Sailors have to develop a special relationship to their environment and their fellow competitors. There has to be a good deal of humility in front of the weather gods and in respect of other people's safety on the course.
Yet humilty is also something we need to nurture in order to learn and grow at what you can call a natural rate.
The first thing about humility which is difficult for experienced sailors is going through the basics and polishing off little systems which otherwise we can take for granted in the ego swing to try new things, to focus on the big wins, to talk about low hanging fruit and to put pressure usually on a high pressure start and high pressure roundings to pull results up by the shirt collar! Ok I say to my advancers in sail school, I can teach you a few tricks now, but it is the basics of weather sense, trim&balance, sail and rig setting and course-to-sail which you will come back to every time to polish and to polish.
The first step in doing this move to humility, which yes I find hard too, is to realises that in the sport of sailing there is a lot of 'chop water, fetch wood', Before a race or when rigging the boat for the season, we go through check lists. If we have gone through our check lists, we mayve have another check again, and we maybe add some small points to that check list. If we then have time in the dinghy park or the pre race, we think about the weather forecast and actual weather signs on the water, and we think about adjustments for that or maybe just maybe trying something a little new.
When you do have time then, after all the brassware is polishded for the day then and only then is there time for And no just take one thing, It could be time then to shake down crew choreography for take-downs or to shorten the backstay cascade system.
Humility then continues. We remember then Rule 2, general sportsmanship, and rule 14 - avoid collision if possible, beyond being right. We kmow some people are beginners or less competent, and yes we know there are arrogant chancers who will misuse rule 14 and people's timidness about the 'wee room' whcih stops them protesting, to their bully boy advantage. Then humility comes as an approach to the weather. Do we actually have more wind than our number one genoa ambitions? Then we come to what is now the blue peter time, 4 mins out, and what are the fleet doing? Are they late or early? Bunched or spread out >? How does this influence our plan for a tight boat end start or to get a text book safe, third way down the line start?
Now we read things. We take a slurp of coffee maybe, now is not the time to make circumstances seem to fit out plans, now is time to move on if they dont. In essence then this is the attitude we take further in the whole race, with each change in fortune. Very good boats which make bad starts, and we are talking second rack starts, have an uncanny habit of clawing back top ten places and not having discards as high as the teens. An advantage of a bad start, is that once we have cleared our wind, as we must, taking more pain or hopefully easing ahead by a nose....sorry an advantage of a bad start as I was saying is that you can read the fleet and the first shift, and take another look at tide and wind strategy. A lot of mid line boats will be tacking around to clear their wind, and others will be pinning each other out of actually using the wind shifts. In effect a major part of the fleet is slowing the whole game down by its sheer 'tactical viscosity' . One deal here for the 'come back kid' is that you can make fewer tacks on the first beat in order to get to the correct side, probably use the shifts more to your advantage, amd then most likely come out with a better mental picture for the run and the second beat which can then drag you up dozens of places.
Humility here too in outset! If you are short crewed, to a point of not being competitve, then why not offer your crew to some better boats who maybe miss one or two, and spread out your spies? Another option is to get up on the right hand side of the extenstion of the line, do a fake start out of the way of everyone, and watch the fleet from the best seats in the business? Soon you can tack up beyond the lay line and keep yourself clear. If you are far short crewed, motorsail it up to keep pace with the fleet. Being flicked off the crew in a nationals for the first two days once gave me a wonderful chance to work alongside professional course officials laying marks and observing the fleet. I heard almost no shouting in the top 5 boats round the windward mark, and no mistakes, just differences in times to hoist.
Humility comes then with of course less than shining results and also a result or podium place pulled by lady luck more than our own endeavours per se on the water. We take stock and go through what we did badly with objectivity and out lady lucjk and the fuck up fairy to one side a little, avoid blame storming and look at how the system with the skipper at its asthmus is peforming. It is the skippers decision to race, and his decision too on how hard to push his crew or if he is wise, how to match your manoevres to the crews ability. Gybes are usually the weakest point in the whole chain where a canny helm will adapt to his crew of the day, hung over or scratched from the harbour side as they may be. You will choose to do fewere manoevres and take time about them, or for example carry out an early take down and white sails gybe rather than a more ambitious last minute gybe and drop at the mark.
We are humble to the sea and to misfortune if there are breakages, and indeed we remember Rule 1 each time we set out and do not just pay a hailing lip service to that rule, we instruct our crew to be ready to down tools and give assistance. The sea is very large and man is but a small barnacle on a wooden plank.
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