THE LONG QUEST FOR A DISTINCTIVE PROFILE
Taking the corners at speed in a VW Beetle was known to be a hazardous business: it might make it all the way round fine, but there was a non-negligible chance it would finish with all four wheels in the air. Thankfully that egg-shaped design would help minimise the damage. The smart kids soon figured out that a quick upgrade with wheel spacers and longer bolts to widen the track made rapid cornering much less of a gamble.
I tried the same thing on my 2CV. It worked to an extent too: objective performance might not have changed to any meaningful degree, but I enjoyed a substantial boost to my ego. The parts came cheap and took just a few minutes to fit, and there were no insurmountable bureaucratic hurdles along the way (the necessary sign-off being readily obtainable from a friendly mechanic, for those in the know). All that, and two weeks’ motoring to be had for a mere ten Deutschmarks. Paradise! Happy recollections: yes indeed, that is nostalgia you sense. Grey heads have a special corner of memory set aside for those cool experiences that can still elicit a grin even decades after the fact. Maybe that’s why I have so few wrinkles on my face…
It was – and remains – all about making an impression. BMW realised this way back, bending its panels into more exciting shapes to keep the masses enthralled and eager to hand over their hard-earned. BMW: today you drive it, one day you might even finish paying for it. They had me hooked for a while too, but I stopped with the Isetta (which I still have, standing in my living room).
Cars do still count as one of my hobbies though. They offer a way to stand out from the crowd without saying a word (which seems to work better for us in Germany than in the USA, for example, because in this country envy never sleeps). I acquired my first Porsche, a yellow 356 A (the one with the kink in the windscreen), at the age of 23. The courageous Beetle engine peaked at close to 75 mph on the road to Amsterdam before a puncture in tulip country delivered a sobering revelation: the floor had just about rusted through. It was that bad we had to find a pallet to spread the load from the jack before we could attend to the tyre. We looked great the rest of the time though, even if driving with the top down in tulip season probably isn’t the best idea (ENT specialists may disagree).
The self-taught and self-governed set their own pace, of course, and we boys probably all have a little narcissism lurking behind our friendliest no-sharks-in-this-pool smile. The big question, always, is which unique selling point to pursue, which horse to back to showcase my distinctive strengths and capitalise on any attention that comes my way. Where do I stand, and where do I want to end up? Decisions, decisions. One has so many options; one has so little time!
Women have it much easier than us men in some ways, especially women who don’t sail, because the physical attributes on which some place so much value can be purchased at the hair salon and nail bar or, for more serious projects, from the surgeon (with a payment plan where applicable). At a less invasive level, there are also endless accessories for different states of dress/undress, cosmetics by the caseload to highlight the highlights or conceal the lowlights (depending on how the marketing bites) and so on. The dimmer switch might well have been invented to soften the impact of discoveries made and realities exposed after nightfall. Spicing everything up though is not an end in itself: outcomes are what matters. Am I getting what I want? Everyone wants something! A man searches for a wife for as long as it takes her to find him – as they say.
We have a number of priorities to resolve in the race to stand out from the crowd.
First of all:
Whose interest do I want to attract?
Should I expect to have to beg, put on an act?
How much can I afford to invest and how much should I?
Or is the urgency such that it’s more how much must I?
Is it enemies or friends I’m wanting to make?
Am I aiming to winnow out the true from the fake?
Is it followers I want, clicks I never plan to meet?
Cyberspace friends whose like will make me complete?
Or do I have things quite different in mind?
Is it a soulmate to put a ring on I’m hoping to find?
Or, looking at it another way:
Will it help me to stand out?
Am I just feeding my ego?
Polishing my halo?
Trying to put one over on the green-eyed monsters?
For what, pray tell, do I want this attention I’m-seeking?
Am I prepared to work hard for it or would I rather be sleeping?
Should I leave this one to an algorithm?
Gather followers, sort followers, bind them all in?
There’s the rub
It’s all about getting attention,
which matters to everyone.
And after all of that,
we each of us know only too well
who that fool is grinning back in the mirror.
Or perhaps not!
The solution to the riddle is right under our nose.
Social media. Oxymoron.
At the crossroads:
Am I top of the heap or one of the sheep?
Am I a unicorn, a mythical creature
marked out by my own unique physical feature?
No, that’s not me.
Back to Earth:
Does spicing it up work on the water as well? Let’s have a look, taking Windpilot (obviously) as an example. I know the ropes here. I’ve been in the business for half a century, I’ve seen and experienced just about everything going and I still haven’t found anything better that might tempt me away. I created this market niche for myself. Who could know more about it that I do?
How did it come to pass? I made myself difficult to resist – in my own unconventional way. I ran wild in my little sector of the marine industry, followed up every idea, every question and every challenge that came my way, gave everything I could think of a try, spent huge amounts of time on the water and … took care to write everything down (the written word endures). Then I mustered all my courage and took my business plan to the bank. Good on them – they understood, climbed aboard and we made the whole thing work. Just like that!
Bear in mind, however:
My social echo sounder didn’t operate at all well in my younger years. Now though it seems to have achieved quite a high level of precision thanks to 23 years of intensive training by my alter ego on the other side of the marital bed. Life flows so much better without all those interpersonal misjudgements battering the emotions and turning trust to ashes, one after another after another. It took me fifty years to finish spicing things up for myself, but it’s done now. The outcome? Better than expected!
The questions I posed
What needs to happen to get a Windpilot on the transom? How should I spread the word to the sailing public? My preference has always been to go direct: no frills, no entanglements with resellers, influencers, homunculi or (whisper it) the press. They tempt you with a veritable smorgasbord of benefits then leave you with nothing but hollow words and crumbs. Remember the tale of Rumpelstiltskin? It always helps to be smart!
Marketing: guiding sharp minds to the logical choice:
Word Of Mouth, It takes a long time (most of a lifetime) to reach critical mass for word of mouth marketing, but I cannot imagine a more effective strategy.
My specialist books, the result of decades of research and contemplation, will also have helped. Being direct and forthright in my writing has landed me in seriously hot water more than once, but the priceless advantage of having the truth on my side has always enabled me to prevail in the end. Following the conclusion of an unpleasant self-steering showdown at the High Court in London (which was eventually decided in my favour), I made my Self-Steering Under Sail guidebook available free of charge on my website in six languages. I took it down again 20 years later, in 2022, by which point it had been downloaded three million times. Now that is smart (and tremendously cost-effective) marketing!
Continuing the free of charge theme, I also launched my blog to discuss the finer points of human social interaction, clear up the occasional misunderstanding, share a word or two of practical advice and provide a little insight into the workings of my particular sector of the marine industry. Overconfident I most certainly am not, but I am content not to chase the algorithms and to let the global cruising community make its own way to Windpilot when the time is right. We are not hard to find, and the wheat separates itself from the chaff.
Are Windpilot and I more stable in the corners after spicing it all up? Well, sharing more about our little corner of the world – our business and our technology – with inquiring minds has certainly improved the ride overall for my better half and I as we keep ourselves entertained helping discerning sailors the world over turn (bluewater) dreams into plans and plans into reality.
And what a reality: hands-free sailing, the Windpilot way.
Hamburg, 14 September 2025
Peter Foerthmann
