Jun 07 2009
San Juan 21 Western Nationals 2008
So I realize that this post is about a year late, but I have been sitting on the experience trying to come to terms with my dismal performance… Since winning the NOOD I finally feel I have the energy to post what I wrote shortly after the July 10-12th 2008 Western Nationals. Please Enjoy…
There are currently 6.6 billion people living on this planet living in 245 countries. Let’s assume that maybe 50 countries have enough sailboats/water/beer money to scrape together any type of national one design sailing regatta, and that at most a serious sailing nation like New Zealand might host at max 100 national one design regattas. Let’s average it out and say that on average there are 20 designs represented in 50 countries so there may be 1000 National Regattas held world wide each year. If we take yet another leap of faith and assume that on average there are maybe 50 boats at each national event then at most there are 50,000 people each year who get to claim that they skippered a sailboat in a national one design regatta. That is 0.0008% of the world population or 1 in 132 thousand. A 2005 article in Livescience.com calculates the odds of being killed by lightning at 1 in 84 thousand. So in any given year your average human on the planet is about 50% more likely to be killed by lightning than sail their own boat in a national event. This year I was one of the very, very few who have had the pleasure to experience this rare gift when I took Limpet to the San Juan 21 Western Nationals in Coos Bay Oregon. Continue Reading »