The Great Retention Problem: Where do all these young sailors go?
There’s lots of debate and opinion around at the moment concerning participation in sailing, the 20-35 gap, and the ageing demographic that our sport seems to have. There are lots of ideas around, many of them good, and I’m going to post a few thoughts on this area over the next few weeks. But for now, I want to look at finding out what is happening to cause this problem. Continue reading
Earlier this week I reposted an old piece I wrote on why people don’t protest each other in club racing, and why we need to work towards getting more protests (or at least more arbitration) in our regular sailing.
Of course, there’s no such problem for the elite professionals. They just have on-the-water judges or TV judges to make decisions in real time.
But even that doesn’t work out perfectly for all concerned.
If you Continue reading
Sometimes when I am sailing in an open event I’ll check to see if anyone with an older boat than mine has beaten me.
Mostly when I haven’t done as well as I’d hoped.
It can be comforting to look at the results and secretly think to myself that if I had a newer boat like the guys that finished above me then I might have done a little better.
I was chatting to my father-in-law, who isn’t a sailor (and can’t really understand why anybody sails) and he asked me how old my boat is. And as I was answering, I got to thinking about Trigger’s broom: Continue reading
Hello again.
Sorry it has been so long. The website has had some major issues. Things have been, in modern sporting vernacular, sub-optimal.
In fact, if this website were a leeward mark rounding, it would have looked a little like this clip (well worth a click if you haven’t seen it before – but maybe turn your volume down – the commentary is kind of loud):
But all these technical issues are behind us now (I hope).
My entire IT department (which comprises of my dad – who, at his age, should be relaxing in front of an open fire in slippers and smoking a pipe) has sorted everything out and I’m trying my very best to not break it again.
As I put everything back together I will upload the pages – this is already happening on a daily basis. For this reason, you might click on a link you want to view and find there is nothing there. All it means is that that particular page is not ready just yet, but you can check back in a week or two and it should be there.
If there is something you want to see urgently then comment below, or contact me via Twitter or Facebook and I will try to bring it to the top of the list for you. You can also email me on damian (at) thefinalbeat dot com.
You can keep up-to-date with all the new additions (including brand new posts and pages) by signing up to the email newsletter. It goes out around once a month, and lists all the latest bits on the site.
I feel it is important to state very early in this review that I consider Wind Strategy to be a Very Important Book for sailors.
The reason I feel the need to state this is because I know what I am about to write, and it may come across that I actually think otherwise. So, in order to be clear on the matter, let me state it again:
Wind Strategy is a Very Important Book.
Wind Strategy by Houghton and Campbell – A Very Important Book
I know this for three reasons. Continue reading
You’ll be sorry to hear that this last month has been rather difficult for me. The reason for this difficulty is that, until this month, I had been sure of three things in my life. And one by one, these certainties have been stripped away.
The first certainty was Continue reading
I received an advanced copy of Golden Lily by Lijia Xu in the post a couple of months ago – I suppose because I reviewed a couple of Fernhurst’s books late last year. It came as a very welcome surprise, and I immediately dropped the book I was reading, and got stuck in.
I intended to post a review straight away, but I had difficulty writing it. You see, Golden Lily is an unusual autobiography, and it has taken a while to get my thoughts straight on the book. Continue reading
I like to read books.
And not even books with pictures – books with just words!
Reading this blog, I can understand that you find that hard to believe. But there it is, it’s a fact.
People that know me know that I like to read books. They’ll often buy, lend or recommend books to me – almost always literary tomes to make me think. Which is good for two reasons:
However, I’m not above admitting that I like a good old page-turning thriller. And a month or so ago my wife took a break from buying me obscure South American literature (which she really buys so that she can read them and then moan at me that I never read the books that she buys me) and she bought me a thriller. It was called I Am Pilgrim
United States
