In sailing, we talk a lot about feel.” But what is that anyway? Is it something natural, a sixth sense we are born with? Or is it more about nurture, something we can define and learn? Lately, it's been one of my favorite regatta-dinner discussions. I’m learning that most of us use the term too generically to describe what we can’t define.
We apply it to others: Sue was so fast today in the waves; she has such a good feel for it.” We describe our own experiences, like, The boat felt sluggish today; we did not do very well.” But both uses are cop-outs. Can’t we be more specific about why Sue is so fast in waves? What exactly makes the boat sluggish, and what can we do about it? Perhaps, if we codify the answers, the boat will tell us more about why we are fast and suggest solutions when we are not.
My best stab at defining feel is: The assimilation of senses in forming an overall sensation of boatspeed and height to assess performance. What find most fascinating about the subject is that somehow our mind subconsciously combines multiple sense inputs to form this performance assessment: Helm, sheet tension, our core, sit bones, sounds and sight all go into the equation that our mind takes in to decide.
Although deeply intertwined, feel is not technique. Technique is the action we take to sail the boat, while feel is performance feedback. If our senses tell us we are bound up and slow, that’s feel. We decide to pull on the backstay more and hike harder to fix that problem—that’s technique. Using instruments is not feel. You can get a lot of information from the simplest speedometer to the most sophisticated instruments with a target VMG, but that is different from actually feeling it.
This story is from the Fall 2022 edition of Sailing World.
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This story is from the Fall 2022 edition of Sailing World.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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