There is a story told of Albert Einstein entering a classroom at Princeton and drawing a small circle on the board. He said to the class, "This circle represents the totality of what I know."
By CaptaIn Ray
Published: May, 2012
There is a story told of Albert Einstein entering a classroom at Princeton and drawing a small circle on the board. He said to the class, "This circle represents the totality of what I know." He then drew a slightly larger circle and said, "This circle represents the totality of what I don’t know." Drawing a still larger circle, he said to his somewhat surprised class, "And this circle represents what I don’t even know I don’t know."
When I started to teach sailing, questions from my students made me very familiar with those latter two circles: what I didn’t know and what I didn’t even know I didn’t know. I needed to get ahead (and stay ahead) of my students, and I needed to do it quickly. Suddenly, I was facing a very steep and very rapid learning curve.
As I labored to reduce the amount that I didn’t know, several very interesting things happened. My growing knowledge reinforced and supported what I had already learned. I found that the excellent training I received initially (thank you, Jay and Phil!) had been accurate. I had few bad habits to unlearn. I felt a sense of growing confidence and, at the same time, my sailing skills improved dramatically. As I came to appreciate the reasons behind and subtleties involved in various sailing maneuvers, I began to perform them much more fluidly. Like dancing, once you understand the steps, you can enjoy the music!
Another area of personal growth for me was empathy. Because I learned to sail as an adult—I was 30 years old before I ever set foot on a sailboat—I remember the learning possess. I remember feeling foolish, stupid, always in the way, and wondering whether I would ever understand what was going on. Now, when a student struggles with some maneuver (crossing from one side of the boat to the other when tacking, for instance), I can draw upon all that I went through as I learned to sail and use it to be a better instructor. Being able to remember the learning process makes it much easier for me to understand the struggles that my student is going through at that moment, and it allows me to be supportive and patient. And patience is something I have not always been accused of!
Sailing has been described as both deceptively simple and surprisingly complex. Because of this, when I started teaching sailing I found it hard to explain to new students exactly what was going on. This was especially difficult in real time. Imagine steering a sailboat for the first time: the noise of the wind, the boat moving up and over the waves, other boats nearby, not knowing what’s going to happen next or even exactly what’s happening right now! Now imagine explaining to this novice (who is experiencing a massive amount of input), how to steer smoothly, what that boat over there is doing, what we are going to do next, etc. But with practice and experience has come the awareness to prioritize what is important at that moment and what is not, and the ability to explain very simply and clearly the whats and whys of a particular situation.
I had no idea what I would be learning when I started to teach. In hindsight, however, it is not at all surprising that these people skills, like empathy, patience, and the ability to prioritize and explain clearly, also serve well ashore.
Ray Wichmann, is a US SAILING-certified Ocean Passagemaking Instructor, a US SAILING Instructor Trainer, and a member of US SAILING’s National Faculty. He holds a 100-Ton Master’s License, was a charter skipper in Hawai’i for 15 years, and has sailed on both coasts of the United States, in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Greece. He is presently employed as the Master Instructor at OCSC Sailing in the Berkeley Marina.
