The Rules in Practice
During the course of the year I travel up and down the country giving sailing talks (and indeed I do talks all around the world as part of my coaching). I first learned to give them when I got my Chemical Engineering degree at Loughborough University, where we had to give weekly talks based on our design project. It has been a long time since I studied Chemical Engineering but I still do lots of talks!
Popular topics have included race strategy & tactics, nutrition & fitness, and the rules. Usually the most popular time for talks is after the clocks go back and it is too cold (and dark!) to sail in the evenings. However not this year…
Every four years the racing rules of sailing change and 2009 is one of the years of change, so people are very keen to learn how the new rules are going to affect them when racing! As a coach I get to see lots of rules incidents and I also get many on camera, so I can pass my experience on to sailors who do not have the opportunity to get as much time on the water as I do…
Obviously you can cover only so much in a couple of hours talk and often I will tend to focus on just one area, for example rounding marks, the appendix on team racing etc. etc. so I recommend sailors buy The rules in Practice by Bryan Willis. A great little book published by Wiley Nautical and an essential part of my kit bag.
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