

SFBayLaser said...

Congratulations on getting an early berth!

For an example of unintended consequences of a more restrictive "qualification" system you can check out the status of the application list for your countrymen (see application list and click on the + for the United Kingdom). Even though their maximum allocation (see allocations) is 120, and they have only had some 108 people actually apply, their system means they have had to decline applications for 16 sailors. Notably, this list includes Peter Whipp who has not missed a Master Worlds in 15 years!

Note that the maximum allocation for North America is 72 and our region has some 64 sailors having applied for entry. Right now it looks good that all will get in.

Tillerman said...

Right on SFBayLaser.

In spite of my occasional attempts to poke fun at the quite complicated ranking method in N.America I do think it has struck a good balance between making sure that our elite Masters sailors do get guaranteed a place while also awarding places to average sailors like myself who are fairly regular attendees at the Worlds and other Master regattas.

I must take a look at the UK rules. Maybe I can poke fun at those too. My (predominantly American) readership will like that!

OHara said...

Happy to hear you will be representing the US in England, but
I am disturbed by the image at the head of your post. Something just doesn't look right. Madagascar to Somalia to central Africa should be in clockwise order. Did you mirror image the globe to make some subtle point?

Tillerman said...

OHara...

Answer #1. Well spotted. This blog is full of hidden meanings and subtle points. It's like one of those Russian dolls... or an onion. You can keep peeling off the layers and finding more deep messages in every layer.

Answer #2. Geeze. I never noticed. I just grabbed an image of the world off Google Images.

We report. You decide.

Carol Anne said...

Funny. That reversed globe was the first thing I noticed about this post as well. I'm going with Answer #2.

JP said...

Congrats and welcome back to blighty!

Maybe I should pop over to Hayling Island and cheer - for the home team of course ;)



(word verification: moneys)

Tillerman said...

For those of you troubled by the "reflected" world image, it came originally from this site http://www.dayinscience.unsw.edu.au/ which is about a program where scientists around the world are invited to write about what they each did on a particular day, in order to show school students where they can go in science.

There is no mention on the site as to why the image is apparently flipped. Maybe it was just the kind of optics that were used on the satellite or other space vehicle that originally took the image.

Brent J. Burrows II said...

Congrats!!!! Im waiting on my email for youth radials!

Pat said...

Gee, I thought the image was merely the earth's reflection on the bumper of a giant alien spaceship. Nothing to worry about. Stick with the training schedule. Do not look behind the curtain. Keep up the wind intervals or hiking practice and roll tack drills and inverted hull finishing practice and whatever else it is that Laser sailors need to do to succeed.

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