The conclusion of this article is that there is no such thing as a natural helmsman, while everything in life is learned, some people seem to have learned very well.<\/p>\n
Loki\u2019s helmsman Gordon Maguire is one of the best in the business. He has a<\/p>\n
feel for driving a boat that allows him to react to changes in boat speed<\/p>\n
instantly, long before the instruments tell him the Reichel Pugh 62 has<\/p>\n
slowed that fraction of a knot.<\/p>\n
There is no substitute for feel, he says. \u201cThe information from the<\/p>\n
instruments is all historical. It takes four to five seconds for the<\/p>\n
instruments to do the calculations from when the cause of the drop in speed<\/p>\n
occurred. People who drive on the instruments are always four or five<\/p>\n
seconds behind. They are reactive and the boat is slow. The brain is so much<\/p>\n
faster at processing all the information coming in at once than the onboard<\/p>\n
computers.<\/p>\n
\u201cReacting early is as important going down wind as up. People tend to get<\/p>\n
carried away as the boat accelerates down a wave, but you should already be<\/p>\n
looking at the exit and how you will catch the next wave. I never look at<\/p>\n
the dials going down wind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maguire says that another problem with focussing too much on the dials is<\/p>\n
that they are more likely to engage the front half of the brain, and the key<\/p>\n
to driving fast is the subconscious.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to get the intellect out of the way. We drive for long stretches<\/p>\n
at a time but doing very precise things over and over. If you consciously<\/p>\n
concentrated for that long you would go mad in half an hour. I switch my<\/p>\n
mind off. I am not really concentrating. Sometimes I don\u2019t know what has<\/p>\n
happened in the last 30 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is like driving a car through an intersection that you go through all<\/p>\n
the time. When you are through it you think, was there a green light? Did I<\/p>\n
just drive through a red light? But subconsciously you saw a green light and<\/p>\n
you did what you usually do without thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet while it is all about feeling the boat under you, Maguire doesn\u2019t<\/p>\n
believe that there is any such thing as a natural boat driver.<\/p>\n
\u201cSteering a yacht is totally unnatural, just like it is totally unnatural to<\/p>\n
hit a golf ball. It is only natural if you practice teeing off thousands of<\/p>\n
times. After a hundred thousand miles you know a boat is going to slow down<\/p>\n
when it hits a wave and what to do about it.\u201d — Read on:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/rolexsydneyhobart.com\/news.asp?key=5080<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The conclusion of this article is that there is no such thing as a natural helmsman, while everything in life is learned, some people seem to have learned very well. Loki\u2019s helmsman Gordon Maguire is one of the best in the business. He has a feel for driving a boat that allows him to react … Continue reading Natural Helmsman?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[491],"tags":[568],"class_list":["post-1003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sailing","tag-natural-helmsman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1003"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1005,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003\/revisions\/1005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}