Jay's blog

We all have limits to our on-the-water practice time, which combined with the number of things we need to practice puts pressure on us to build as many of our fundamental skills as possible off the water.

 Our decision making ability deteriorates as regattas progress. As we get tired, our brains begin to try to moderate energy use by settling for easy choices – “I’ll keep going this way until I get a more obvious sign.” Both the power to focus and control, and our stamina to keep at it can fail us.

Decision making quality can be as much about the quantity of your decisions as about the knowledge and wisdom you bring to bear. Keep making decisions all day and you may start to tire out and begin to opt for easy options and maintaining the status quo. Over use can wear out your decision making strength as surely as hiking can exhaust your quads and abs.

Yes, John may hit the line at full speed. Bill could possibly pinch me up at the line and leave me stalled. David has lots of room to leeward to accelerate without risk. But where am I?

I can see Scott heading for a mid-line start. The other David looks like he wants to play it safe and slide off to the right as soon as he gets a chance. But what am I doing?

Getting my head out of the boat is all well and good, but too much awareness and I become merely reactive. I’m trapped in the space between Bill’s Laser and mine. I’m caught by the few feet of difference between my possible start and John’s. I’m already sailing up the right side and trying to gauge the wind pressure on the left side where David will be. I’m not sailing my race!

There’s an inherent tension in a Laser racing fleet. Competition means bettering the other sailors, showing we’re better at least for the moment, at the sport than they are. It’s easy, and to a fair degree appropriate, to give some voice to that tension and competition – confident talk of the psyche-out variety.

But the fleets are usually made up of a wide cross section of competitors of varied degrees of experience and skill. Our relationship with our competitors will show effects weeks and months down the road. To build a fleet we all need to regulate our competitive actions, communications and attitudes to a level suitable to each individual who is less experienced than we are.

The water was cold, although it didn’t numb my toes. It is so hard to push past the inertia to take that first sail of the spring. I was eager this year, but somehow the weather was always a few degrees too cold or the wind felt a bit stiff for a sail by myself in cold water.

I had dropped the Laser off at the club last week. Sunday the temps hit 60 and the wind forecast was 10 or less, great conditions for a first sail. Trouble was everything went up, the temp a few degrees and the wind about 5 to 8 more in the gusts. Since I was there, the decision was easier, a push off the sand and the season opened up before me.

A quick question, have you set your sailing goals for the season? Yeah, I know I talked about this back in February, but most of you haven’t done it yet have you?

I decided 30 years ago that I would be more productive if I learned to touch type. I never did practice the formal method. I just kept trying to use a few more fingers and got proficient enough to satisfy my urge. But I’m far from good. (I had to correct a word in that last sentence.)

I’ve talked about practice being the key to performance, and that very careful practice, “perfect” practice, leads to higher quality performance. So what’s the very first step toward creating high-quality practice?

Be certain you’re sure why you’re doing it. Why is practicing at a deliberately high level worth it? It saves time. Don’t want to spend a lot of time or don’t have the time to invest? High-quality, deliberate practice is worth more than unfocused time sailing your Laser. By focusing, you can get benefits that are multiples of casual time spent sailing your boat.

What a variety of experience and ambitions show up for club race days.

There are the skippers who get to the club twenty minutes before the harbor start and disrupt the flow of others’ preparations by asking for last minute help getting their Laser off the racks and maybe even straightening out the pattern of control lines that they haven’t yet memorized. And there are the guys who get there early to chat and fail to notice that some of the racers want to get into their race-day mind set.

On the other tack, some more experienced sailors may show up late because they feel they can fly through their prep. These and other “serious” racers may put their head down and forget that unless they help the less experienced people they will soon end up stagnating with no real competition. And the need to help the newer sailors doesn’t stop at the water’s edge. Improving the experience of each racer is the responsibility of all club members.

This is the time of year to make a concerted effort to upgrade your rules knowledge. So I’d like to pass on a few ideas about how to make it easiest to understand and remember the details of the Racing Rules of Sailing.