Managing your Boat Owner! Crew Perspective on 'Coaching and Cunniving"

Currently I am not a boat owner, for better or for worse, and nor am I any longer in the DOPB up status (driving other peoples boats)

Crewing is both a happy place to be ....void of much responsibility , financial drain and other stress......while it is also an exaperastingly frustrating place to be if you are as good or better a helm, tactician and "sail maker" as the owner/driver.

I was lucky once to have an owner who often said "Drivers drive!" meaning that helms concentrate on boat speed and let a.n.other call tactics. Usually he was truist to his word when someone else was driving it has to be said.....after all an owner-driver wants to get their own personal best on the boat and not have Russel Coutts driving it first over the line, at least not every wednesday eve'.

I have come to my favourite type of boat often - that is the boat type in terms of dynamic on board - I much prefer sailing with a 'developer' team than with an established or worse, rock star scratch crew team. However sometimes you cannot be that lucky, as in my current local club which, to be honest, I have given up hope on meeting anyone who is open to being taught anything by the likes of me. Sometimes you have to grit your teeth a little on tactical errors, boat handling fails, misinterpretations of the rules and from outset poor strategy, if you want to get out and sail a bit.

In many situations, either with the stubborn owner or developer owner, you as experienced helm when crewing are in a position to advise them.  However you can often liken this to guiding an elephant with an elastic band. Sometimes the critical mass will come with you willingly, other times it won't budge, but either way, when you pull too hard on the elastic band it snaps! Hey presto you are flicked! Either further up the boat to the pointy wet end, or for a really early bath before you go racing .....ie services not required. Mistakes may be obvious to you, but correcting them takes some subtle diplomacy - ego is at stake here for the majority of owner-drivers.

The subtle line is in not trying or appearing to be taking over command........ or at least not letting the helm think that they are being taken over in their erstwhile decision making and own comfortable learning curve...... or well dug ditch of bad performance for that matter. I was once called to a bar meeting by the owner of a boat, concewrning their feeling there were two skippers on board and that being one too many, so frankly I should tone down a little. I thought about it after the beer sank, and thought about what the owner needed to learn and what his current team could offer, and bailed out. He was a bit further back on the learning curve than at the point when you know you need to listen to better sailors to make that little quantum leap up the fleet. And that was fine, I then got on board a great J109 where the owner was right in the sweet spot for learning and practicing, and running a team with fun in mind.

That J109 owner/driver later wrote me a personal reference for jobs about how I performed in a tightly knitted team> his comment in the first paragraph was " He is clearly very experienced, and could have taken over control of the boat , but rather than that he offered his knowledge and fitted into the team in a very comfortable way"

Developer boat/teams are a joy. There is nothing better in this world than hauling a boat up from mid to back fleet, up into the top 10 and then grabbing some wins! Much better than going out with a gang of big headed bitches on the rail and winning most of the time, and getting all upset about losing once in a while or mistakes that new boy made that day.

Stick-in-the mud owner-drivers who run 'dog boats' are by no means a lost cause though. However remember that elephant! They need actually to be taken to that place which maketh them a developer boat and team.  How you get there can be very subtle, but really it is down to one-to-one talks with the helm and not the blame-storming debriefing over the bar room table with the whole team. Especially avoid the 'good leiutenant' , usually the main sheet guy who will spank you down if he is within earshot when you start nurturing learning ideas in the helm.

There are different ways and means> be cautious if you are committed to the season and maybe a nationals with them, because you will get flicked if you are not diplomatic and managing your own expectations. Alignment is the key here. Talks about talks, setting out the protocol for maybe learning some more. Placing physcial boat fixes down the list a little, lady luck off the board and introducing the idea that helming and crew coordination is as good a place as any to start at. Sailing with friends can be actually more like this than you at first thought, with more than just your slot on the rail at stake. Be patient, polite, but a little persistent when you get the helm's ear alone. Talk objectively about manoevres and wind shifts, "maybe there is something to be learned there.....why not  look at this general aspect.....could there be some boat legnths and places to be won by focuusing on this...."

If you have a choice in which boat you sail on and have happened upon a dog which is otherwise a well turned out example of the white GRP species, then you can be far more confrontational with the skipper. Here the trick is to be highly critical of what is going on, a little objective but also quite harsh when it comes to the central dogma here- the old dog needs to learn new tricks. Don't suggest yourself for the job at first, wait to be invited otherwise you will become percieved as the arrogant management consultant on the transom, getting everyones back up and  riding for a fall if results dont get better.

I sailed five seasons with a dog boat where the helm just would not learn and never did that boat get any higher in the placings than when we had a 'pre/olympic' coach on board for the nationals down at Cork ROI, only a year into my tenure as admittedly the apprentice. From my point of view now, I see pretty clearly that I laid all the building blocks in that one design boat for the rest of my 'career' but also much more importantly than skills per se, I came to the last season with a thirst to really learn the next level, and of course jumped boat to move up to my new trajectory on the learning curve.

