GORE-TEX® - Best Thing Since Salted Beef

Second entry in our group writing project this month is via email from Steve who describes himself as "an ex dinghy sailor, who spent a bit of time sailing keelboats and things."

If I have only one piece of advice to offer you it is wear GORE-TEX®.

Unless you are an habitual dinghy sailor, doomed for eternity to squeeze yourself into a wetsuit, you must have had to put on a set of oilskins. (This is what we call wet weather gear where I come from in England).

If you are old enough, you would have to remember the appalling range of wet weather gear available pre-GORE-TEX®. Who can forget slipping into a sodden mass of wet nylon and bits of mesh, masquerading as a "waterproof", a contravention of the Trades Description Act if I ever met one. Ill fitting and with the absorbent properties of a bath full of sponges, these garments served only to hasten the onset of pneumonia if worn for any length of time and would increase the weight of the wearer to life threatening proportions.

But then there was progress....I remember being overjoyed when my parents stumped up for a set of French Equinox oilies. These were basically just extra thick PVC in shocking yellow, yet the knowledge that when sent to the foredeck, you would return wet only half way up your arms and halfway down your chest made the experience almost tolerable. But sit for a while and OH the sweat! This led to a constant robing/disrobing process, which would often make the entire crew look like it had fleas. But then, after decades of misery, miracle upon miracle, there came GORE-TEX®.

GORE-TEX® has made wet weather sailing pleasurable. GORE-TEX® means coming ashore free of a full body case of nappy rash. GORE-TEX® means you won't smell like the lost property bin of the local gym. GORE-TEX® is Great. GORE-TEX® has to have improved the life of more sailing folk than any other invention since salted beef

Wear GORE-TEX®.

Thanks Steve.

So where is the flood of ideas I expected on Best Sailing Invention Ever? What are you waiting for? Do I need to offer prizes? First prize, a mooseburger dinner date with Sarah Palin perhaps? Full details on how to participate at Best Sailing Invention Ever.

Slogan Contest

He's at it again.

I've written before in World's Most Expensive Sail and Dear Sunfish Class about the penchant of a certain pop-star billionaire to use his Sunfish as a romantic location for charming ladies that take his fancy. It was how he first snagged Heather Mills... and we all know how well that turned out. Now Sir Paul McCartney is once again a-wooing on a Sunfish, this time with his latest squeeze Nancy Shevell according to this story in the Mail Online.

Surely this is too good an opportunity for the leaders of the Sunfish class to ignore? Photo after photo, tabloid story after story, proving that the Sunfish is not only a toy of the rich and famous but also, apparently, a powerful aphrodisiac.

So if you were in charge of marketing and public relations for the Sunfish, what slogan would you choose to launch a campaign to promote the boat based on some aspect of this sex/money/pop-star angle?

The Mast! Invented After the Sail

The first contribution to our group writing project on Best Sailing Innovation Ever comes via email from Jim Katz, who has such amazing insight into nautical invention pre-history that I assume he must be a professor of anthropology or archaeology at one of the world's major universities...

Uurrgh, who was one of the earliest boatmen, having awoken one morning to find himself inexplicably floating on a slightly hollow log the morning after feasting on some fermented berries, discovered that if he stood up on the log, the breeze pushed him along the surface of the water. The Sail was born! This was the state of sailing affairs for 18 thousand years, until one day an especially bright spark noticed that when the wind freshened, he found himself falling repeatedly off the log. That's when he invented the Mast to have something to hold on to. Further improvements followed at a blinding pace as not ten thousand years later it was noted that you could hang somebody else on the mast instead of yourself; then their skin only seemed to do the job even better, and could Kevlar and Carbon be far behind?

Hmmm. What have I started? Beat that if you can.

Best Sailing Innovation Ever

"Best Sailing Innovation Ever" is the title of this month's group writing project. Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to write a few lines about what innovation, new idea, or invention has been most significant for the sport of sailing or has contributed most to your enjoyment of it. Explain what the innovation is and tell us why you think it is so significant.

