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.
Truth be told I was not sure if I would be able to pull off this event. I had scheduled a family camping trip to Coos Bay to coincide with the Regatta, and a couple family friends with younger kids also joined in, but I wasn’t sure I would be able to abandon my wife for 3 strait days of watching 2 kids at a campground. On our drive down the big discussion was something like “do you really need to sail all three days?”
Some men win the lottery in the gene pool and become major league short stops, some men win the lottery in the lottery and clear 26 million on the powerball, I won the lottery when one of the most understanding and supportive women to ever walk the planet agreed to be my wife. There is nothing in this world which makes you feel more loved than your partner telling you “Go live out your dreams… I will take care of everything else!”
Of course my dreams took a little bit of a beating when it came to the actual sailing. Lets just say that if Mike Dukes didn’t take pity on me I would have come in dead last in the 25 boat working sails fleet.
Still it was a learning experience and I had some great new friends (Patty & Gordon) who helped me limp around the course.
The final race of the regatta I was involved in the most bone jarring collision ever. A collision ahead of me forced a boat into an inadvertent tack to port right at Limpet. Luckily no-one was hurt but my port aft window was smashed in and my rail was fairly well damaged.
I left bruised but determined to contend in one of these races in the future.
Andy, Congrats on your success moving up through the ranks this year. Patti & I wish we could have been at the W.Natl’s to cheer you on.