On Aug 1, 4:57*am, Brad wrote:
You may be on to somthing. Some pilots are referred to as naturals and
their skills are readily apparent.
A young friend of mine won a national hang gliding competition flying
bare bar, no instruments at all. The times I flew with him were
inspriring.................you see, I too was a member of those
ranks....heh..............the rest who have to study and make fun of
the Zen masters will always wonder how it's done, as they re-read
everything Reichmann wrote whilst grunting in the restroom.

Learning young makes a huge difference. I learnt to sail racing
dinghies in my teens and when I compare how I sail with how I fly the
differences are huge, even once I've allowed for my much greater
experience in dinghies. I raced my dinghy with no wind indicator,
just the wind on my skin. The one I had fell off, I didn't replace it
immediately and found I sailed just as well without it. Better in
some ways - it left my attention completely free to look outside the
boat.

I learnt to ski to a fair standard for a UK 2-weeks per year person in
my 20s & early 30s and it doesn't take too long to get back into the
swing of it, so long as the conditions are not tricky. I never
mastered ice or bumps!

And with sailing in particular, I would find it very hard to explain
to a middle-aged beginner why I do a lot of what I do - I just know I
need to do it. I feel it. In short I've got the Zen thing with boats
- and I found it applied to larger boats as well when I did a little
sailing on them back in '97.