I've been getting into sailing, solely for the purpose of cruising and sailing for fun with no interest in racing. As I've started talking to sailors, I've realized that you need to gauge whether you're speaking with a racer or a cruiser. Racers will claim these are not mutually exclusive categories, because of course racers can also cruise. But racers who cruise will ultimately talk to you like racers.
Racers are, as you might expect, fanatical about performance. They will go very deep into details about optimizing sail trim and shape, and using wildly-named specialized foresails (not merely spinnakers, but asymmetric spinnakers, reachers, screachers, code-zeroes, etc). It's a bit like talking to an SCCA racer about your new pickup truck.
In fact, if you have a good grounding in the basics of sail trim ("when in doubt, let it out"), and know how to put a reef in you can have a fine time getting between points A and B in a sloop with a basic mainsail and jib.
Racers are, as you might expect, fanatical about performance. They will go very deep into details about optimizing sail trim and shape, and using wildly-named specialized foresails (not merely spinnakers, but asymmetric spinnakers, reachers, screachers, code-zeroes, etc). It's a bit like talking to an SCCA racer about your new pickup truck.
In fact, if you have a good grounding in the basics of sail trim ("when in doubt, let it out"), and know how to put a reef in you can have a fine time getting between points A and B in a sloop with a basic mainsail and jib.