I felt that the sonnet ‘Homily for the start of the Mirror Worlds’ got distracted in the middle so I have rewritten part of it to maintain decision-making as the theme.

See what you think.

Homily for the start of the Mirror Worlds, reworked

Written after registration for the Worlds; reworked after the regatta finished to give a consistent story about decisions.

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.
The series had begun; the fleet was tense.
Who’ll make the best decisions under stress?
Does instinct or cold logic make more sense?
Does boat speed trump the lot and find success?
The fleet goes right, your hunch for left is strong;
Can fifty million Frenchmen all be wrong?

*  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.