What do you "unlearn"?
For some racing sailors, it's difficult to relax while cruising

Rosalie B. wrote:
There's more than just relaxing unless you define relaxing as not
rushing to the destination but enjoying the journey.


Is it a matter of enjoying sailing? If an individual does not enjoy
sailing then they're not going to like cruising *or* racing. If they
do, then there is enjoyment to be found in both.

Maybe it is that they need to value sturdiness over lightness. To
pick sturdier materials.

I can tell that you're one of those "cruising only" sailors. Breaking
stuff is slow. The surest way to lose a race is to have even minor
gear failure. And racers go out to sail & race in conditions that
cruisers stay home in.


And to have spares aboard in case something
breaks, and also to have the stuff on board that one needs to live
comfortably and not feel that they are camping out.


That's not a *sailing* skill, is it? Sounds like common sense plus a
slight amount of organization.



" wrote:
Well, attitude is certainly an issue. Some people will like cruising
who don't like racing and the reverse and some will like both...
Racing and cruising are very different.

Agreed.

.... But I wasn't really thinking
about attitude as such. At least in my case the majority of my racing
was done a few hours at a time in the day with the occasional week or
10 days of day races and an an occasional fully crewed long distance
race. When I jumped into cruising full time my fist leg was from
Brisbane to Noumea and my second was Noumea to Opua. While those
aren't particularly long passages by Pacific standards they are
marathons by racing standards. Moreover, I undertook them with just
my girlfriend who was a novice sailor. Just in terms of the sailing,
the mistakes I made on those legs were a result of applying a
sprinter's skill set to a marathon. I won't bore you all with the
gory details but on the first leg I shrimped the kite and on the
second I averaged more than eleven (yes 11) sail changes a day.
Needless to say, my wallet, my psyche and my body all suffered a lot.

Hmmm.... please don't take this as an insult, because I don't mean it
to be... but your racing did not teach you to prioritize wisely.
"Getting there" is a goal for both cruising & racing, but the effort/
reward ratio is very different.


While I still set outboard sheets and barberhaulers and run the kite
on a fairly regular basis, as a result of those first two legs I
retrained myself in some pretty fundamental ways. Tweaking is fine
when it amuses, but pace and rhythm are key to passage making. The
pace and rhythm that were engraved in my brain as "sailing" from day
racing weren't just inappropriate to the kind of long distance
cruising that I took up, they were downright dangerous. And it is
that that I am thinking of when I say I had to "unlearn" racing.

Okay, that makes sense; but when you were planning the leg (which is
*certainly* a part of both racing & cruising) did you put any priority
on getting good rest? On letting the boat settle down, perhaps even
heaving-to, for meal preparation & eating? Certainly racers aren't
going to do that but then they have greater manpower available and
enjoying mealtimes isn't on the priority list. But prioritizing is
certainly a common skill!

There's also a bunch of stuff that I never learned or only thought I
knew from racing that I think are important to safe and enjoyable
cruising. That's a story for another day. But, IMO, the intersection
of day racing skills and long distance cruising skills isn't all that
big...


Day racing not so much; however I will say again that it's easy to see
the difference in skills between racers & cruisers when watching them
maneuver in close quarters (which is a pretty big part of cruising).
And point-to-point racing, whether in the ocean or in sheltered
waters, is essentially the same as cruising except that risk/effort/
reward priorities are different... and that's partly a matter of
attitude and partly a matter of realizing that it's up to you to set
your priorities in the first place.

Was it Socrates who warned against "the unexamined premise"?

Fresh Breezes- Doug King