It was my MO in my first dinghy race. Unlike Neal, I considered half a
metre
to be a reasonable margin...

Half a metre?
How many boats got in there?


I didn't make this comment myself since so many others beat me to it

Wally wrote:
None - it was racing for novices and none of us knew what we were doing. The
real newbies were the ones sailing around, asking all and sundry, "has the
race started yet?".


An interesting comparison and IMHO clearly shows the higher skill level
developed even for basic racing. Last week at the Bitter End there were
a lot of casual races, and there was always a group of sailors who could
not manage to get their boats to the line & across it smartly. But most
of them improved with some practice, and that practice also showed in
their docking after the race.

One of several reasons why I personally believe that racing small boats
is the best sailing school.

Fresh Breezes- Doug King