Level 2 training

The summary version of Level 2 training is that it's about learning to live on a boat, as well as consolidating what we learned on Level 1. We got all that. We also got a really social boat and had a lot of fun.

Things were crowded for the week. They originally planned to run two boats, but they didn't quite have enough people, so instead they put us all together on one, fourteen in training plus four skippers. The boat couldn't even sleep everyone, but, as they explained, it wasn't like we'd all be able to sleep at the same time anyway!

It was an interesting group of people. Banno used to be a credit trader and just quit, with no apparent plan yet for what to do next except for this trip, more sailing, and time with his family.  Carla was a PhD aerospace engineer from Andorra. Marine was from Monaco and Karri fro Estonia, adding to the tiny country thing. Christian was a buy-to-let landlord, leading me to get briefly into work mode and try sell him on our offering. Sam had a business designing and manufacturing various gift items. Ian imports medical devices, ultimately leading to more sales mode, as I figured I had to put him in touch with Seth and Dan, two friends with a medical device startup. Patsy had the best story, about to start up an oil and gas consulting business with a friend after doing one leg of the race, she had done her first week of training and immediately decided to go round the world! She hadn’t yet told her business partner, and we were all looking forwrad hearing how that went when she did.

We also had four instructors. Matt and Simon had both skippered in previous races. They had both also come in last. I asked Matt at one point what he thought made the difference, how much was decisions he would have made differently in retrospect, how much was decisions that he’d still stand by but just didn’t work out, how much was the focus or quality of the crew, etc. He put a lot of it down to bad luck that then snowballed. For example, there were some injuries that were just bad luck, which left the crew short-handed, which things went more slowly and people were tired, which led to some more errors and required some conservative decisions like steering a course well around heavy weather.

The sailing was pretty straightforward, without a lot that was really new, but with a lot of focus on doing everything better. Matt was particularly good about this, getting us to think in advance through everything we had to do in e.g. a sail change, then agreeing what calls would be made at what point, and so what the next person would do when he heard that call. We went through this a lot and got better with the repetition. We were starting to feel like a racing team. Not a GREAT racing team or anything, but the beginnings were there.

We did my first night sailing, which was really cool. I was on the helm for a while, not exactly navigating by the stars, but steering toward a few particular stars on the horizon. The stars were amazing, not completely free from light pollution but still pretty isolated. The Milky Way was visible, and I could pick out a few constellations and planets… or at least guess at them in a semi-authoritative voice. Keeping a watch for other boats got more important and a bit more tricky, as you had to watch for and understand their lights. We worked a bit on sail trim as well. I fairly consistently managed to call for the wrong trim, which I’d like to blame on trying to read things in the dark, but really just came down to not having figured out yet what I was doing.

We had a few minor injuries as part of training. One person was a bit casual unloading a winch. The halard whipped off, she held on, and her had got pulled into a jammer. Just a bang and a small cut, but enough to get your attention. At another point, a Yankee sheet came free. Matt jumped to control it but got a minor clip in the head and was a bit dazed afterward. We headed back into the marina, so he could get checked out, and he was ruled OK in the end.

Heading back in, as we were on a long, bumpy sail back toward Gosport, some clouds rolled in and the temperature started to drop. I was a bit underdressed, so I went below to put on an extra layer. This took a long time, with the boat heeled over and bouncing around. By the time I got back on deck, I was feeling pretty queasy. For about an hour of uneventful sailing, I didn’t feel any worse, but I didn’t feel any better either. Then lunch came up from the galley, and after two bites of cheese and pickle wrap, lunch came up again. I dove for the low side of the boat, but I was clipped in, so I didn’t quite make it. Ugly. First time seasick (or any kind of motion-sick), in as long as I could remember and not great considering it wasn’t actually that rough, but I felt a lot better afterward. A few more people had trouble along the way, but they were generally more subtle about it than I was.

Our last night was Banno’s birthday, so we all went out to dinner and then to Gosport’s finest bar (which was not very fine). We managed a birthday toast with all the bubbly they had without, I think, having to break a twenty. There was some karaoke, including my go-to song. (If you don’t know my go-to song, we just need to go out to karaoke sometime!) There was dancing. Overall, a great social finish to a fun week of sailing.

Sea survival course

We had a full-day sea survival course before starting Level 2 training. It was in a local middle school, so we got the experience of sitting in uncomfortable and slightly-too-small chairs with all the walls covered by middle school geography material, at least for the first half of the day. There was a vast amount of material to cover, and I can't claim to have absorbed a lot of it. I'm not even sure we were expected to though. Well, yes, we were expected to come away with a lot of knowledge about how to handle ourselves if our boat should sink. But more than that, I think the idea was to build confidence than to really know every last detail. As long as individuals don't panic, and everyone knows the basic bits, then you can survive. At least that was my main takeaway.

Also, in my defence, the instructor was extremely Northern, and while I've spent a lot of time with a lot of Northern people, I just couldn't even understand about a third of what he said.

At one point early on, he asked how many people didn't know how to swim. I thought it was a joke until a few hands went up. His follow up, "Don't worry. It doesn't matter. If you go in, the sea doesn't care if you think you can swim. You're relying on the survival gear no matter what."

The second half of the day, we were in the pool, actually applying some of the techniques we had discussed. We got comfortable with the life jackets, including how they would automatically get you floating the right way up. We practiced the recommended backstroke technique for moving around, how to latch onto other people and two them around, and how to huddle together as a group to keep warm and keep track of each other. Then we deployed the raft, which was pretty cool, and practiced getting in (tougher that you'd think), helping others in, and securing the raft, all while having water thrown at us.

