Shorthanded Sailing

I'm always amazed when I go to the Single Handed Sailing Society's meetings how many people seem to know each other. By definition, these are people who like to sail by themselves. The Three Bridge Fiasco skipper's meeting usually has about 200 people. They're all talking and laughing and discussing strategies and windshifts and whatever else sailors talk about.

I have always stood on the edge of this and tried to figure out how they know each other. Probably yacht clubs. Maybe from race parties (Tillerman, that's the beer tent thing). I still can't completely reconcile it with the singlehanded thing but I've known for years I'm no great thinker.

Last night was a bit different for me at one of these things. War Dog over at Sailing Anarchy (SA) had organized an SA division for the 3BF. Afterwards, he'd compiled the results and posted the winners and the non-finishers. He was offering a bottle of rum to the winners (Blister DH, Ragtime SH) but also got some SA t-shirts to hand out.

I met some of the people that I've been reading for years and actually had someone to talk to at one of these events. I don't want this to come off sounding all sad-sack, I'm very aware of how you would go about meeting people in the sailing community, it's just something that doesn't fit into my current sailing life due to kids, lack of time for 3 day regattas, etc.

For all the annoying things about SA, this is what makes it the top online sailing community and I'm darned glad to have been in the inaugural SA sailing division and to have won a Sailing Anarchy shirt.