Caption Contest

Sandy Is Coming!

According to rightweather.net ...

The track of the storm is one that is potentially very destructive for the Southern New England coast. It doesn’t matter if it is a pure hurricane or, much more likely, a storm that is becoming extra-tropical, any storm with a central pressure near 950mb when it crosses Eastern Long Island and heads northwest is sure to throw a storm surge and screaming winds into the coast.

Woo hoo!

This could be interesting...

They don't like it up 'em

I was saddened to hear in last night's presidential debate that the US military doesn't have as many bayonets these days as they did in 1917.

The value of the bayonet as an excellent tool for dealing with uncooperative foreigners was a recurring theme in the BBC television series Dad's Army. Corporal Jones, a World War 1 veteran, was famous for often recounting his experiences using the bayonet in action and reminding anyone who would listen that, "They don't like it up 'em!"


 


Call me old-fashioned, but I say let's bring back the bayonet.

Fat Boys Regatta 2012

It was an odd day in several respects.

First of all, the Fat Boys Regatta at Bristol YC has been a regular event on the local Laser regatta schedule for many years now. But, although I frequently sail in Bristol and although it's probably the Laser regatta that is closest to my current home where I have lived since 2007, I have never sailed the Fat Boys before. Indeed I've never set foot in Bristol YC before.

I'm not sure why. My son and I were planning to do the Fat Boys in 2008 but went off to play at the waves in Third Beach instead. See Fat Boy and Little Man.

Second of all, the weather was seriously weird. It was foggy in the morning and there was still a light drizzle when we launched from the club around 11am. There was a decent breeze, 8-13 knots say, at the scheduled start time, but as soon as the sun came out it died off to more like 3-6 knots for most of the time. Then, almost like someone suddenly turned a switch on, the wind went right and increased to about 15-20 knots at about 2:45.

Very weird day.

My results were mainly nothing to write home about. So I'll write home about them.

There were 22 boats. In the light winds I was usually finishing around 15th. Not good. But not totally humiliating.

It was obvious after a while that the right usually paid. The guys who went hard right immediately after the start and sailed almost into the shore usually came out ahead. But not always.

I was getting great starts. That's the third weird thing. I think I might finally have overcome my mental barrier to getting up in the first row at starts and fighting for a good hole to accelerate into.

But I never really made the commitment to go hard right in the light winds. There were always lots of shifts that tempted me to tack on headers and sail on lifts instead of continuing to go right. For a while being in the middle looked really good. I was ahead of boats to right and left. Until those fat bastards on the right came roaring in on a huge lift.

Oh well!

But there was one bright spot. After a few races I noticed that after rounding the leeward mark on to the final beat for the finish, there was a band of stronger wind near the layline to the finish line on the left side of the course. I went for it in the last couple of light air races and probably picked up five places each time I did, as everyone else seemed to go right. I don't know why they did that. Maybe they just figured that as it paid on the first beat, it would work again? Anyway, it was good to pass a lot of boats approaching the finish and I think I may have even made the top ten in one of those races. Children can be so cruel at my age.

And then they switched on the wind!

What a contrast. Now it was gut-busting hiking-hard upwind and ohmigod please don't let me capsize downwind. People were capsizing all over the place. I saw one broken mast. I saw one sailor repairing her boat with a screwdriver. I saw one boat that seemed to be on its side for ages being helped by the safety boat.

So I hit the hiking straps and went hard right and was in the top three or four boats at the windward mark in the first heavy air race. Woo hoo! How did that happen? I gybed on to port, headed straight for the leeward mark and just tried to keep the long pointy thing aiming at the sky. The boats near me headed further left but I grimly hung on to my rhumb line course and, out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of my competitors capsize. Ha! I was second at the leeward mark and should have come second in the race but I was so excited to be doing so well that I had a brain freeze about which end to go for on the highly biased finish line, and I was passed at the finish by the young guy who eventually won the regatta.

Hey, third is pretty good for me in this company.

In the second heavy air race I was strictly in survival mode. Just keep the boat going. Don't capsize. Don't capsize. And I somehow scored a fifth! Not too shabby.

I was having so much fun and was looking forward to some more heavy air racing, but the race officer waved for us all to sail back to the club. I discovered later that the safety boat (which was also serving as the mark boat) had somehow got itself literally tangled up with one of the capsized Lasers and so was unable to reset the marks to run some more races.

Oh well. A great day, nevertheless.

I was on such a high that I was still babbling to anyone who would listen about what a great time I had had as we derigged our boats and enjoyed beer and pizza at the awards ceremony.

After the awards (no podium for me - I ended up 12th) one of my friends, who also reads my blog, pointed out that I must have been having fun because I didn't quit this regatta early. He was right. In fact, if you don't count the one day masters regatta at Cabarete in January, this was the first regatta all year in which I had completed all the races.

For a while, early in the year, I was using my back injury as an excuse for quitting before the end of all the races.

Then I was using the excuse that I only do this for fun, and if I wasn't having fun I would quit early. Although this was, of course, really just  another way of saying that I wasn't fit enough to be able to have fun sailing all day.

Maybe my 14 consecutive days of Laser sailing in Menorca really has built up my stamina to where it used to be?

Or maybe my problem was all in my head all along, and I have finally snapped out of my funk?

What an odd day. But in a good way.

I'm all fired up for the start of the frostbiting season now. Bring it on!

Cheat the Nursing Home

Cheat the nursing home. 

Die on your LASER. 

Not at the hands of a fellow resident of your "assisted living facility."

