Friday, March 10, 2006
Optimists in the Snow
Optimist sailing has gotten a whole lot more serious since I was doing it. There were 317 boats at the US Nationals in 2005 and 268 boats at the New England Championships. I have also heard that it is now very unusual for any sailors to show up at a regatta without being part of a team. These teams have coach boats on the water to support the young sailors. One of these teams is FAST; a group of Opti sailors from CT, RI and MA. They recently had a training session in Newport where the conditions were probably more extreme than most adult frostbiting sailors would be comfortable in; 24 degrees and 20-34 knots. Some great photos showed up on the Sailing Anarchy main page.
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5 comments:
Interesting comment in the article that sailing in those conditions would not have been possible 20 years ago because sailing gear has improved so much in those years.
There were drysuits 20 years ago, just not gore-tex ones.
Yeah that's what I was thinking. What's really changed? Goretex drysuits, maybe slightly better wicking underlayers, perhaps better gloves ... Not sure there's enough of a change to say that this couldn't have happened 20 years ago.
I think the big change is that now parents put there kids in sailing programs that take kids out sailing in those conditions.
I can only dream of sailing in conditions that cold...
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