UKLA Chair blog #34
courtesy Lotte Johnson
A blog of two halves this week. My take on how much luck there is in sailboat racing and then the story of how we raced in 30knots at the Ovington Qualifer 3 at WPNSA this weekend (from Brett Lewis)
Unfair or unlucky?
We all know the quote from Gary Player “ the more I play the luckier I get”. In one of his books Paul Elvstrom (for younger readers – 4 times Olympic Gold medallist) says the advice he would give to young keen sailors is that, however hard it is to accept, the winner almost never wins through luck. His argument is that you are only lucky if you do something you can’t foresee and that some of what happens on the racecourse is predictable at some level. A shifty offshore wind ? It is manageable at a holistic level. With more experience and skill one sailor’s luck is another sailor’s insight. On this basis it is hard to say something is unfair.
Of course, without those skills you can be in the right place or wrong place at the right time or wrong time,and it is a matter of learning as much from this as you can. I can give countless examples over decades of racing but will restrict myself to two. Leading in the last race of a J24 National Championship and so heading for series victory, we chose to tack under a starboard tacker because it was the right shift heading in the right direction – obviously right? Only it wasn’t and we should have sacrificed doing what might have been the “right” thing for a pragmatic approach of covering of our nearest competitor, however unlikely it would be needed. A series lost but a lesson learnt – conditions change on the racecourse suddenly (and maybe only unpredictably for the unskilled) and it never pays to be overconfident in your ability to predict it.
Even this weekend, in the 1st race on Sunday at the Qualifier in WPNSA in 8 knots, I fluffed my start and cleared right and on a decent header and puff, tacked and started crossing most the fleet. Looking upwind you could see much more pressure coming down the course but would it go left or right? Had I checked the forecast, I would have known it was due to go right. But then again there were some big clouds lurking and it was an offshore breeze. I guessed it was going to go left and was unlucky but someone else may have been better prepared or had better insight and made the right the decision.
So luck comes into it, after all you have a 25% chance of picking the correct side of the first beat twice in a row. But it is too easy to say other sailors were just lucky rather than more skilled. But what about fairness? Strictly it is the same for everyone so unless the racing is run in way that unfairly prejudices you (through an improper act or omission – see rule 62), it is hard to have a case. Rather than blaming someone else or putting it down to luck, better to take responsibility, use it as motivation to work harder and acquire the skills needed to get luckier.
How we raced in 30knots at WPNSA
Brett Lewis, UKLA Safety Officer says the UKLA Qualifier 3 on Saturday March 25th was a successful day for UKLA on many levels as we sent 151 sailors to race in high winds. At 12pm we raced the ILCA7s in 24knots, gusting 32knots, at 1.30pm when we sent out the ILCA6s the wind picked up to 26knots gusting 33knots. For the ILCA4s the wind strength abated as expected to a benign 10knots. The planning for this began four days earlier when Race and Safety team met to discuss what we called Plan B, which in this instance was a windward leeward course and one fleet at a time to minimise safety concerns.
Why was this such a success for UKLA? It was a success because of the 40 plus volunteers, both ashore and on the water that made it happen. Ashore we had the tally, beach and bridge team, while afloat we had 12 safety ribs, along with the Race team and Jury giving us sufficient resources to manage two fleets at a time. This enabled us to swap over fleets while racing continued in the harbour. Without the volunteer support and resources, we would have not run any racing in those wind bands in March.
Let’s remember that these are World and European Qualifiers for our sailors heading to Cadiz, Volos, Dziwnow, Gdynia, Stavanger and others. At these venues they could race in these conditions and why they need to race in the UK when those conditions prevail. This is why our class is so strong, we go the extra mile to make these events take place. Thank you again for those volunteers who made it happen.
And of course thanks to our class sponsors and in partciular this weekend Ovington
Snippet:
UKLA National training for April will open on Wednesday.