In the end, I was a lot more confident about the situation. But even with the extra confidence, it also rammed home the lesson that you just really don't want to have to abandon ship in the first place.

Well, I've finally pulled the trigger

So, that's it. I gave my notice today, so I'm now fully committed to doing Clipper. Still have to send in the contract, pay my money, finish my training, etc., etc.... But let's face it, I've quit my job and given up everything that goes with it, so I'm not turning back.

My boss was surprised, which I guess is good. But the fact that I wasn't just going to some competitor made it a much different conversation than it would have been otherwise. My favorite comment of his, "I don't know whether to say 'You bastard' or 'You lucky bastard'. Downside is that it looks like I'll be working out my six months notice instead of getting some nice gardening leave. He's also asked me to keep it quiet for a while, until he has time to line up a replacement. Going to be a bit weird. But then, I've been keeping this quiet as I've been thinking about it myself for the past few months, so I guess it's not really much difference.

This does mean I can really start telling people other than at work. Probably going to be toughest news around the rugby club. They'll be losing a Treasurer and a prop. (Not that my performance as Treasurer has been that great of late! Or my performance as prop! But there aren't any obvious people to step in to either role. Had to happen sometime though, and this is a good reason for it.)

Evil

I listen to a number of Slate podcasts -- sports, culture, politics, money....  It's good quality general-interest discussion. And, when they get into political docs, it's a good exposure to center-left thinking.

Recently, it struck me that across several different podcasts, I'd hear a lot of references to "evil":
-- Walmart
-- Amazon
-- Uber
-- for-profit colleges
-- the SAE guys from Oklahoma singing racist songs

I'm certainly not defending the SAE racists, and the for-profit colleges seem to have engaged in at least some very bad practices. I can even see the case against the other businesses, even if I don't agree with it.

But here's the thing. I'm about 85% sure all the people saying these things would have been mocking George Bush for using the word "evil" to refer to Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. What does that say?

Level 1 training

I think I'm doing this.

I just finished Level 1 training for the Clipper Race. This was a week of learning the basics of crewing a big racing yacht. I've done a little bit of sailing before, but nothing like this. This week was all about finding out whether sailing a big boat in bad weather had as much appeal as sailing a 35-footer in the sunny Mediterranean. And the answer is... not exactly. But it has something different, and something I could use just now.

There's much more of a team aspect to this kind of sailing than I expected. That's great when it works, but it also got frustrating at times. Each evening, we did a round robin, "What did you think of the day?" session. Night one and night two, it was all the same. "I really learned a lot. I had fun. I liked this. I liked that." But night three, it got around to me, and I broke form. "Honestly, I found today really frustrating. We're not functioning well as a team. Everyone is jumping to do everything, getting in each other's way, and leaving the last job with nobody doing it. It's like six-year-olds playing soccer, all swarming around the ball. There needs to be one person leading things. When Max (the skipper) is bossing us, we're fine. But when he just says 'go do it', it's chaos. Maybe my expectations are just going up faster than our ability, but it's driving me nuts."

Fortunately, people seemed to take it in the spirit it was intended. Not sure it made much difference, as fundamentally my expectations were going up faster than our ability. But as we got a few more days of experience working together, our communication got better, and I could see how a team could emerge out of all this.

There was a lot of technical learning as well. Winch handling was key, how to safely and effectively get lines onto winches, grind them on, and ease them off. Hoisting sails, changing them, packing them away. Tacking, gybing, taking in reefs and shaking them out. Rowing around the dinghy. Man-over-board drills every day, sometimes twice. And we were doing this in some weather. It was near freezing much of the time. At one point, as we headed out, it was 30 knots of wind and hailing.

And of course, the people. I really wondered what kind of person would be doing something like this. You'd think that the fact I was thinking about it would be some assurance, but it wasn't that simple in my head. But as it turned out, it was a really good group. A lot of people I could really click with. A few others who, honestly, didn't feel like as much potential for a connection, but I could definitely see working together with them.

A little thinking about the timing of the race, the World Cup, and my notice period, and I think legs 4, 5, and 6 would work for me. I'd come in thinking I wanted to do the whole thing or not bother, but this compromise feels right. It's still about six months. It's the Pacific. It's Australia. And while it would be much cooler to say "I sailed around the world" than "I sailed almost half way around the world", this just works better.

News to some

It's an old piece -- never mind how I stumbled across it -- but the "public editor" of the New York Times asks "Is the New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?" His answer, "Of course it is."

It's worth reading in its entirety to see what exactly he means by this. It's not likely to satisfy the Times' harshest critics, but it should give supporters something to think about.

Ezra Klein might be right on this one

Interesting analysis of a recent Pew report on political polarisation. And by "interesting", I mean "supportive of a number of my pre-existing views, with a slightly new take and actual data".

I like the distinction between extreme views and polarised views, especially as someone who holds a few extreme views but in what I like to think is an eclectic mix (legalise drugs and free markets, expand immigration but crack down on those who've already violated immigration law, libertarian(ish) domestically but neo-conservative(ish) in foreign policy....).

I also like the fairly symmetric view of the world here. Polarisation is happening on both left and right. Democrats, Republicans, and their partisans spend a lot of time painting the other side as extreme where I see a fair amount of moderation of positions (albeit not in all areas) but both sides digging in more.