You might write about some technical advance such as canting keels or GPS. Or perhaps you think something much more mundane has dramatically contributed to your boating pleasure... such as the class 2 trailer hitch, or Velcro fasteners on sailing gloves. It doesn't have to be a very recent innovation... perhaps you are a fan of Mr Cunningham's contribution to sail control, or of Mr Darby's idea for using a handheld sail mounted on a universal joint to steer a sailing craft.

It doesn't even have to be a technical innovation. If you're into race management maybe you think that the dreaded Black Flag is the best thing that ever happened for the sport. Or if your passion is Racing Rules you might want to write about how Rule 44.1 has revolutionized sailboat racing.

Whatever. Be creative. Be a maverick.

Same rules as usual...


1. Write a post on your blog on the subject of "Best Sailing Innovation Ever".

2. Once you've posted your story, let me know about it by sending an email to tillermeister@gmail.com including a link to your post. If you don't have a blog just email me the story and I will post it here. Please let me know about your post, or send me your story, before Saturday 20 September. Choose a unique title for your story please. We don't want a dozen posts all entitled "Best Sailing Innovation Ever".

3. I will post here two links to your story. Every day or so I will write a post listing any new entries in the project. Then at the end of the project I will provide a summary post with links to all of your articles about innovations, ideas and inventions.

Please participate in this project. Do it for fun. Do it to so that new readers will find your blog. Do it to show off your eruditeness. Do it to educate others. Do it to please me.

Oh for Neptune's sake, just do it.

Surprise me.

Getting Serious About the Olympics

There's been a lull in posting here caused by a trip to the UK (without my laptop) and then my laptop going kaput on the day I returned. Perhaps it was lonely?

I'm still catching up on the US news while I've been away... why is this hockey mom who looks like she escaped from a Lenscrafters ad on the TV so much now? ... the Yankees are how many games behind? ... and it can't be football season already surely?

Anyway I haven't read much about what the US is planning to do to improve on its relatively dismal medal performance in Sailing at the 2008 Olympics. I did listen to John McCain's speech last night... but I don't think he mentioned this vital element of national policy. At least I didn't hear anything about sailing before I fell asleep somewhere in between his story about how being a POW is perfect preparation for being a POTUS (amazing nobody thought of this before), and the bit about how his new friend Sarah "works with her hands and nose". What was that all about?

Sorry about falling asleep Big John. Blame the jet-lag. But I'm not going to vote for you if you don't promise that the US will win a medal in every class in the sailing competition at the 2012 Olympics. Forget all that irrelevant stuff about offshore drilling (gets in the way of sailing) and the bridge to nowhere (I hate sailing under bridges anyway). At least the Democrats did show a sailing video at their convention.

Anyway I offer two observations for anyone in the US who is interested in raising the level of US sailing Olympic performance based on a couple of Olympics news snippets I read while in the UK.

• The British Track and Field team had a target to win five medals in Beijing. They "only" won four. So this week they fired the "director of elite performance", which I think is Britspeak for head coach.
  
  Has anybody responsible for the US Sailing Team been fired?
  
  
• Apparently the English professional football (Britspeak for soccer) teams hire a lot of promising youngsters of which only a few are kept on for professional careers with the teams. So someone came up with the bright idea of testing the kids that don't make the cut to assess their potential to excel in other sports... cycling, track, volleyball, cheese-rolling, midget-tossing, whatever... with a view to developing the best of the bunch for the Olympic teams. Sounds like a brilliant move to me. Here you have a source of fit, ambitious, highly motivated young men ready for a new challenge. It would surely be a shame if they all went off to be accountants or estate agents (Britspeak for realtor) or yobs (Britspeak for Red Sox fans).
  
  So what are the plans for finding the next generation of top sailors in the US?
  
  

When? In Your Time

I've been playing this song over and over again in the car while I've been driving to and from sailing. At first the lyrics puzzled me. Then I realized... Bob Seger is singing to his son and teaching him some lessons about life.

