Don’t judge other sailors for their choices
Issue 58 : Jan/Feb 2008
A seed of a concept was planted in my brain, perhaps as long as seven years ago. It has been rolling around in there ever since, gathering material in the same way that a snowball, on its way to becoming a snowman, grows as time goes on.
This concept applies universally to all things we do, including sailing. But it was fi rst presented to me as a way to categorize fellow travelers on our nation’s highways. There are two levels of drivers, I was told: idiots and morons. From the speaker’s perspective, as a perfectly sane driver, all drivers who drove faster and took more risks were idiots. All those who drove more slowly and showed more caution were morons.
There’s a center point of this continuum, you understand, and this point just happens to be wherever a particular observer is standing.
This concept is particularly clear on the sailboat race-course. Choices associated with spinnakers are one of the many points of differentiation. As the only well-adjusted and sensible skipper on the course, you can be amazed by the lack of seamanship shown by the fellow who chooses to fly a spinnaker on the days when wind conditions indicate folly in such a choice. Yet, because he is flying his, you believe you must do likewise if you want to be competitive. So both of you have a very stressful spinnaker leg, an ordeal that your spinnaker and crew may (or may not) survive.
“Idiot!” you’re thinking. “Why did he make such a fool-hardy choice?”
Or there’s the other guy who chose to live through that leg by flying wing-and-wing. It’s nearly as competitive. (Jerry and I used to do this when racing in the Flying Scot fleet because Jerry knew my skills as a crew were not up to taking “the idiot’s challenge.” I suppose that we were, therefore, morons. Nonetheless, I was still smiling when the race was over.)
Cruisers too
The idiots vs. morons concept applies to cruising as well. It’s about the gear you choose to take or choose not to take on a cruise. It’s about the skills you choose to learn before you go or don’t have a clue about by the time you set off on your voyage. It’s about the safety precautions you choose to take or don’t take when you drop the docklines for the last time. It’s about the timing of your departure. It’s about weather windows and the decisions you make each time you decide it’s time to leave.
As sailors — each of whom is perfectly sane and always correct — we rate each other, sending irate letters to sailing magazines because someone was featured on the cover with or without a tether or a life jacket . . . because someone pushed the EPIRB button or didn’t . . . because someone left when the season was at an end or just beginning . . . or a weather window wasn’t large enough or interpreted correctly . . . or they didn’t go soon enough in life . . . or they were way too young to have any experience . . . or they chose the wrong anchor tackle . . . didn’t take the right training program (or have any experience or training at all) . . . didn’t buy a life raft . . . on and on it goes.
In the end, the personal choices you make about your own sailing activities are just that: personal choices. All these choices lie somewhere on a continuum. Choose your center point and be comfortable there. Neither judge the other sailors for their choices nor let their judgments (real or imagined) rule your life. There will always be idiots to the left of you and morons to the right. Sail on!
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
