“Smile – It’ll Make You Sail Faster”

When I was first learning how to sail in my old wooden Optimist, the mums and dads that used to teach us had one saying that they used more than any other:

“Smile – it’ll make you sail faster.”

Smile - it'll Make You Sail Faster

This is me learning to sail in an Optimist. I don’t know if I was smiling. You’ll notice the wooden spars, which even at the time were old skool. Reminiscing with my brother about K-1293 he said that the mast was “so heavy and dense that it was technically a black hole”. He wasn’t wrong.

I remember it not because it is good advice, but because they used it so much. I mean, they used to say it all the time.

But it is good advice.

The problem, though, is that you generally say something like that to someone who isn’t smiling. And it is the last thing that someone who isn’t smiling wants to hear.

You know what I mean – it is the sporting equivalent of saying to someone that is grumpy “Cheer up, it might never happen”, or “It takes more muscles to frown than to smile”. These are not good ways to cheer someone up.

That said, the adults that taught us (and used that saying) were right. You do sail better when you’re relaxed and happy. And, possibly more importantly, you sail more often if you are happy and relaxed when you are out on the water. I also suspect that they could see something that we kids couldn’t – that we were already starting to take sailing too seriously. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with taking something seriously, but we were already starting to see results as something that defined who we were, instead of seeing them as a by-product of the fun we were having.

I remember the first Open Meeting we did. It was at a neighbouring club, a lake with lots of islands. The course brought the boats near to the shore once per lap, and as the Optimists from our club reached past (bringing up the rear for the most part) our parents would throw chocolate bars to us. It was fun (if nutritionally questionable). I doubt if any one of us remembers how we did at that event, but we all remember having a good time.

As we grew older, and started counting our position from the front of the fleet instead of from the back, the chocolate bars stopped coming (we’d have probably been protested for receiving outside assistance or something). But that is how we wanted it. We weren’t just sailing around with our mates any more, we were racing with our mates, and that’s what we found rewarding.

Those of us that were still sailing, that is.

The first Optimist we had was called “Box of Chatter”, and the reason it had this name was because my older sister would go out sailing and spend the whole time sailing around chatting to her friends. After a while she and her friends realised that they could chat just as well on the shore, and they wouldn’t have to worry about where they finished in a race, or whether their younger siblings were ahead or behind them (we were mostly behind – she was a good sailor, my sister), and nor would they have to spend time learning about knots, or tides, or any of that nonsense.

And so, over time, they sailed less and less, until they didn’t really sail at all.

So why have I brought all this up?

Well, it occurs to me that we worry a lot about making sailing fun for teenagers and early twenties sailors. We’re losing a lot of sailors from this age group, and our immediate reaction is to wonder how we can make sailing more fun.

More fun.

But, wait a minute. Sailing is fun.

We need to stop worrying about making sailing more fun**. I don’t think my sister stopped sailing because sailing isn’t fun. I can’t speak for her, but I think she stopped sailing because it wasn’t rewarding enough. What I mean by this is that different people are motivated by different things, and they’ll gravitate to the things that fulfil those needs or wants. This means that we need to figure out what these needs or wants actually are.

Maybe she’d have carried on sailing if we’d have got her a Mirror instead of an Optimist (so she could sail with a friend), and they’d been encouraged to sail to an island and had a picnic instead of sailing in races.

Then again, maybe not.

Maybe she’d have preferred sailing on an evening when there was no racing on, and there was some social event after they’d been sailing.

Then again, maybe not.

Maybe she’d have carried on sailing if, when sailing with my dad in our Enterprise, he’d have stopped falling out of the boat, leaving her flailing around trying to sail the boat single-handed whilst he enjoyed his impromptu swim.

Then again, maybe not.

My point is that sailing was more about competition and the pursuit of improvement for me, and less about the social aspect (although this was still important); but it was more about the social aspect than the racing for others. But trying to make sailing more fun is a bit like telling someone to cheer up or smile more – you can’t force people to enjoy something.

But you can help them find the bit of something that they do enjoy, and let them explore that.

Maybe we just need to try and empathise with what others want, and find ways of helping them do more of it.


** Some thoughts on sailing and fun from Scuttlebutt articles:

 

First Published March 2015

7 thoughts on ““Smile – It’ll Make You Sail Faster”

  1. It is good advice alright.

    I remember reading about your singing before, Tillerman, and enjoyed that post. I wonder if it is that you’re distracting your conscious mind, and letting your sub-conscious do its thing unimpeded? Maybe doing maths problems in your head whilst sailing around the course would have the same positive effect.

  2. As your article suggests sailing is not for everyone and even though we are both life-long obsessives doesn’t mean it should be for everyone. However I think we were very lucky in growing up sailing when we did, I am not sure my family would have been able to support all of us in the very focussed national squads that were the norm from 2000 onwards. Incidentally I think the RYA under Ian Walker has identified that the Olympic machine feeding youth hopper is not the only way to introduce junior sailors to the sport.

    • Very true. I do think things have improved recently – I originally penned this in 2015 and a lot of work has been done already.

      Our club, for instance, is looking at the boats we’d like to encourage the young sailors through, and the Olympic pathway boats get a less positive response than the boats that encourage a wide range of sailors.

      420s and 29ers are viewed as expensive both to buy and in terms of depreciation, and highly technical to learn to be competitive.
      RS200s, on the other hand, are seen as cheaper, competitive for longer, less technical (i.e. you can be competitive quite quickly), and they encourage a wide age range, so friends can sail with friends, kids with adults, etc.

      I should right something about it and see what others think…

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