So I dedicate this post to my grandson, Aidan.

Feel the wind
And set yourself the bolder course
Keep your heart
As open as a shrine
You'll sail the perfect line.

You'll be fine, in your time.

How Much?

How much should we pay to enter a sailing regatta?

It seems like this year I've been paying around $40 or so a day as regatta fees to enter Laser regattas around here. Sometimes it's hard to see what I'm getting for my money...

Yes, a race committee... I guess they need gas for their powerboats.

Maybe drinking water between races; maybe snacks before, after or between races. But not always. And sometimes I have to pay extra for food and drink.

The winners get trophies too; they have to be paid for too. I don't begrudge that even though they rarely end up on my shelf.

I've run regattas myself in the past and know the challenges of drawing up a regatta budget. You don't want to lose money. You don't want to overcharge and scare sailors away. And you have no idea how many folk will actually show up and pay their money on the day.

Still, 40 bucks seems a lot. Am I getting old? I don't want to turn into that old curmudgeon who got into a slanging match with his fleet captain over a $5 regatta fee.

Some organizers seem to run excellent regattas for much less. What do they do differently?

How much do you think you should pay to enter a sailing regatta?

Wow

On Saturday I went off to Lake Whippersnapper for the informal Laser practice racing that I also wrote about in Just Six Laser Dudes Racing Round a Sausage.

This week there were actually seven Laser dudes.

And new technology.

First couple of times I did this, one of the racers took it upon himself to blow whistles for the three-minute starting sequence. This was also the method used for starts at the world famous Goose Poop Beach Sailing Club when I sailed there. How anyone can do this and still get a decent start himself is beyond me.

But this week we had a virtual committee boat.

The dude that sends out the emails to encourage us all to go sailing Saturday afternoons must be a pretty clever dude. He had taken it upon himself to build one of those automatic starting machines, a bit like the Ollie Wallock Automated Sailboat Race Start Machine that is fairly well known in the dinghy racing world these days. Just press a button and it sounds all the start signals.

But the email dude had gone one better. He had mounted his system in one of those rigid plastic picnic coolers and was using that as the buoy for the starboard end of the start line. There was a button on top of the cooler and a kind of horn for the sound to come out. All he needed to do every race was sail up to the cooler, press the button, and we were in sequence.

Wow!

A virtual committee boat.

All it needs is some way to recognize boats OCS and race committees will be obsolete. Maybe a paintball fired down the line at time zero?

When

Last week of August...

The weather these last two weeks has been spectacular. The intense heat of the earlier summer has disappeared and we have been enjoying long balmy days with comfortably cool nights. Perfect weather for enjoying the outdoors. Perfect weather for sailing...

Last Friday I went Lasering in the Eastern Passage. Just cruising around between Aquidneck and Prudence Island, enjoying the views to north and south, admiring the yachts sailing by, soul sailing at its best, and letting my mind wander where it will go...

Last week of August. A back to school, end of summer feel. Easing back a bit after the frenetic "racing 2 or 3 days every weekend pace" of July and early August. Knowing that the coming months of September and October will offer some of the best sailing weather of the year. Much to look forward to.

And thinking... if I live to be 90 then I am currently at the end of August in my life span. Sounds about right. The intense heat and activity of June and July are over, thank god. No more sweating away in glass boxes. Now it's time to enjoy the good times, relish life, kick back, sail more, spend time with grandchildren. Much to look forward to.

Not time yet to think about frostbiting in December...

What month of your life are you in?

Whence

A few minutes ago the Democratic National Convention in Denver watched a film tribute to Senator Edward Kennedy, which included a number of shots of the senator sailing with his family on his schooner Mya.

Now this blog is getting numerous hits to my post on Mya, courtesy of the fact that it is #1 on the list if you Google "schooner Mya".

I'm dumbstruck. The connection between a major national event in Colorado, a TV audience, the oddities of a search engine algorithm, and the direction of readers to some obscure sailing blog written by an old Laser dude in Rhode Island just strikes me as seriously weird.