addiction

Why is it addiction?

You stay away in the winter and early spring and even take up healthy pursuits .... you promise yourself and your family to down size and long-term your ambitions .... then you just happen to reply to a crew ad' looking for occaisional crew....


the rest is addiction. The thing being that really any frin-factor is short lived and the whole ritual is like monotomous worship. You unroll the sails and rig the boat, you get the gear setting for the current wind, you look at the start line and if you have any seriousness and nouse, you go up the beat to look at how it is and dry the kite out.

Then you argue with the owner and you know you are not being properly listened to and they just CAN call the shots because they are paying....

--.-and you breath in after the race and get sleepy on the way home if you've had a beer and then you hope they call off the training or the overnight or even just next wedenesday....this lasts about 14 hours.

Then you want more. Eventually through skill, certificates, contacts and mere fortuity you get a sail with something more serious that actually "wins" . This far from saites the appetite! Petrol on the flames. Now you can go back to your 6 knot shit box and tell them what the hell to do! ..and the realise they can get better and that they do stuff wrong...and get a sail maker or someone more experienced wiht the boat to come and read som text book garbage and swing their weight around.

so yoy carry on trimming and suggest tacking or gybing as the lifts or headers come through and generally help the whole team gel by ironing out the littel shitty things they do like sweat hoisting the entire legnth of the spinnie halyard.....


Frustration builds until you can finally afford the ego trip yourself and you buy a boat or a share...then the crew become the source of never ending limitations


Or maybe just maybe y9ou get an owner who listens and wants a limited back of boat democracy and you find out that your ideas are often better than you thought or actually really not ood calls and that you need to learn some hu,ilty.

But the hunger comes from this...asking yourself the quetion,how can I get better. When you stop asking you are either a set loser or dead.