Infact that helm would often do the exact opposite of what his mainsheet guy recommended or myself or anyone else commented. His thing was power and decision making, absolute, and he only really wanted information when he asked for it. He was a company director and I guess his management style on shore was much the same, being somewhat dictatorial and overly assertive. He  could be very kind and show some really reflective moments, but by in large he often blamed 'lady luck' or some misdemeanor on the race course for the boat's mid to bottom fleet ills. Fifteen years later the fleet has dwindled as that class ages, and guess what, they are still mid to bottom of the eight to ten boats which turn up now in the regional OD meets.

As in business, to be an on board management consultant, a lot is about protocol and permissions. In outset there is often an objective definition of the problems or shortcomings, SORRY 'Challenges' I meant to say. This can get a little emotional. Later it should be  followed by a discussion and then some formulisation on if help is needed and what form the consultant will deliver. Often consultants have a very specific brief, but as I found out when I worked as a hired in consultant, that missive very often spans the whole team dynamic in a small enterprise. Consultants are experts on elephants with rubber bands. Once the elephant agrees to go somewhere, maybe a few steps at first, then they can often keep themselves on the payroll and end up a lot further down the road with the beast than the great walloping paciderm first suspected it would be lead!!

On a boat this translates to establishing that new learning has to take place, to then bend the owners ear more specifically on a couple of weak areas, sorry potential areas for improvements, and then play that out as a team in terms of implementing things. I have been hoisted by my own petard here, by recommending that someone take tactics on the j109 while the owner-driver concentrated on speed, meaning yours truly........ but being presented with a slighly more experienced regatta bitch as a new crew member!!! It worked very well, and the helm let them make several mistakes, particularly on the down wind angles with the assy' which they had not sailed, such that they learned from their mistakes and to listen to the folk who knew the boat better on the rail!

Taking up on that point, you can cut your own throat by coaxing the owner into taking on board a new management consultant or reworking the crew altogether. You may appear an impudent rebel and thanks for the advice, we will seek help elsewhere. One way round that is getting you and the owner out on another boat. It could be you go sail a dinghy you are used to helming, or that you and the owner crew on board a boat which wins regularly if they will have you or swap some bodies for that night. Another alternative safe consultancy approach is to travel to a sailing school or have a sailmaker , instructor or the like on board for some training and a race or two, safe in the knowledge that they are temporary hired in guns for your boat!!

The first step on the learning curve may well be start lines, which is the very best place to begin to hike up the steepness of the learning curve. Boat speed and safety as a given, starts could be ideal,  but then again the real thing is all about getting the ball rolling> ie the helm accepting that new learning must happen, and that gains will be made for a little bit of pain. Starting is my biggest challenge personally, so I may well choose say wind strategy and shift pattern as a place to begin hiking up that curve and breaking down that comfort zone.  Once you have moved them, and when you get results or atleast a gain on the water, then there should be an all round back patting for the whole team and a reinforcement of what made the difference, what have we learned, what will we repeat. Then the next block of learning can be facilitated, kind of the floor is lubricated for sliding up and taking on the next challenge.

Success is very measurable in yacht racing luckily. Small changes in actions and tactics can have large and permanent profits in where you place yourself in the fleet. On the race course while underway, you can begin to break placings down further "live" by discussing how many boat places you are winning. Positive reinforcement. Building confidence in the helms own mind that change is good, change works.

Boat lengths are an ideal little pay back mechanism to use. It can apply most of all to the absolute key areas an "improver" boat can make most gains in> namely, the Start, the windshifts, the roundings and tactics for laylines, bouys and the finish line. Wind strategy over a course means more trial and error, and more information gathering and I would maybe take that with some caution later once some other areas were tackled. However at a local venue, such as in SF bay, round the Isle of Wight or the East Patch on the clyde, there are some pronounced wind bends due  to the shape of the coast in relation to prevailing or common wind directions and stregnths. If you dont hit them right when the fan is on from that way, then you wont get especially the beat to work for you. So boat speed being equal and starts being passable, then aim for the sweet spot where the wind bend heads and gives the best gain on the new tack as an example of what consultants like to call internally a "quick win" from the "lowest hanging fruit"

You can of course do exceptional modifications to prove the point. For example starting late at the boat end, perhaps on port even, and then sailing high and right of the fleet to look at what is going on.  Learning the concept of burn/time at starts and practicing it in repetitive training sessions, in different wind strengths- how does it go in the race, starting with a clear runway first and then mixing it with other boats? The biggie though in exceptional modifications is either driving yourself (high risk!) or getting a helm from a better boat in the OD or a very similar HC boat. Helming yourself is best introduced in traning sessions, or perhaps if you have established permission and know you are competent, yes taking a start or a leeward mark or just a few tacks or gybes on the helm.

A final wee approach is to set yourself up to sail on a better boat, and bring back some tips. Fifth columnist type stuff. Special, privelidged information. Some of it may be a complete fabrication, it  just sounds better if it was told as a white lie as to what the other boat do right or differently, but you knew all along. Once again it is about permission to get the helm to change their attitude to the learning curve and to try something concrete out, probably just one thing at a time.  That is really as good a summary to the whole blog as I can give in one scentence.