Episode 16 Success and other dangers

We don’t do enough to promote the fear of success.

Probably, its because we’ve decided that the only fear worth fostering is the fear of failure. Even that is misleading because it is really a fear of looking a goose in front of persons more competent, and more superior, than oneself. Technically, it relates to peer pressure, which is a lamentably underrated virtue. For instance, my fear of looking a goose in front of other drivers (peer pressure) keeps me alert to driving on the right (left) side of the road, which, in turn, has probably saved many lives. I have decided there is nothing inherently wrong with trying to blend in, though one should be discerning about what one should blend in with.

The fear of the fear of failure is one of those things that I’d like to feed into my politically incorrect two-stoke tree mulcher, together with other post-modern sacred cows, like the Disneyesque notion of following your heart. 

There is another danger out there that awaits the unwary failure-averse among us - Success. Particularly in a competitive environment such as a boat race.

What could possibly be wrong with winning, I hear you say. I’m glad you ask the question, so let me explain.

[At this point, Martin puts on his most sincere voice, knowing that if he can fake sincerity, he can fake anything. He’s been watching the politicians on TV, and reckons that if they can do it, so can he.]

The problem is that when you succeed, you’ll want to go back and succeed again. Call it confirmation bias, if you like, or even the Gambler’s Fallacy.

I got a whiff of this, when I finally got the boat out with its new rigging and sails for a Sunday Afternoon Race Around Green Island. I had cajoled a mate, Maurice, to crew for me, and together we set off into the unknown, not knowing how the new old tub would react.

I am happy to report that the boat did, indeed, sail better. Noticeably. Which is reassuring after my recent investment in her. She took on a solid heel of about 10 to 15 degrees, occasionally bowing over to 30 degrees in the gusts, but never panicking. Two hundred and twenty kilograms of cast steel slung below the boat in the keel made sure of that. And she slid along nicely at about 4.5 to 6.0 knots, which is about half a knot or so faster than before. Importantly, she pointed quite nicely with an angle of about 50 to 60 degrees off the wind, up from about 70 to 80 with the old, blown out jib. What these numbers mean, is that we managed to work our way upwind and almost made the first mark off Green Island before being overtaken by the first of the boats in the pursuit race behind us.

The experience of getting overtaken was to be repeated many times before reaching the finishing line, but not comprehensively so. We started at the front (being the slowest boat in the race) and finished about twelfth from first and fifth from last. Which means there were still some boats behind us, allowing us some gloating rights. That’s not bad.

We also saw a Green Turtle and scared an Osprey, with its fishy lunch, off a navigation post, as we brushed past. I had instructed Maurice, on the helm, to get as close as he could to the markers without entangling the rigging in them, and he did a remarkably good job of it.

Puffed up with this modest success, my mind then started to calculate how to get the boat even faster. I’d need a new Mainsail ($900), a better bracket to pull the outboard right out of the water ($150 to $300), a bespoke mechanism to fill the keel slot when the keel was down ($500 ?), shiny go-faster paint ($5000), carbon sails ($ eeek!), a new boat, with foils, and so on. When you add up the dollars, you wonder if you’d be better off with a less expensive addiction, say illegal drugs or funding a private war in central Africa. All this because I had almost succeeded at something, and needed to clamber towards turning the "almost" into an "actual".

And so, we need to fear success, or at least hold a healthy respect for it, in the same way that we should fear failure. You never know what it will drive you to.

No that I’ve got that off my chest, I need to plot a way to get past that 11th-placed boat. And after him …

New Furler and Foresail, but getting overhauled in the last leg

Course recording from iSailor