The sailor in me and the techy programmer are always in conflict. The sailor says keep it simple, you’ll be happier. The techy says just gotta have that whiz-bang thingy, it’s so cool. Like the cartoons with an angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other they can’t agree on anything.

On the whole the sailor has been proven correct over and over. Still the techy wins a lot of arguments.

For instance, the recent outhaul upgrade required some high strength 40mm blocks, all with shackles and 2 with beckets. Having a becket allows for increased purchase, i.e. more power. If rove correctly a 2:1 becomes 3:1 . I didn’t care what the sailor or techy said, this old guy likes trimming to be easy, therefore increased purchase is a must.

But I had a choice in beckets, the ancient fixed style or a shinny new removable clip style. The techy won that one. Yes there is a but, another little gosh-darn incident.

It came about yesterday as Bill and I set out. This could be karma or Murphy at work. I rarely use the so-called turning basin to raise sail. It’s too crowded with paddle boarders and others that aren’t conscience that a 5 ton sailboat doesn’t have brakes. I suspect I’d never notice the bump.

The herd of boards forced the course to be a bit deeper and closer to the pier than usual. Some guru got nervous about that. Now thanks to the keel any sailboat easily turns 180 in its own length –  not so with power boats or cars. So no worries. A couple boat lengths off, he shouts “been sailing long?”, followed by advice “don’t raise sail”.  Guess he needed to impress his buddies with his ignorance. Of course we raised sail. Needless to say all went smoothly. Why it annoyed me I don’t know. Been a hard week I guess.  I mulled over things I could have said to him; perhaps karma heard?

A few tacks later the wind remains fair and building. As she begins to heel beyond optimal I ask Bill to flatten the mainsail. That de-powers it, which lessens heel, weather helm, and lets her get back on her design lines, all of which translates to faster sailing.

So Bill grabs the outhaul line and pulls like it was the old outhaul. Now the old one practically required a sacrifice to move. The new at 12:1 takes  a light touch. In a blink one of the outhaul blocks hits an eye strap I had been meaning to remove and instantly that shinny new techy clip in style lets go. That wasn’t in the brochure.

After a few minutes of fiddling with it on a rolling boat convinces me to wait for calmer times.

Granted the eye strap was the instigator; but sailor can’t help but noticing that with the old traditional simplistic style becket this type of failure could not occur.

So once again the sailor had the last word.