Poor Euan is copping a pasting around the sailing media in Dog’s latest press release.
“Euan McNichol has again joined us as coach. Euan is a very skilled sailor in skiff classes and a coach with a great set of eyes and solid communication skills. His bathroom bag (cosmetic case) is so big that is needs a set of wheels, but there you go, nobody is perfect”
I hope the sailing world understands the Australian sense of humour…
Why don’t more people sail on a beautiful sunny, warm and moderately windy Saturday in Sydney?
Euan and I did a few hours of 49er training with Emmett & Phil from Woollahra on said Saturday. Despite launching from a club with over 20 rigged 49ers in the boat-park, we were the only ones on the water.
What’s going on with dinghy sailing in this place?
Admittedly, the club normally races on Sundays, and they did have between 12-15 boats on the water that day. But really, in a city of 5 million people, the proportion of people participating in just abysmal.
Then where are the junior fleets? I haven’t seen a fleet of MJs or Sabots for a long time. Woollahra has none. Vaucluse 12 footers, practically none. In the richest part of the richest city in the country with the most incredible weather there is no sign of a budding fleet of juniors or teenagers, or even adults sailing in dinghys.
All that doesn’t bode well for the future. Who is going to come through the ranks to replace the old guard? And where are they going to come from?
Who is doing anything about it?
Woollahra does have a sailing school and private school sailing. But based on the numbers that progress to participation - they’re not successful.
Balmoral has a similar operation, but those kids are stuck in clunking wooden mirrors, condemned to an era that has long passed - hardly appealing to the instant gratification generation.
What to do?
How do we get kids and adults for that matter, interested enough to give sailing a try, and keep them interested enough to keep turning up?
Where are the opportunities for adult beginners (that aren’t over-commercialised)?
Where are the interesting opportunities for girls - apart from being the ‘bit of fluff’ on the rail of a keelboat?
Back in the day, Dad’s sailing programs in a remote coastal backwater resulted in proportionally well over 10-times the racing boats than Sydney. The level of devotion from the families back then was just exceptional. Now I may just be romanticising the past here, but not too much.
Who’s going to devote their time and effort to make it happen again?
What can we do to stop this sport from losing the critical mass it needs to keep churning over?
Ideas?
Another overly philosophical post for Monday eh?
Looks like more of the 18′ Skiff fleet will be carrying GPS devices from now on (at least while the novelty lasts).
Rollo has been using one, and now John on the Rag has used his new Velocitek to generate some polar diagrams out of GPSActionReplay.
Interesting that it only just maxed 21 knots in about 18 knots of breeze, but as John pointed out, the VMG is still impressive. I’m not sure that even Rohan’s new Bladerider can match those… or can it?
I’ll get the tracklogs from the last two weeks up eventually.
The blog has changed a little, being moved to Wordpress over the weekend. Unfortunately the photos and comments have gone, but I’ll try to resurrect them somehow.
… though I’m not going to start putting green on a boat.
I’m not a total climate alarmist… but I’ve read enough and watched
enough to want to start doing something.
So I’ve decided to try and go carbon-emission neutral.
First step was to try to neutralise my car - which is hardly used
as it is - through an operation called GreenFleet. Basically they’re
going to plant a bunch of trees to offset my emissions for the
year.
But that’s only the start.
I logged onto one web site and did a calculation on my carbon
footprint… after all the flights this year it’s not pretty. If I
was to try and offset those emissions by purchasing carbon credits
(ie. energy from renewable sources) it would cost me over $6600.
Hmmm… makes me think cheap flights are no so cheap.
So the next step is to offset the household energy
consumption. We’re on some level of green power at home, but
I’m thinking of getting 100% of it from renewables. That should
only cost about a dollar a day.
Cutting out overseas sailing is really not an option at this stage
(though I could start sailing there instead…) so the flights are
going to have to stay for now… I’ll just have to reduce the
number of them by combining events and staying over there longer…
sounds like a good idea to me.
From there? How to offset all the chemicals that are created in the
process of building all these carbon-fibre boats and plastic
sails… hmmm…
Maybe I should also replace my appliances with
some energy efficient ones.
The quarter-life crisis starts today… time to re-evaluate the
state of the nation and make some irrational and drastic
changes.
But then I’m feeling relaxed and comfortable… what to do?
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