Campaign 101, Part 2 – Your Attributes

By David Dellenbaugh, CleverPig.org
Before heading into any new phase of your sailing career, it’s smart to do a bit of self-reflection. By evaluating your strengths and weaknesses, it’s much easier to identify the path you must take to achieve your goal.

Evaluate Your Strengths & Weaknesses

Every once in a while I do something especially careless on the race course and create unnecessary problems for myself. A good example happened during a recent one-design regatta. The weather end of the starting line was favored, and the wind was predicted to shift to the right. So most of the 69-boat fleet decided to start near the committee boat. Not surprisingly, we had many general recalls.

After getting caught in some tight jam-ups during these starts, I had a “great” idea. Why not come in a little late at the committee boat? That way we wouldn’t have to fight the crowd, we didn’t risk being over early, and we’d be able to tack immediately for the favored side of the course. It seemed so logical.

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