I have just finished a sail regatta in Norway. The team I'm on came in as the 11th boat of 12 participating boats. This is of course terrible if you would like to win, and are capable of winning.

I'm not going to spend any time telling you about crew, practise, equipment and so on. But I'm going to tell you this: If you're sailing 'identical' boats with the same boat speed, are among the top 4 but the leading boat is far ahead of you; you can settle for second place. If you wan't to win you'll have to make a strategy, stick too it and be willing to loose it all. We did just that. We made our strategy, settled for nothing less than beeing number one, and were willing to loose it all. We lost, but we won our own respect for not following others by finding our own 'way'.

I'm not sure if you can use it, but I thought you wanted to know!