Simple is good. Boats are simple. People are not.

It is good that sailboats are simple systems because they are in an environment that is complex and incomprehensible. Two particular aspects of sailing are totally impossible to manage. One is the weather. You do get some weather forecasts, but with all the computing power and modeling and patterns, we still get it wrong half the time. The second aspect which is difficult to predict and impossible to manage is people. The people you have on your boat. Even less yourself. And the major difference is that you kind of agree you can do nothing about the weather, but you still believe you can influence people. You don’t get pissed off with the weather. You don’t get mad at nature – nature is nature. You don’t hold it against nature, you don’t hold a grudge against it, you don’t look at it in terms of fair and unfair. With people, you can influence them, but only to an extent – and you can never reach the last few percent. In extreme situations, it is the last few percent that matter. You expect people to deliver these last few percent, and when they don’t, you get pissed off with them. Instead, you should probably be mad at yourself.

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