NYYC Race Week 2022 – 5 Minutes of Sailporn
So many great memories of sailing in Newport, Narrangansett Bay and paties at Harbor Court. Miss it bigly 🙁
Read MoreA few weeks ago I blogged about both Mark Hendy and my own experiences with sailing mentors. I wondered who else had sailing mentors. A couple of wags said that they never had one and felt it explained a lot. There were some very interesting perspectives on the whole mentor thing.
Carol Anne has two mentors:
Michael shed some insight too :
Stan Lander - a retired USCG officer and working captain/instructor in SF was a huge mentor for me as I became a professional instructor/captain. As a recreational sailor, I learned from the best: Joe of Horse's Mouth fame...
O'Docker shared some great experiences
A friend who's been sailing all his life has taught me a lot over the years. He's a genius at sail trim, reading the wind, working the tricky currents of the Bay, and coaxing the last tenth of a knot out of a boat. But his most valuable lesson, for which I'm forever grateful, is one he never realized he was teaching me. He started on 505's - boats with a million strings to pull, every one of which will buy you some speed if you know what you're doing. When he took friends out on his Catalina, in his head he was still racing that 505. He fidgeted constantly with headsail changes, whisker pole, vang, cunningham, outhaul, backstay, and anything else he could find to adjust while we were all supposed to be enjoying a day on the bay. I soaked it all in, but he was driving his wife nuts. Eventually, she stopped sailing with him altogether. When we finally got a boat of our own, I had to learn sailing all over again - how to see it from my wife's perspective. I had to forget about pushing the boat to its max. I learned how to power the boat down so guests were comfortable when the wind came up. I learned to relax and enjoy the day, even if sail shape wasn't perfect. I learned I can put my wife on the helm even when it's screaming if the boat's buttoned down tight enough. She may be happier back at the slip with a Merlot in her hand, but at least when we get there, she feels like she's earned it. For all that my old mentor showed me about trim and boatspeed, the lesson that he never learned himself was the most valuable one he taught me.
Chandler Howell had a very different perspective about the mentor/mentee relationship:
You overlooked another kind of mentor which is much less obvious, and that's the mentee who consistently ask just the right question to force me to face and overcome my own deficiencies.
I try to operate under the Feynman Rule (basically, "You don't truly understand something until you can explain it to someone else."), not just in sailing but in life. I find that the best mentees are those who ask the questions I am least prepared to answer at that time.
Sometimes I can work out the solution and the explanation with a little thinking, sometimes we just experiment. I've re-learned opportunities for improved sail trim because I've gotten into a habit until prompted why I'm doing or not doing something. Other times, I can refer to a reference book, and some times I just flat admit I don't know--yet.
But invariably, I find that I've become a better and better-informed sailor simply for having been subjected to a fresh point of view.
And I've also found that for many people, realizing that in sailing there is never omniscience, but rather only varying degrees of ignorance is quite comforting as they grapple with learning even the basics of everything that goes into sailing: sail handling, helmsmanship, crewing, captaining, cruising, racing, owning and just generally loving to sail.
Who's your mentor?
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