Rod Davis
Carpe diem… for all
We live in interesting times. Covid has turned the world on its head, and caused many to rethink their priorities and values. By and large that has not been all bad. With the Northern Hemisphere coming into
spring, but international travel still an iffy thing, I wonder if grass roots yachting will be the big winner of 2021. It sure is in New Zealand, in a
variety of different classes: OK dinghy, Finn, Zephyr, Paper Tiger, Sunburst and more. It seems that because people can’t travel internationally they
have both money and time to enjoy some simpler pleasures. And club sailing has taken off. Fleet sizes are up 37 per cent (did you know that 65 per cent of all quoted statistics are made up?). The point is we have got bigger fleets than ever before racing at the local yacht clubs. And there is no logical reason the Northerners won’t see the same thing in the coming months. The trick is how we, that is all of us, keep these numbers in the
years to come? How to make sailboat racing sticky, so people keep coming back for more. I guess that is the real goal: not just the racing, how do we make the whole experience sticky? OK, let’s start with the top 30 per cent of the fleet. Forget them,
they don’t count. Look, they will come back to race because they are in the hunt to win. We need to cater for the mid and back-fleet sailors. The ones who sail to enjoy the experience, who have their battles for 15th or 23rd with their mates. Solely for fun, or even bragging rights at the club. You might think this is a funny perspective for me, as a profes-
sional coach and sailor obsessed with being as good as I can be. But as you get older you also see the world is actually bigger than
36 SEAHORSE
your goals and aspirations. Over time I have come to realise that making sailing more fun, thus more popular, is a bigger goal than any personal one. We are talking about club racing and national championships
here, not Olympics or the America’s Cup. Here are some ideas on how to make the racing sticky. Not all are perfect but feel free to use and modify them as your club sees fit. Racing close to the club. No one wants to sail 45 minutes to get
to a startline and 45 minutes back. If that means the racecourse is not perfect, so be it, do the best you can within a 15-minute sail from the club. Don’t let the race committee get too pedantic about the race-
course. Top mark within 10° of upwind, great – start the race. Starting line reasonably close to square is plenty good enough. We are looking for very good, not perfection. Again, this is not the Olympics. Remember, the rule of 80/20* applies! Three races of 20-25 minutes, without too much time in between,
and mix up the courses every few weekends. Windward-leeward races every weekend get repetitive, even boring. Triangle races, a harbour race, even a downwind start… just to see what happens. Could be a great equaliser! The last race of the day could finish back at the club. A few other quickfire ideas. Penalties – two circles is too many,
one circle is enough and will encourage people to take their penalties for an infraction. Build a culture of doing penalties by acknowledging those who do their turn. Protest hearings are a fun killer and will rip sailors out of the middle of the fleet. Results of the day’s racing ready at the boat park for the unrigging
banter, even if they are ‘unofficial’. Results that don’t come out until late in the evening don’t make the yachting sticky.
MAX RANCHI
ALAMY
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