{"id":151969,"date":"2024-06-12T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-12T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/?p=151969"},"modified":"2024-06-12T08:19:24","modified_gmt":"2024-06-12T07:19:24","slug":"should-we-identify-more-with-our-youthful-selves-to-drive-motivation-nikki-henderson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/comment\/should-we-identify-more-with-our-youthful-selves-to-drive-motivation-nikki-henderson-151969","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Should we identify more with our youthful selves to drive motivation?’ – Nikki Henderson"},"content":"For Leg 3 of the Ocean Globe Race<\/a>, L\u2019Esprit d\u2019\u00e9quipe<\/em> (FR) and Neptune<\/em> (FR) were granted dispensation to sail with an all-male crew. The Notice of Race stipulates that every yacht must sail with a mixed crew, which is defined as a crew where there is at least one woman. In the Ocean Globe Race (OGR) newsletter, race organisers explained that the teams had found it \u2018too difficult to find crew members at such short notice during the festive season\u2019.\r\n\r\nThe Race Committee found this a valid enough reason to permit both yachts to compete without suffering a penalty.\r\n\r\nFor context, there are time and financial penalties outlined throughout the Notice of Race for not complying with the rules of safety equipment inspections, not attending media photo shoots, or not conforming to Ocean Globe Race branding. It\u2019s interesting the OGR does not regard having a mixed team as critical to its brand.\r\n\r\nThis news was highlighted to me via the Women who Sail Facebook group<\/a>. As you can imagine, the story inspired the voicing of some strong opinions. But you might be assuming that the response was negative, criticising the OGR management or full of disparaging comments about all-male crews.\r\n\r\nThat assumption would be wrong.\r\n\r\nThe major theme that caught the attention of over 100 women on this group was about how hard it is to be the \u2018only\u2019 woman on board.\r\n\r\nArticle continues below...<\/em>\r\n\r\n[collection]\r\n\r\nIn an interview quoted in the OGR\u2019s own press release, Capucine Treffot \u2013 who transferred from L\u2019Esprit d\u2019\u00e9quipe<\/em> after two legs \u2013 said: \u201cIt\u2019s tough being the only woman on board. There is some stuff you can\u2019t share and sometimes you feel really alone.\r\n\r\n\"I\u2019d made very good friends on the boat, so I\u2019m not missing friends, I\u2019m missing another woman on board. A mixed crew should mean more than just one woman. It should actually be really mixed.\u201d\r\n\r\nFinding a woman who can sail is not that difficult. Every year the Magenta Project is inundated with applications from women to join its mentoring scheme. There are over 20,000 members of the Women who Sail Facebook group.\r\n\r\nIn the context of the OGR, Maiden<\/em><\/a> is evidence that bolstering a crew with women is possible; they have managed to fill their entire boat with women. What\u2019s more, both boats lost their sole woman not because they didn\u2019t enjoy the race but because they too wanted to join the Maiden crew.\r\n\r\nTherefore, the conclusion is that the real challenge if we want to diversify our sport is not to find women but to retain them.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_97942\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"630\"]\"\" Team SCA was an all-female entry into the Volvo Ocean Race[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThe OGR has proven that requiring a minimum of one woman on a crew is a way to bolster numbers getting involved, but it doesn\u2019t address how long women stay on board. Perhaps those who are making and enforcing the rules do not fully understand women; I wonder how many of them are women?\r\n\r\nThe rule that there must be a woman on board is not diversifying this sport \u2013 you could argue it\u2019s doing the opposite. Maiden<\/em> is repeating history in more ways than one \u2013 just as in the Whitbread race of 1989, a women\u2019s team in 2023 was again competing against all-male teams in what is classed as a \u2018mixed sport\u2019.\r\n\r\nFrom my experience, the culture aboard a yacht becomes more inclusive the more diverse the team becomes, making 50:50 male-to-female crews more attractive to everyone. Adventure charter company 59\u00b0 North has recently reserved two spots for women on its trips to avoid there being just one, and reported an increase in women signing up to over 30% of their overall crew numbers.\r\n\r\nA Harvard Business Review also supports this theory. On investigating how to boost the proportion of women in boardrooms, they concluded that: \u2018Solo women feel isolated and marginalised. Adding a second woman helps reduce the sense of isolation, [but] two women may be perceived as a separate group. A clear shift occurs when boards have three or more women. At that critical mass, women tend to be regarded not as \u201cfemale directors\u201d but as directors.\u2019\r\n\r\nThe lesson I see for anyone hoping to sail with a mixed gender crew this season is to make sure you recruit more than just one woman. Ideally look to build a crew made up of at least three women. In theory, this should be all you need to retain women crew and avoid drop-outs.\r\n\r\n
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As a team that is much younger than the rest of the competition, what superpower does that give you? That\u2019s the question I asked of a group of teenagers this month during a sailing podcast interview. Francesa Dougherty (aged 17), Isa Ford (15), Anna Cezik (16), Simone Ford (17) and Henry Thomas (15) make up a Race to Alaska team named \u2018Rock the Boat\u2019. They\u2019re borrowing a Santa Cruz 27 and competing in this year\u2019s 750-mile human-powered race from Port Townsend, Washington to Ketchikan, Alaska. Oh, and if you were wondering, their theme song is the one you\u2019re thinking of. And, yes, it was released before any of them (or me) were born. Their nervous giggling made me think they didn\u2019t quite see themselves as superheroes. \u2018Energy and enthusiasm,\u2019 just about summarises their bashful answer. As the \u2018grown up\u2019 in the room, it is now my prerogative to reflect on what else they could have said. Something that struck me was how able and confident they were, in such a wonderfully humble way. Most adults see this race as adventurous, if not extreme. For these teens to even believe they can do it is a mark of impressive self-assuredness. To find a boat, spend their free time training offshore with mentors, and design and build pedal drive systems to fulfil the \u2018human-powered\u2019 (rather than sail-powered) element of the race by themselves is exceptionally resourceful. Article continues below… But as they detailed their ambitious plan, there was no arrogance, no cockiness, no overconfidence. Instead there was a lot of \u201cNo, you speak first!\u201d giving each other space to talk, coupled with a lot of the aforementioned giggling. I\u2019d be fascinated to watch their future sailing journeys unfold. As we dug deeper into what \u2018being young\u2019 meant, they opened up. They feel an innate sense of responsibility as a young team. They have a sense of duty to be safe, make good decisions and compete at a high level, in order to set an example for other young teams, other young women, and other people of colour. They hope to become role models in sailing for anyone else \u2018who looks like them\u2019 and lay a path that others can follow. Half an hour of talking later, I was feeling inspired \u2013 how brave, ambitious and optimistic adolescent energy is! A true passion for something greater than the race itself \u2013 that\u2019s their superpower. It\u2019s that extra surge of energy they needed to go overnight training in the pouring rain last weekend. It\u2019s the thing that will fire them up at 3am when they haven\u2019t slept, and someone wakes them early to help with a sail change. It\u2019s what will keep their frustration in check when someone inevitably doesn\u2019t rehydrate dinner properly or forgets to flake the spinnaker sheet during a gybe. It will turn whatever result they have, even if they don\u2019t make it to the finish line, into something that feels good for them. I left the call with more questions …Continue reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4389,"featured_media":151971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[969],"tags":[1633],"review_manufacturer":[],"acf":[],"introduction":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151969"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151969"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151972,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151969\/revisions\/151972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151969"},{"taxonomy":"review_manufacturer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review_manufacturer?post=151969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}