A friend and I were talking about the sad state of affairs regarding PHRF here in Dago, specifically the dearth of boats in Class1 (ratings of 45 and faster). Of course much of the blame is put at the feet of the dopes on the rating board for doing an absolutely hideous job of handing out fair ratings. After all, it's not much fun to go out racing if you are not one of the chosen who have guaranteed pickle dishes by giving themselves generous ratings. These creeps are the Enron executives of sailing. As guilty as these idiots are, this, for once, is not the point of the article.

What has happened, or more importantly, failed to happen here, is that the level of sailing ability from an overall perspective has suffered greatly. A case in point here in SD is the Nelson designed CM 1200, now named Velocity. A decent, if not spectacular performer under previous owners, the boat is now so far off the pace under new ownership as to be laughable. No doubt the new owners are not up to the task of getting this boat even close to it's potential. And really, unless this owner dumps a pile of money on some sailmaker's desk, there is almost no way he is going to do any better on his own.

And it is here that the system has failed itself.

I don't mean rating system. I mean the system that should be in place that helps people become better racers. The biggest problem for people is that of becoming a good sailor. The traditional route of starting in dinghies and then graduating up to crew and then ownership in big boats is often circumvented these days. A lot of people simply don't have the background or time to spend learning the finer points of the game. They might have sailed early, gone off to a career, and then later have enough dough to buy a boat. Or some people just get into the game late, with a whole lot of catching up to do.

Whatever, the result is that there are a bunch of poor sailors out there. By default, the role of helping owners and crew get better has fallen upon the sailmakers. They tend to be the better sailors in the industry, and they are usually a more immediate and accessible source than designers, boat builders, or equipment manufactures.

I would guess that because most sailmakers were better sailors than they were businessmen, the trend of sailmakers being put in the position of delivering far more service than they were being compensated for, began because of poor negotiating skills. The first sailmaker who agreed to the first customer who said, "Well, I'll buy your sails, but you've got to sail with me" started a very bad trend. (At least for sailmakers. For customers it has resulted in untold hours of free service.) Peter Conrad, the Gestapo force behind Sobstad, once gave a great analogy for what is wrong with this facet of the sailmaking industry. He said, when you go buy a set of Ping golf clubs, they don't deliver them to the course and they don't show you how to use them. If you want them delivered, there is a delivery charge, and if you want to learn how to use them, you hire the local pro.

Why should the sailmaking industry be any different? It shouldn't, and really there ought to be two contracts when you buy sails, a product contract and a service contract. You want the sailmaker to sail x amount of practices and x amount of races? It'll cost you x amount of money.

Beyond that, there are people outside of sailmaking who can be hired for lessons. But this level of instruction has never been widely accepted in sailing. Why is it that a guy with a $250 tennis racket will think nothing of hiring an instructor at $40 bucks an hour to show him how to get better, but the guy with the $125,000 race boat gets offended if you suggest the same thing?

This cog in the wheel should be much more present than it is. Really, it is the only way for people to raise their game. Sure, there are sailing schools and some of them are quite good, but to learn specific things to your boat, with your crew, private coaches are the way to go. So to all you guys with good boats that are getting your asses kicked, find the best guys you can hire, work out a good deal (most of these guys are not shrewd entrepreneurs), and get out there and practice and race with people who know, showing you what to do and when to do it.

Look, you owners are already spending a bundle to participate in this sport, what's a couple grand more? It accomplishes a number of things, all positive. First, It will give you much better results than anything else you could possibly do. There is nothing like knowledge and experience, two things that you'll get from a good coaching program. Second, it compensates guys in the industry who should be paid to teach you what they know. They've spent a lot of years developing their skills - they shouldn't have to give it away. Third, it helps the marine economy, it better defines roles of owner, sailmaker, and coaches, and it raises the whole level of the game to a higher level.