{"id":152660,"date":"2024-07-29T06:00:44","date_gmt":"2024-07-29T05:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/?p=152660"},"modified":"2024-07-29T08:27:53","modified_gmt":"2024-07-29T07:27:53","slug":"expert-sailing-skills-how-to-be-a-great-crew-boss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/5-tips\/expert-sailing-skills-how-to-be-a-great-crew-boss-152660","title":{"rendered":"Expert sailing skills: How to be a great crew boss"},"content":"French Figaro sailors, whether they\u2019re currently on the circuit or former Figaro skippers who cut their teeth in the class years ago, seem to do very well in the fully-crewed offshore world. So what makes them so good? British sailor Alan Roberts has spent the past decade immersing himself in French offshore racing culture, learning by competing against the best of the best in the Figaro scene as he works his way towards a Vend\u00e9e Globe<\/a> campaign.\r\n\r\nRoberts is in demand as a very effective consultant on fully-crewed offshore racing projects where he tends to operate in the tactician or navigator role. The short-handed nature of the Figaro forces a sailor to set strict priorities about what\u2019s the most important focus at any given moment of a race. It also teaches a level of intensity and focus that he feels is often missing from the mentality of many offshore sailors.\r\n\r\nAccording to Roberts, every second and every metre of advantage counts, and knowing how to up the intensity and maintain that level of focus are key skills that he aims to impart to every team that he works with. Here are his five tips for resetting your offshore racing priorities for greater success on the race course.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_127045\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"630\"]\"figaro-series-2019-toughest-sailing-race-fleet-credit-Alexis-Courcoux\" Close quarters, tactical racing places big demands
on solo skippers. Photo: Alexis Courcoux[\/caption]\r\n

Prioritise<\/h2>\r\nAs a Figaro sailor you\u2019re forced to face up to your priorities all the time. Over time you become very good at quickly filtering through the job list to focus on the things that are going to make the biggest difference.\r\n\r\nPlanning ahead is the most critical skill. There\u2019s never enough time, so the more you think through the scenarios in advance, the better you\u2019ll be in the heat of the moment. It\u2019s also about bringing a higher level of intensity and urgency to your sailing.\r\n\r\nIn long, offshore races there\u2019s a tendency to fall into a more relaxed pattern, which means you can start to miss important details. Over time this can compound into a significant loss of time and distance. Every moment, every wave matters.\r\n\r\nArticle continues below...<\/em>\r\n\r\n[collection]\r\n

Share the plan<\/h2>\r\nWhen I come aboard a boat as a navigator, I bring along details of the weather forecast, our likely routing on the course, and an overall game plan for the race. It\u2019s important to involve the whole team so that everyone gets a chance to contribute and talk through how and when things are done.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s also vital to run daily briefings in the lead up to the race and make sure everyone has the latest version of the documents. A simple PDF highlighting the key points is a really good way of sharing the plan with everyone on the boat. It means every crewmember can anticipate the likely next move rather than waiting to be told what to do.\r\n

Swap roles<\/h2>\r\nFigaro sailors can do any job on the boat. That\u2019s part of what makes a team of Figaro sailors so strong in a race like the Fastnet<\/a>. They can float in and out of different roles because they\u2019re great multitaskers.\r\n\r\nMost keelboat sailors tend to be much more specialised in their skill set, but a great way to overcome this is to dedicate part of your training sessions to swapping roles on the boat. How often does a driver go up to the bow? Or a bowman step into the mainsail trimmer\u2019s role?\r\n\r\nCommunication and expectation are two really important factors a whole team needs to understand. Swapping roles during a training session can really improve communication and expectation and make sure everyone is working more cohesively as a unit.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_66693\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"630\"]\"Sailing Alan Roberts is an in-demand solo skipper and offshore racer[\/caption]\r\n

Visualise scenarios<\/h2>\r\nThere\u2019s no substitute for focused time on the water, but something that\u2019s almost as good and which you can do pretty much anytime, anywhere \u2013 even in the car or on the train \u2013 is visualisation. Running through a mental simulation of different scenarios is a really effective way of practising even when you\u2019re nowhere near the boat. It\u2019s something you can do as an individual, perhaps thinking through the detail of how you prepare the Code 0 for a hoist, for example. Or it can be a visualisation process between the whole team, whether it\u2019s face-to-face or even on a midweek Zoom call to talk through various manoeuvres and the crew choreography.\r\n

Risk: reward ratio<\/h2>\r\nJust because somebody else won a race with a certain strategy or manoeuvre doesn\u2019t mean you could have done exactly the same. With a cold front about to hit the fleet, maybe they waited until just 10 minutes beforehand to reef the mainsail and change to a heavy-weather jib. A well drilled team can afford to leave it that late. But if you fumble the reef and get caught out with full mainsail in 35 knots of wind, it could end your race. So discuss and agree on your risk:reward ratio so you have a shared response to a changing scenario. The more training, the more experience, the better you know your boat, the more cold fronts you\u2019ve been through, the more you can turn the dial on this risk:reward ratio. Set your expectations to reasonable limits for your abilities and skill levels. Sail up to, but not beyond, your limits.\r\n\r\n
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Being an effective crew boss relies on good preparation and a great sense of timing, says Annie Lush. \u201cThe role basically comes down to organising manoeuvres, so it\u2019s about having the right kind of communication and using the right words to make sure the front, the middle and the back of the boat are all working together,\u201d she says. On smaller boats around the 40ft mark, Lush says it\u2019s common for the pitman to take the role of crew boss. \u201cBut when you\u2019re on a 100ft superyacht with maybe 30 crew, you\u2019ve probably got a dedicated crew boss who is most likely spending a lot of time in the \u2018engine room\u2019, next to the grinders and the pedestals.\u201d Having someone who understands the role of the pitman is key, but having good tactical knowledge of the race course is also very important, Lush points out. \u201cYou don\u2019t necessarily need to understand every role on board, but when things go wrong, which inevitably they will do, then you need to know what the priority is for the tactician at that given moment. \u201cThat way, you can help minimise the damage on the race course and restore the focus on the bigger picture as quickly as possible.\u201d Here are Annie\u2019s five best tips on how to be an effective crew boss: Build your playbook You should be looking to build up your playbook from the moment you step on a boat and keep on adding to it and refining it as you go along. That means I always carry my wet notes with me as well as marker pens and tape for calibrating sheets and halyards and anything else where you need to replicate settings. The longer you sail on the boat, the more manoeuvres and experience you build up, the more comprehensive and refined your playbook will be. It\u2019s your bible. Article continues below… Set your stopwatch Key details in your playbook are the times it takes to execute any given manoeuvre in a range of wind conditions and sea states and with crew you have on board. Just because someone on board a TP52 says, \u201cOh, we could get set up for a gybe-set in 35 seconds,\u201d that doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019ll be able to do the same. We realised this on [all-female] Team SCA. Record how long each manoeuvre takes and then make sure the tactician and the afterguard know exactly what that figure is. During an in-port race in the Volvo Ocean Race it looked like we were getting the kite down too early compared with two of the men\u2019s teams next to us. But they ended up getting their kites down too late \u2013 we rounded inside them and were ahead out of the leeward gate. Better too soon than too late Which brings us on to the next point. If you don\u2019t know how long a manoeuvre will take because you\u2019ve never done it before, take your best guess at the expected time and add a few …Continue reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5203,"featured_media":152662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[846,934,1633],"review_manufacturer":[],"acf":[],"introduction":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152660"}],"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\/5203"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152660"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152663,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152660\/revisions\/152663"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152660"},{"taxonomy":"review_manufacturer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review_manufacturer?post=152660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}