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Sailing:
Nature Spoils Cardboard Sailboat’s Debut and is it
Really that Important to Get There?
by Dick Potter
July, 2004
Punta Gorda Life
The recent annual Redfish Fishing
Tournament in Punta Gorda included a number of
subsidiary activities, including the great cardboard
boat races. The rules for this event are pretty
simple; the boat must be constructed from the
limited list of materials of cardboard, glue, duct
tape, and paint. The Punta Gorda Sailing Club could
not resist the challenge of showing those power
boaters, kayakers, and other abusers of nature and
the body how the simple harnessing of the wind can
produce essentially the same result of moving a boat
through the water. Accordingly, the Club
constructed a trimaran of those cardboard cylinders
used to mold concrete columns using a good bit of
glue, duct tape and paint and produced a splendid
looking craft with a lateen sail. Assigned to the
miscellaneous power group, the “Paper Clipper” was
placed in the last heat against the Rotary Club’s
paddleboat. And this is where Mother Nature and a
race committee suspected of bias comes in, because
there wasn’t any wind or, if there were, it was
shielded by the
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Holiday Inn immediately
alongside the racecourse. As a result, the Paper
Clipper just sat there until the Club’s Commodore
assisted by swimming and pushing the vessel around
the course. For the final all-in-together race, the
illicit (under the Racing Rules of Sailing) use of
paddles became a necessary.
All this leads to the point
about sailors and their attitude to getting
somewhere. If it was that essential to go from A to
B and to arrive exactly at some particular time,
then the boater will most likely go out and buy the
biggest and noisiest motor and become a “Stink
Potter”. Not that sailors are generally laid-back
persons, as you will see Type A activity at any
sailboat race. However, in a sailboat race, the
sailor recognizes that all are subject to the same
conditions and that it is skill that will decide the
eventual outcome. The true sailor understands the
limits of the wind and is not fazed by the necessity
to wait for more favorable conditions. The reward
is getting there for nothing, due to the superiority
of the human race’s ability to take advantage of the
weather. That is why the true sailor, when
embarking on a cruise as short as a trip to Pelican
Bay or as distant as to the Bahamas, will not offer
any indication of arrival time or whether, in fact,
the journey will actually be made. For a day trip,
the sailor leaves Ponce Inlet and checks the wind
and, on the basis of the strength and the direction
from which it is blowing, chooses a course to take
advantage of the wind and to provide a satisfactory
experience for the Captain and passengers. The
planned cruise is the curse of sailing when a number
of boats agree to meet at a given location at a
given time. More likely, the sailors make their
independent way and eventually meet up with some of
the group or maybe they don’t. I’m not saying that
power boaters are sheep and suffer from a herd
instinct that causes them to drive in line across
Charlotte Harbor on the way to lunch, because that
is cruel and anyway it has been said many times
before. No the true sailor is someone to whom the
experience of traveling is as important as is the
arrival at the destination. We are all different
and sailboaters are more different than others. 
Please
click here for additional information
on the Punta Gorda Sailing Club.
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