Natural Navigation Quiz

1. What state are we in? (If you can't guess this one, I'll disown you all.)
2. Which way are we looking?
3. What was I standing on to take this photo?
4. Where is the nearest sailing club?
5. Where is the nearest boathouse that isn't a boathouse?
6. What did Tillerwoman and I have for dinner?

Unsolicited Email

I am a bad person.

Sometimes I have fun when I get those unsolicited phone calls selling products I don't need or requesting contributions to sketchy charities that I have never heard of. I string the callers along for a while while gently taking the piss out of them.

I am sure all my fellow bloggers get emails like this from time to time...

Hi!  

I have been working for a while on Storylane, a product that I believe a blog owner like you will appreciate.  

Storylane works like a blogging platform but is social from the ground up. Your content can be categorized by you and then discovered by our fast growing community. Storylane can breath new life into the content you created for your old blog and hopefully connect you with people, places, and ideas that can add value and meaning to your life. 

Would you like to give us a try? join us here and add a story or two (feel free to use stories that are already on your blog)  

Best,  

Jonathan Gheller
CEO Storylane 

Usually I just ignore them but I couldn't resist replying to this one, as follows...

Hi! 

Thanks for the invitation to join your Storylane product but I am not sure I want to be "social from the ground up." Mine is a sailing blog and so I really want to be social from the water up.  

And I am somewhat concerned by your threat that Storylane can breath new life into the content I created for my old blog. Most of the content on my "old blog" has been dead for years and I think it might get a little shocked if it was brought back to life all of a sudden. It might even get a Jesus complex.  

And speaking for myself I really don't want to connect with people, places, and ideas that can add value and meaning to my life. I have spent 64 years on this earth searching for the meaning of life and I am pretty sure that I've found it with the family and friends I now have, with the place where I now live, and with the ideas I now have. I don't think I could stand any more meaning and value in my life from connecting with Peruvian fire-eating evangelicals or plumbers from Azerbaijan who believe in trickle-down economics, say.  

Best,  

Tillerman
CEO Proper Course

I really am a bad person.

Short

How long should a sailing practice session be?

Read the blogs of some of the Olympic sailors and you will find that most of them spend many hours on the water each day, for day after day.

On the other hand, I remember reading a post on another blog a couple of years back (might have been Andrew Campbell's blog) that said you could achieve worthwhile results in an hour of two of practice.

But how about this post - Short but Effective Practice - on Jay Livingston's Laser Sailing Notes blog?

Excellence comes from putting one short, well-designed practice session after another short, well-designed practice session. And short can mean just 10 minutes. 

If you think 10 minutes isn’t enough, then let me give you a guarantee; I can improve your Laser sailing dramatically if you will budget just 10 minutes 5 days a week during the off or the on season. I would teach you to visualize flawless boat handling choreography, to understand and memorize one racing rule a week, to create and practice your energizing and settling self-talk, or to build your core strength.

And I’ll bet that most of you are already agreeing with me and few are actually thinking about making that minimal investment.

Wow. 10 minutes? Being basically a very lazy person, I would sign up for that.

Now, to be fair, the examples in Jay's post are more about practice sessions on the land - vizualization, learning a racing rule, working on fitness - than on-the-water sessions. I mean, who goes sailing for only 10 minutes?

But I think he's on to something.

When I go out and practice a skill, I must admit that I find it hard to concentrate on any one given activity for longer than 10 to 30 minutes say. Sure, I can be quite happy sailing around for fun for longer but that's not the same thing.

Maybe "short but effective practice" is worth a second look?

I came back from Minorca Sailing last weekend with a list of skills that I need to work on. Not a huge long list, but I did discover a few things from feedback from instructors, or my own observations, or watching my sailing track in races on GPS that need some work.

One thing is that I'm sure I'm not sailing the boat flat enough in 5-10 knots.

Another is that, although I did pretty well in most of the racing in Menorca, when I did get beaten in a race it was often because I wasn't as well tuned in to the headers and lifts as I should have been.

So on my first sail back in Rhode Island yesterday I worked on both these issues. Just sailed upwind for about 30 minutes concentrating on both issues. Is the boat flat? Am I on a header or a lift? Then had fun sailing downwind for another 30 minutes.

Short? True.

Will it be effective? Time will tell.

Binders

Today, October 19, is the anniversary of the death of Henry Tillinghast Sisson.

Regular readers of this blog will know that our friend Henry was a general in the Union Army in the Civil War, a Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island, and he lived just down the road from me in Little Compton. Not at the same time as me, you understand. Old Henry kicked the bucket 102 years ago today, in 1910.

But his lasting contribution to the world is that it was Henry who invented the 3-ring binder.

No. Really.

Where would we be without the 3-ring binder?

Before everyone started storing all their stuff on digital storage devices (or in the "cloud" whatever that is) we kept our stuff in 3-ring binders.

All kinds of stuff. Lecture notes. Tax returns. Technical manuals. Whatever stuff turns you on.

I discovered while watching the television machine on Tuesday evening that some men even have binders full of women! Whatever turns you on dude.

Me, I have binders full of boats. Well, not real boats. Articles about boats that I have clipped from sailing magazines and similar publications over the years. Articles about racing Lasers and tactics and strategy and fitness for sailing and racing rules etc. etc. etc.

My binders full of boats sit on a bookshelf in my man cave.

I hardly ever look at them.

If I want to find out something about boats these days I use the Google.

I really should look at my binders full of boats more often.

I could find interesting stuff in there to blog about, I'm sure.

So on this day, October 19, give thanks for the life of Henry Tillinghast Sisson, inventor of the 3-ring binder.

What?

What's that you say?

You wanted to see a binder full of women?

Oh. All right then.

What do you have in your binders?

Phone Call