Yeah, except those times when you stomped me!
Nice writeup, too. Almost felt like being there, but I need more. Come on y'all...you know who you are.
so, now I'm going to wax philosophical, as is my wont, regarding kicking butt, and stomping.
One of the reasons I like the SSS is that while folks all try to win races, everybody realizes a fundamental truth: that if you're out there, driving your boat alone or with only one other person, you're already kicking butt. In terms of buttwhomping awesomeness, "winning" the race is the last 2% on top of the 98% that you've already accomplished. This goes 10x over if you've ever taken your boat out past the Golden Gate.
let's put this in perspective.
We tend to forget.... if you walk your dock, that 50% of the boats on the dock almost never leave the dock. Do YOU leave the dock? Why yes, you do. So you're already more kickbutt than half the people on the freaking dock.
Ask people on your dock what they think of sailing solo. The overwhelming majority won't do it. They think it's crazy. It's too hard. So the fact that you do it, even "just" around the Bay makes you more kickbutt than about 80%, of the 50% that do in fact move their boats off the dock. Have you ever sailed at night, in the dark? Do you have any idea about how many sailors have never done that, wouldn't dream of doing that?
How about sailing solo around the Farallones? 95% or more of sailors in the San Francisco Bay Area have never been around the Farallones at all. Of the 50% who actually move their boats off the dock more than once a year, probably 95% have never been around the Islands. It's too dangerous, it's too much work, they're not ready. If you have been around the Farallones at all, you're already in the kickbutt 5%, of the 50% whats actually use their boats.
How about doing a LongPac? Not one sailor in 100 in the San Francisco Bay Area would dare to sail 400 miles out of sight of land, much less alone. It's DARK out there!.... and and and... This puts you in the kickbutt, stompin' 1% of the 50%, again. In other words, what we as SSS'ers take for granted, is 'effing insane by the standards of the overwhelming majority of people who step on sailboats. Each of us is in the kickbutt !%, of the kickbutt 5% of the kickbutt 50%.
THAT....is stompin' kickbutt. To then go finish an in-the-Bay race, five minutes faster on handicap than someone else, pales to utter insignificance in the overall spectrum of kickbuttnicity.
That's a dose of reality for us all. **shaking my forefinger at Ms Gamayun". We live in a little sailing world where we cheer for people who sail around the world, or engineer outrageous hi-tech carbon structures, or do incredible and amazing things. Yet the rest of the world stares at us, if they know about us at all (which they don't) as if we're crazy... brave, talented, courageous, adventuresome, all of that.
We all are stompin' kickbutt.
It's like...at my Highland Games get-togethers.... you have NO idea how many people say "
I'd love to try that...." but when you offer them the chance, there are more reasons than you can shake a stick at, that people won't do it. "My knee"..."My back"... "My shoulder"... I'll get hurt"... "I'm too small"... "I'm too old" on and on and fackin' on. For 1-in-10 who spout an excuse, that excuse is in fact probably valid. They actually DID have rotator cuff surgery back in January. For the rest? ~~
Well, the way we say it.... if you're on THIS side of the fence, even if you utterly suck, you're beating all the people on the OTHER side of the fence. That makes you awesome.
One of my favorite books about sailing is called "
The Race". It's about a New England journalist who did an early OSTAR in a Westsail 32. After sailing alone across the Atlantic to arrive for the race, he had a few weeks in port to prepare. Then they started and he wrote about his experiences during the race, including a really fascinating hallucination that almost cost him his life. He arrived in Newport after a month at sea. All the super-big, super-fast boats had left already, they'd finished two weeks earlier. While he was at race headquarters, the telephone rang. It was a Johnny-come-lately journalist who wanted to interview one of the racers. The guy at race headquarters handed the phone to the author, who said hi. The journalist asked him about his boat and where he'd finished. Of course, he'd finished well down in the pack, in the slowest division. The journalist hemmed and hawwed, and finally asked the author if there were any "
winners" there to interview. The author replied.... ~~
No, there are no winners here. There are only losers left here, now~~...and hung up.
I thought that was a great line, and it applies perfectly to the SSS. I'm quite proud to be an SSS "loser" Yup. In 2008 a mess of us "losers" who didn't finish first sailed alone to Hawaii. In 1995, 1997, and 2003 a bunch of losers, including me, sailed those years LongPac's. Only one boat of each of those "won", the rest of us...those people who sailed 400 or 2,120 miles along..."lost". The utter preposterousness of calling anyone who achieves those things a "loser", is...is....words fail me.
If you push off the dock, you're awesome. If you push off the dock, alone, you're kickbutt awesome. If you push off the dock and sail alone past the Golden Gate, you're stomping-beyond-belief-kickbutt-awesome. --- and we all know it. And if you happen to sail smart and actually finish first in a race, well. Good for you! Way cool! Enjoy it.
That's one reason why I keep coming back to this bunch.
