Title: Sailing Rant
Date: 2014-10-11 00:01
Author: adam
Category: Sailing
Tags: rant, sailing, sports
Slug: sailing-rant
Status: published

Up until this year, sailing at my high school was fun.<!--more--> We had the same partner and boat most of the time, so we could refine our skills together. I was with a good friend, so we could always talk about something (mostly recent developments in technology), and he was good enough as a crew that I didn't have to pay constant attention to how he was doing his job.

This year, however, has not been very fun. We switch partners and boats every day, meaning that we never really develop skills together. I teach the same things to whoever I am with every day, yet regardless of how well they understand it, I know that the next day I will have to teach it to someone else all over again. By the time I get any of them again, they tend to have forgotten whatever it was. Since I need to constantly play attention to what my crew is doing and continually correct them, I can't focus on things that I need to practice, such as starts, or fun things, such as using the rules to mess with people.

In addition to the pairing changes, our head coach is being increasingly insistent on longer practices. Since it takes 10-15 minutes to walk down to (and back from) the boathouse every day, our practices are already about 20-30 minutes longer than most. We also tend to not get out quite on time since we don't go in with enough time to de-rig and take off our drysuits. In addition to this, we also have an extra half hour on Wednesdays and Saturdays, the reasoning being that most sports have games then.

I would be mostly okay with the extra time, except that this year, sailing has been the event I least look forward to. This is a major change from previous years, when it was my favorite part of the day. It is so bad that it is even worse than my English class, which is traditionally my least favorite part of the day. Obviously, something is very, very wrong.
