nolatom
Super Anarchist
Our community sailing center had a regatta day yesterday, nice day out on the Lake (Pontchartrain), coulda used a bit more wind, but not too bad. Four teenage students on our boat (Gary Mull-design Independence-20), racing against three others, with the grownups there to help as little as possible and let them do it.
Oh boy, is that hard to do! I had to keep from reaching out for the tiller or sheet, was mostly successful but I probably did more tactician advice than I should have ideally. Remember the flick "Dr. Strangelove", where the Peter Sellers mad-scientist kept hitting his right arm with his left, to keep from saluting? I almost had to do that.
And ran my mouth too much? Maybe, though I heard other boat guides doing it too, especially in the whistle countdown to the start. ;-) We got in four short windward-leeward races.
Great group of kids in the 15-16 age range, they'd had around 5 lessons so they knew much but racing was new. They got into the spirit of it though, and moved the boat pretty well. Yeah, they pinched too much which kills you in light air chop, but usually corrected themselves just in time. I did have to remind them to sit to leeward if they could, to induce some heel in the light stuff upwind.
But I could see and feel them getting better each race, becoming more of a team, and talking about what to do next. I tried to shut up , not always successfully ;-)
How'd we do? I wanted it not to matter too much, it's the teamwork and learning that counts, uh huh uh huh, but they still wanted to win. We got in 4 races, won 3, and dead heat finish in 4th. Most of the other boats had younger kids, so we may have been the "overdogs", but it's still nice to win.
They all had fun, and a little ceremony afterwards with t-shirts, so they all were winners.
How does an old guy (me) relate to teens? By doing something together with a common purpose. We were the only boat without a working Torqueedo, so we had more sail time getting out and getting home, and it was fun just conversing with them, finding out what they've done and where they've been, they were "grownups".
And they glided into the slip just perfectly after dousing sail.
When can we do this again? ;-)
Oh boy, is that hard to do! I had to keep from reaching out for the tiller or sheet, was mostly successful but I probably did more tactician advice than I should have ideally. Remember the flick "Dr. Strangelove", where the Peter Sellers mad-scientist kept hitting his right arm with his left, to keep from saluting? I almost had to do that.
And ran my mouth too much? Maybe, though I heard other boat guides doing it too, especially in the whistle countdown to the start. ;-) We got in four short windward-leeward races.
Great group of kids in the 15-16 age range, they'd had around 5 lessons so they knew much but racing was new. They got into the spirit of it though, and moved the boat pretty well. Yeah, they pinched too much which kills you in light air chop, but usually corrected themselves just in time. I did have to remind them to sit to leeward if they could, to induce some heel in the light stuff upwind.
But I could see and feel them getting better each race, becoming more of a team, and talking about what to do next. I tried to shut up , not always successfully ;-)
How'd we do? I wanted it not to matter too much, it's the teamwork and learning that counts, uh huh uh huh, but they still wanted to win. We got in 4 races, won 3, and dead heat finish in 4th. Most of the other boats had younger kids, so we may have been the "overdogs", but it's still nice to win.
They all had fun, and a little ceremony afterwards with t-shirts, so they all were winners.
How does an old guy (me) relate to teens? By doing something together with a common purpose. We were the only boat without a working Torqueedo, so we had more sail time getting out and getting home, and it was fun just conversing with them, finding out what they've done and where they've been, they were "grownups".
And they glided into the slip just perfectly after dousing sail.
When can we do this again? ;-)
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