the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon
LUNACY, a Contassa 32 on the harbour in her red days!
It’s a familiar sensation. An obscure word we’ve never seen before captures our attention. Then, suddenly, we start to see that word pop up all over the place. Or you’re thinking about buying a particular car, and you begin noticing the same make and model seemingly everywhere. It is known as the Frequency Illusion or Bias and, more informally, the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. The latter coining was apparently by a newspaper reader in Minnesota, US, who, was talking to a friend about the once notorious West German Baader-Meinhof gang, and the next day, the friend referred him to an article in that day’s newspaper in which the left-wing terrorist organisation was mentioned, decades after it had any reason to be in the news. More than 10 years later, the term Frequency Illusion was coined by Stanford linguist Arnold Zwicky. Essentially, the Frequency Illusion is a perception that something you’ve been thinking about, or recently learned, all of a sudden seems much more frequent in your environment than it was before.
Exactly a month ago we published an article entitled “Including GRP Icons” in which we discussed the pros (mostly) and cons of broadening our events to embrace the famous early GRP designs and which ones that might include.
Well my number one boat in the list was a Contessa 32…hardly a regular in the average Australian fleet. And then I flick through the October issue of the Sydney Amateur Sailing Club’s Newsletter and find this wonderful short piece by Tom Moult. I hope you enjoy it!
DON’T MISS NEXT YEAR’S LION ISLAND RACE
The Greatest Little Race on the East Coast
Some weeks ago, Lunacy competed in the Club’s ‘season-opener’, the Lion Island Race. I reckon I’ve done this little race at least a dozen times and I just love it. It’s a step-up from a Harbour race, but nothing as tricky as a blue-water passage race. You may come home after sunset, but there’s no sailing through the night. The race starts in Watsons Bay, out through the Heads, past Long Reef, past Barrenjoey light, to a mark off Lion Island laid for us by our friends at the RPAYC. Then back down the coast, back through the Heads, to the south of the Sow and Pigs, finishing at Captain Amora waiting at the Eastern Channel ‘wedding cake’. As usual, Lunacy’s crew were all called Tom. Tom Griffiths and I enter the two-handed division. Lunacy is easily handled and being twohanded suits a race with more tactics than manoeuvres — and there’s less washing up to do. As the holders of the two-handed trophy, we were rather hoping we could hang on to it for another twelve months.
LUNACY starting in the 2023 Lion Island Race- Image John Jeremy
Almost inevitably, the race is a work one way and a run the other, sometimes the breeze is light, which is why the start was sensibly moved to Watsons Bay some years ago, occasionally we’ve had a strong westerly which can mean a reach both ways and just once, aboard Anitra V, we managed to sail both under spinnaker up and back. If the starter deems it too windy to be out in the ocean, a longer than usual Harbour course is set. This year, we started in a pretty solid southerly. Up went the kite and off we went. Whoa! Don’t get too close to North Head, it can be ‘swelly’ and there’s sometimes a ‘windward lee’ under the cliffs. We followed the traditional strategy of staying close to the shore to avoid the southrunning set. This brings you close to Long Reef so be careful here. The wind and swell picked up off Barrenjoey and little Lunacy recorded 11.3 knots under a spinnaker and down a wave. We were feeling confident about our strategy when we didn’t meet the biggest boats, returning, until we’d passed Barrenjoey light. The two Toms made three end-forend gybes to arrive at the Lion Island mark in well under three hours. We’re usually the smallest boat in the fleet, so we are given the task of calling the Alfred’s to tell them they can come and collect their buoy. We performed this duty as requested despite being only third last around the buoy!
Coming home was always going to be a slog into the southerly, but after an hour on the breeze, the wind abated, after that we got no significant water over our low foredeck. Our strategy was to head way out to sea on starboard tack in attempt to get into some southerly set. Working off fairly basic instrumentation, Tom and I calculated that there wasn’t any current running but later, when we made the mistake of coming close to the Dee Why beach we detected an unusual (north flowing) counter-current. We watched a glorious sunset over Manly, and the breeze obligingly swung east enough to allow us to get round North Head without further tacking.
Skipper Tom at the helm
Once in sight of South Head, we eased sheets and raced towards South Head and into the orange glowing sky. Past Hornby light, the breeze held and we belted, close hauled, towards Captain Amora. Back in flat water and in the dark creates a sensation of moving very fast. Stuart Anderson, of Mistral, was just behind us and said it was the first time he’d sailed into Sydney Harbour in the dark. If you haven’t done it, you don’t know what you are missing. I doubt there is better port night entry anywhere else in the world. The big boys all got home before dark and so they missed this very special experience. I’d really like to see more SASC boats in this great little race. Yes, you’ll need a Cat 4 certificate but it’s really not that hard. You may have most of what you need on your boat already. You’ll need a storm jib, a second anchor, lifelines, PFD harnesses — with tethers, a drogue for emergency steering, clipping on points in the cockpit, some flares, an EPIRB (which you are required to have if you go more than two n miles offshore anyway), a drogue and light and a few other odds and ends. Once you’ve acquired all this gear, the list of items which need to be replaced every season isn’t long. And if you don’t fancy lugging it around the Harbour all summer, take a tip from Herschel Smith of Shambles — on safety audit day, get both a Cat 4 and a Cat 7 certificate. Once you’ve done the Lion Island Race you can put the extras in your garage and Harbour sail as Cat 7. It also means you have all you need for that other great little SASC offshore race, the season-closer, the Bob Brown Race! In the end we failed to retain our two-handed title, we came second by 6 minutes —and, annoyingly, we knew exactly where we lost 25 of them (Dee Why!). Lunacy’s log showed that we’d sailed 48 miles and my watch showed that we’d been out for eight hours and ten minutes — more than enough to get a decent thirst up. Please have a think about entering the Lion Island race next year. If you’ve not done it, talk to those who have. It’s something different, a bit more adventurous and a really rewarding day out. No matter the result, it’s great to get out of the Harbour once in a while.