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Showing posts with the label yacht racing

What Racing Taught Me About Sailing

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"I have learned for the first time that the fastest yacht does not win the race."   - Charles Nicholson (British yacht designer) I learned to sail through simple trial and (mostly) error* on our first sailboat and while crewing during the local Wednesday night races and a few longer distance races. The racing was fun and often exciting, but I was there for instructional gain. I was raised a boater, so I felt I knew some basic seamenship, yet sailing seemed technical and more involved than most of the boating I had done previously. I'm pretty sure I shared the common misconception that sailing was overly difficult. My experiences while racing did little to dispel the misconception. Whether doing laps around the cans on a short 0.5 mile course or crossing Lake Michigan during the Queen's Cup, we were constantly trimming sails by adjusting the cars, fiddling with the backstay, messing with the topping lift, tweaking the vang, and easing the outhaul only to then ti