Learning to Learn and What is RIght for Me??

There are so many variables in sailing that on the one hand you can take a lifetime to learn a boat and stretch of water, while on the other you forget what you perhaps learned last wednesday night's regatta.

Here we have the crux of the matter for boats which struggle. They need to learn to learn again. They need to understand that they are learning and not just put things down to bad luck and an awkward day for the crew with things not being 'optimal'.The last wedneday's analysis over a beer is what is wrong for most I think, but it is just a reflection on an attitude. You have a beer and a chat, and your helm starts blah blahing and then even blaming the crew behind their backs. Usually the helm or the democratic members on a discussion boat, go away with something they could have learnt, things they have missed the importance of and things they think they have learned but either forget or cannot somehow put into practice.

Helms who won't learn or can't learn and sit mid to back of fleet on the results , are a personal cause-fatale for me and I am so fed up with mine now that I am stopping sailing with him. More on that later, boat divorces or realignments in responsibilities. But he has all the typical learning mistakes and it based on the fact that he thinks he is a great sailor with a great sailing CV and he is also an instructor. However he is stuck in making mistakes himself which are stupid, expose the crew to difficulties, or which he just doesnt interpret as mistakes. Worse he blames his crew  for bad manoevres when he has been completely over ambitious and aggressive in how quickly he wants things to happen.

Going through a race, he can start and get really top rank positioning at 30 seconds out, best helm ever,. but then he wants to kind of stuff other boats up, and doesnt focus on getting the boat going fast. So we win an important part of the start only to loose it immediately by not having enough time to get the speed on. Then there are his panic tacks and paranoia about bad wind from far away boats. He sits wagging his head around at where other boats are and not looking at the compass. Some lifts headers he sees are just return to average after a nice lift., so he tacks then into a header.

The boat can go really well, but mainly when he has a sailor on board who he doths his cap to more than me, which is unfair because I am a good tactician which given the chance. We win races when this happens and he gives up some of his power and his worrying. We even had a sail maker helm on day of a recent regatta, (oh, also he was a pro racer btw !!)   So first day really good, him calling tactics, good relaxed sailor on the helm. Second overall in the results, Day two throws it away on slow starts and panic, plus really not giving us time to hoist and drop.

We then need to see if he can ever learn or will ever learn and I think he is going backwards because sailing has become his big manhoods test in a hen pecked life, so there is more stress and adrenaline all day, and more blame us and not him, while chilled after. I dont see me sailing any more with him now. He even gave the helm to a 90 kg bloke who is inexperienced so as to keep me as ballast and pole man, and he helmed pretty shit, not awful but not good. I have had a good time over 5 years really, but also he shys away from the crowd and isnt very sociable so I am done there. Divorce doesnt need to be harsh words or letters, it can be a drifting seperation like so many past girlfreinds , we just loose contact and stop going on dates.

Back to attitiude then after an example of the wrong attitude. We need as I blogged last, humility on the race course, or out at sea anytime, and we need to take our whip lashes and learn not to get those sores again. Attitude must change, mistakes are mostly by the helm and tactician, small mistakes yes can be punished harshly in an OD fleet, but really the bigger mistakes involve placing too much on the crew in too short a time by in large.

Firstly we need to learn to analyse and be objective. That then leads to relaxing because problems become a source of information for improvement in results. Relaxing leads to being more aware of the boat and situation, which leads to more analysis of the positives and negatives. Analysis means we firstly and foremost understand what happened, bad or good, and what the lead up and consequences were. Now we are in a position to make some conculusions and focus on what we can do to fix or improve the situation, or just avoid it. 

I often recommend to back fleet sloggers to just sail up to the RHS of the line , maybe a little ahead of the start and follow the fleet round on the periphery so you can see how the tactics develop before and on the start, and look at the windshift and first tack. Or go and do comittee and bouy boating, that is very illuminary for understanding what good boats do right. The next step is to sail on other good boats, rather than getting just the helm to come on board yours, especially if it is a different class or model, or your crew are lower in the learning curve than theirs are.

The biggy then is learn that you NEED to learn. You need to change what you are damn well doing to get up the results table.