Here are two poems about racing small sailing boats:

one to celebrate an excellent Mirror Nationals, satisfactorily completed

one to celebrate the start of the 2019 Worlds

 A hall of Mirrors
 Robin Ford, December 2018
  
 We’re nearly there, this is the final day;
 Committee boat on station, in good time.
 Competitors are launching in the bay
 The view as always achingly sublime.
 For windward and return this is the creed:
 It’s “pick the wind-shifts upwind, set the kite;
 Attack when you’re behind, defend a lead.”
 To see who’ll gain the prize on trophy night.
 Applause for those who win, but this we know
 A metaphor for life; we run our race,
 Becalmed, or soldier’s wind or sudden blow,
 We do our best with honesty and grace.
 This eve’ning we will put away our boat
 Tomorrow is another day afloat.
   

 Homily for the start of the Mirror Worlds
 Robin Ford, January 2019
  
 “Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong” 
 Stuart Walker in The Tactics of Small Boat Racing (1966) *
   
 The breeze had settled in, the mark was streamed
 On oh four oh, to oh point five — up tide.
 The start was clean, the beat was fine it seemed.
 And on the run — both gybes; the fleet spread wide.
 This practice race with less at stake had lacked 
 The drama of the main event, yet soon
 Competitors will once again have packed
 Three boisterous races in an afternoon.
 No reticence when starting, take the chance;
 And pick the wind-shifts — if you have the knack.
 So hope to get it right, and thus advance; 
 Or fear you’ll get it wrong, and fall right back
 The fleet goes right, your hunch for left is strong;
 Can fifty million Frenchmen all be wrong? 
  

*Reference

This mysterious quote from Stuart Walker heads Chapter D in Part III of his book. It always intrigued me, and although I didn’t really understand it I think I got the message. Of course in the age of the internet there are many explanations available. Wikipedia tells me that it is “…a reference to the hit 1927 song “Fifty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong” by Willie Raskin, Billy Rose and Fred Fisher, which compared free attitudes in 1920s Paris with censorship and prohibition in the United States.