YOU WANT THE BEANS?
Here goes.
I am Steve Clark, some of you may associate my name with C Class Catamarans, Vanguard and other sailing endeavours over the years. I have been racing at a fairly serious level for most of my life. I have even won a world championship or two.
The boat I just chopped into is one that I built. I can fix it if I want to. I can also take the parts off, throw it in a dumpster, and build new hulls in very short order. I am not going to defraud an insurance company lie about what I did and why. I was pissed off and took it out on the hull of my boat that had just been holed competitor who had violated rule 18.2c. He tried to turn inside me at a leeward mark where he had no rights ( did not have an overlap at two boatlengths) and where he did not have room to complete the turn. He was yelling at me "what the f... are you doing" when his bows went through my topsides. I was, quite obviously rounding the leeward mark and avoiding the two overlapped boats in front of me upon which I had no rights. The situation seemed pretty obvious to me and I got a little exercised by this guy acting like it was my fault that he rammed into me and holed my boat. My regatta was over, I had been fouled 3 times in two races, and I was wound a bit too tight for anybodies good.
So I vented, I'm not particularly proud of myself, but my anger only hurts me.
And Timbo, I have 3 kids. If they behaved like some of the sailors on this race track, they would be going without dinner for a while. The ethics of some of these people would not stand close scrutiny. This has been commented on more than once by BJsailor in his event writeups. The a member of the international jury has said they have never seen a fleet with worse grasp of the Racing Rules of Sailing.
If my kids melted down like I just did, I would guess that they would have to do what I am doing, be honest about it and go sailing when you have fixed the boat.
Steve Clark