Those were very well written words Smitty, and were concise and exactly to the point. The only problem as you mentioned was that they were too long for the Letter to the Editors department. Had you condensed them to about 250 words and been able to make the point, they would have been printed. What you wrote in both of those, especially the first, were excellent editorials. Editors are on a tight deadline and probably skimmed and trashed those instead of trying to condense them. Remember, they no nothing about boats or racing, so they cannot digest what you wrote and shrink it down to where they may or may not seem like idiots. They will not do that. They present themselves as no-it-alls to begin with, so they will not put themselves in a spot where people will figure out that they are no smarter than the rest of us.

If you had set your articles up as a column for an opinion in the OP/ED pages where length is important to get your point across, I think they may have printed both. However, timing is important. You would have had an excellent chance in the 70's and early 80's. Seattle in the late 80's and 90's I'm not so sure.