| I remember one absolute drifter where there was | | | | the skipper who just takes what comes. |
| almost literally no wind. The class racing was Flying | | | | Advantages of Local Knowledge |
| Dutchman, which, as everyone knows, will move in a | | | | For boats which race usually at one club for most of |
| wind of only a couple of knots -- and yet all 30 or so | | | | the season, a sort of pattern emerges. More often |
| boats were practically becalmed. | | | | than not the race is sailed in the prevailing wind of |
| A Private Storm | | | | the district, and after a couple of seasons skippers |
| We all had our spinnakers up because the course | | | | have a fair idea what to expect. Many rely on this |
| was a short reach to the start of the work to | | | | 'experience' knowledge and nothing else. This might |
| weather. I happened to look across at a boat to | | | | be all right as far as it goes, but if a skipper |
| starboard of us just as the water around it -- and | | | | correlates the weather that has just happened to |
| only round it -- began to wrinkle, then pucker, then | | | | him with the weather he expected from newspaper |
| work into a miniature storm. The poor fellows aboard | | | | weather maps, his own barometer, his observation |
| had no chance. They capsized immediately, the | | | | of cloud formations and the forecasts issued by the |
| spinnaker filled with water, and when the wind did | | | | local Weather Bureau, he is going to build a more |
| come properly they were in so much strife that they | | | | accurate, detailed and predictable 'experience' |
| withdrew from the race. | | | | knowledge than the others. |
| That treacherous bit of private weather will stick in | | | | It is not terribly hard to sail decently when the |
| my mind for the rest of my life because of the | | | | conditions at the end of a short race are the same |
| object lesson it gave. If weather could be so local, | | | | as they were at the beginning. The longer a race, the |
| and so unpredictable -- then yachtsmen should learn | | | | more often change is likely and the more important is |
| all they can about it so even if they can't avoid that | | | | a record of weather patterns. But the men are really |
| kind of capriciousness, at least they can be prepared | | | | picked from the boys when the conditions change |
| for the more usual forms. | | | | halfway through. |
| Weather, which includes wind -- the yacht's fuel -- is | | | | So get to work. Follow the weather all through the |
| complex, temperamental and vital. And nobody | | | | week, make your own observations, and perhaps |
| knows the half of what it will do. But you can learn | | | | you'll become the person that exists in every yacht |
| what is likely to happen in a given set of conditions. | | | | club -- the legendary skipper who can 'smell' the wind. |
| If you're right only half the time you'll do better than | | | | |