Another T-10?

With the season fast approaching, the club has just acquired a new toy for the boys (and for the girls too, of course). Speaking of beautiful ladies, on the right is a photo looking up under the poopdeck of our newest keelboat, Siege. It is a Tartan-10 donated by Glen Gordon, an avid sailor and racer down in Waukegan, IL. Word is that the donation isn't official yet but will be soon. Even when formalized, boat donations often don't stick around Hoofers for long, either being sold off cheap to preferred club members or stored on the farm until they can be taken as a tax write-off.

The Tartan-10 is a bit of a funky design. It has a fractional rig with a small chute, the cabin top is flush with the deck (and thus disorienting for drunk people), and the cabin has zero headroom. That is to say, it ain't no cruiser. But then, alcohol is now verboten (pronounced: for boatin') anyway, right? On the plus side, the T-10 has a wide transom making it very stable downwind. Some consider the feel of a T-10 to be more like a J-24 than a typical large keelboat. It is lightweight (~7000 lbs) though not an ultralight.

One or two T-10's have been donated in the past and were not kept by the club, having been deemed less than ideal for the keelboat program. However, given the recent losses of several Hoofer keelboats, we can probably use another one. Even when we do keep donated boats, they often don't last very long. Most end their lives as victims of sailing incompetence or otherwise damaged beyond repair (e.g. Decoy, Toy Boat, Maria...). It's a miracle that Soma is still sailing, or hopefully will be. But hey, if a big guy like Glen can sail a T-10 for years without falling through the cabin top, maybe we can too!

Guthier Day

Today is Earth Day, a time for everyone to pause and consider what they can do as individuals to help the environment. For instance, recycling, using less plastic, biking instead of driving, rowing out to the keelboats instead of taking the motorboat, eating less meat (meat production is inefficient), protesting nuclear power, protesting monkey abuse at the UW Primate Center, protesting child abuse (we're all children of the Earth), and so on.

Earth Day also provides a chance to pause and appreciate the beauty of the natural world. Lake Mendota, for instance. It's pretty right now--before the iridescent slime of summer arrives like a spilt tanker of green paint. The photo above is a good example of why we need Earth Day. It shows the new Union parking garage under construction. Note how it will almost completely block the view of the lake from Langdon Street! Alas, it would have cost more to make it entirely underground. What's worse, the new enlarged garage will encourage more driving and less walking and biking. The planners/perpetrators must have been high when they designed and approved this thing.

And yet, Union management claim that the Wis. Union is "green"! Let's try to make sure Hoofers at least is as green as possible. Beer drinking is green because beer is a natural product of, um, plants and stuff. Happy Earth Day!

Living the lie

The annual instructor hiring charade is finally over with. Were you "selected" (or not)..? Someone recently complained to me, i.e. someone who applied to instruct but wasn't selected, er, hired. S/he is a very good sailor, personable, loves to sail and windsurf, and s/he enjoys alcohol (the main critera for "selection"). Yet, s/he wasn't approved and won't be allowed to instruct even though s/he applied as a volunteer

If you think applications are evaluated fairly, they're not. Returning party buddies, er, instructors, get priority--even though teaching sailing at HSC isn't intended as a job but is part of one's overall education. The club's home page states explicitly (and correctly) that instructing is "the best way to become a better sailor". And yet, they refuse to let qualified, enthusiastic individuals teach lessons even as unpaid volunteers!?

It is human nature to try to build and maintain a comforting world view. Nietzsche explained this using the concept of illusion vs. reality. In a vernacular, it's known as "living the lie". To make existence bearable, our brains reject ideas that conflict with our preferred world-view, regardless of how accurate that view may be. The fact that Hoofers is run by sleazeballs is an unpleasant reality that is difficult to accept. We want desperately to believe that Hoofers is a nice place where everybody can learn in happiness and be treated fairly.

Most people are afraid to complain, reasoning (and rightly so) that if they do, they might suffer even greater abuses. The Japanese have an adage for this: "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down". Unfortunately the problem isn't confined to Japan. It exists wherever some people are given arbitrary authority over others. The crooks in charge of hiring aren't 100% at fault because it's the system that facilitates unfair access to resources and perks. There simply is no incentive to treat general club members, i.e. paying customers equally.