It s been a bit of a mediocre year for me. Yes I have done well in the DF65 and 95 events, one design at its best, but have struggled with the IOM and Marblehead this year as I settle in new boats and get to work on their optimisation. My timing was bad getting a new IOM on the water 1 week before the Nationals and trying a couple of things on the rigs which did not work. I did the same (new boat the week before) at the Marbleheads and suffered a couple of technical issues. However all is not lost as these were quickly fixed on the M and the IOM is now up to speed.
Why the title. Well I was thinking about the worlds and that I might be a lost cause until I heard a podcast called "13 minutes to the moon" created by Kevin Fong.
It is a fascinating and inspiring account of the story of the first lunar landing (Apollo 11), all eminating from Presidents Kennedy's famous speech in 1962. I can highly recommend listening to this Podcast on BBC sounds. There is much archive material from NASA, interviews with the flight controllers and astranauts and personalities threaded through an unbelievable story that almost ended in disaster.
The web site with links to the podcast is HERE
On September 12, 1962, a warm and sunny day, President Kennedy delivered his speech before a crowd of about 40,000 people, at Rice University's Rice Stadium. Many individuals in the crowd were Rice University students. The middle portion of the speech has been widely quoted:
We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours. There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon... We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.
So imagine being tasked with this, when the rocket technology was only just developing after the war, computers barely existed, semiconductors were just being imagined. Think about developing a flight guidance system for landing a luner module on the moon when very basic computers filled entire rooms. Because of weight restrictions, everything had to be controlled by computer rather than by pilot controls and this had to work and fit inside a couple of shoe boxes. In April 1970, they landed on the moon.
To Quote the creater, Kevin Fong
“The message of Apollo is very simple: If you can take human beings and fire them into the space at 25,000 mph, land them on the surface of the Moon and bring them home, then anything must be possible,” Fong said. “We are limited only by our own imagination.”
Having heard this, it got me thinking about my approach to the worlds. Nothing is impossible if you apply your mind to it. I do not have the 400,000 people involved in some small way on the Apollo project of people to help me but there are so many resources to help and as Jim Saltenstall used to say to me racing 470's, there is no substitute for hours on the water. Winning might be a stretch but a good results is within my grasp.
A good supporting fact in my favour is that Juan Egea in his Alioth scored a second in this weekend in a Spanish championship. An Alioth against a fleet of Venti's and only 4 points behind Guillermo Beltri.
Now all I have to do is get my head down and focus on performance, which is where I was last year with a trusted stead.
Onwards and upwards
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