Right, Rolf. That's why we make sure the last-place boat is not far from the first-place boat. If there is a newbie who can't figure anything out and is way back, you assign somebody to "mentor" that sailor and stay with them and coach them around the course. They need to be close enough to another boat to be able to emulate what they are doing in the way of sail trim and course direction.

That's the beauty of frequent, one-design series racing -- you can do things like that to get everybody in the fleet up to speed. And that ultimately helps the whole fleet to improve.

In our sailing seminars, we found that, especially with the Laser/Sunfish seminars, it is very beneficial to have the guest expert actually sailing with the group, and the expert can mentor and teach by example.

In most racing, if a boat is way back, they have no way of seeing what the faster sailors are doing, and they have no way of copying it. Very discouraging for them.

And, unfortunately, in a lot of fleets, the winners are happy being out in front and are not willing to give up points in the series by hanging at the end and helping the stragglers get better.