Your Crewing Career : Drive Your Own Learning Curve!!!

At the moment I am not helming, so it is a good point to continue to reflect on crewing and how to improve yourself as a crew. First and foremost I would say that you must drive your own learning curve and not just wait for it to happen. Second to that, you need to get experience under your belt, do some plateauing (see Mastery!) where you repeat and consolidate your skills and push to get more experiences.



Every local club and any fleet has its' rock stars, pro or amateur. Some just perform and do well without making a bit splash about it all. How did they get there? Well a great many crew have been through the youth development squads and competed at a national level in one design dinghies, and this gives them a massive advantage over anyone coming fresh as a crew on yachts or to dinghies. They offer helms a wealth of experience and are usually pretty young and fit.


However not all top crew have come that route. Some just know the owner socially and have been trained up by them. Some haev learnt underway and had luck to be asked out with "winners". Others have been far more conscious and determined to shape a career through learning and pushing their boundaries. In fact you could say my own career has followed all three of these paths in parallel, starting yacht racing in 1992 as an adult.

Begin at The Beginning

As I have blogged on and many sailing books or web sites will refer you to, a really good start for anyone is taking the Competant Crew course as the RYA in the UK over see, and many other bodies and sailing schools run around the world. Clubs sometimes have their own, racing oriented crew training.

Canned Sailing Versus Brew-Your-Own
 If your local club doesn't offer a course, and it is far to travel to the nearest school, then make a noise and organise a training programme for crewing either in general seamanship and sail handeling or more focused on racing. You will no doubt get a really good response and find several boat owners and voluntary instructors more than willing to take new beginners out, and thus build the pool of crew for racing and cruising.

When you talk to helms outside the very top boats, you will find that they nearly all comment that getting good crew and people willing to train and learn is their greatest challenge. Some of this is of course blaming their lack of results on their toolbox, but it is never truer. I met a very, very good sailor who had bought a j80 and struggled to get enough folk on board. So getting a certificate or better still organising a course at your club, even if you are a new beginner, is a really worthwhile thing to do and will get you known as a initiative taker and someone with a trajectory in sailing!!

Course Ingredients

A competent crew course should cover much of the basic seamanship skills- getting on and off the boat, how to move around a heeled boat, safety on board (especially when gybing or broaching, capsizing in dinghies), the basic knots ,  hoisting and trimming sails, using fenders and tieing a boat up and anchoring. The RYA course used to be I believe a weekend, but I see now that it is a minimum of five days over then three weekends. Money well invested if you live in the UK or want to try it, taught in English on a week long summer course at an RYA centre in the UK or for example in Croatia.

A really good crew course will also include some basic navigation- how to use charts and understanding navigation marks and shipping signals and lanterns. Also it will have a man overboard exercise, which is literally speaking, a real life saver! I don't know if the current RYA course actually includes spinnaker work at all, it may vary by school too. For racing in spinnaker classes, this is one area which really must be covered in a club run, race focused crew course.You may also have a longer cruise where several points are tested under way.

In fact a competent crew course can be a very good place for a helm struggeling to find crew, to participate in or as above, organise at their local club. I would gladly go on an RYA course on the Solent or Clyde just to be sociable and meet some new potential crew and contacts. Also there is always something to be learned, or you have of course a teacher to ask about specific points of interest - for me that might be some technicalities of coming along side or setting off, or navigation.

Dinghy Cabin Boy Courses Are Not To Be Found

I have never come across a dinghy new beginner course just for crewing. There are some advanced courses I have seen, for trapezing and so on, but basically at the start you want to be able to sail a dinghy alone or two up. This has a very great advantage in that you learn sailing from  both the helm's and the crew's perspective and I actually would recommend doing a dinghy course or going to the local club sailing school at some point in your yacht crewing career.

One hour in a dinghy I find, is worth eight in a keel boat- the small adjustments with large effects, the awareness of wind and waves, and the whip that if you do something really wrong, you capsize are what makes time in dinghies so instructive for yacht racing. I would recommend that any sailor who has not been on a dinghy course go right back to basics and put themselves through at least a weekend of sailing a dinghy, both on the helm and as crew.

Getting Going Without A Course

The alternative to a formal course is to get yourself on board a racing boat whom are looking for body weight, given that you have sailed before in some capacity and have some deck shoes/boots and foul weather oilies. The best then is to go out on a training night, or agree to do a delivery before you get into actual racing. Be honest with everyone on board, and ask to learn things when there is no pressure.

This is where I began, and believe me it was a baptism of fire sailing on a 37ft stripped out racing machine whose owner insisted on single sheet, end to end gybing!! My learning curve was incredibly steep. Uncomfortably so. I always felt and was reminded that I was one page back at least in the book!! The boat actually sailed way beyond a comfortable level of risk and responsibility I would accept on any vessel today, but that was also an experience in itself, to compare other boats to.

Start Racing with A Place on the Rail

Once you have had some practice and picked up enough to move around safely on board and help other crew in their jobs, then you can be pretty sure that someone will want you as at least rail ballast for racing.

The best possible race to start with is a passage race when the boat may be a bit short handed or operating a watch system. Here you will have far more time to see and learn about what is going on around you, and ask questions, and also ask to have a go at things like trimming jibs and spinnakers or working the pole or mainsail. I wouldn't recommend signing up for the Fastnet, Tobermory or even the round-the-Isle-of-Wight race first up, but a day long race or two days max will give you time to get to know the other crew and the boat.

I would always say, get on the best performing boat you can, because then you will have the best sailors around you. They may not be the best possible teachers but often they impart the most correct and salient knowledge to you, or you will just see how a well oiled machine functions!

If the local club has a not-so-serious wednesday night series then it can be worth writing yourself up on the crew-available board, noting ' a bit of experience' or 'has done RYA competent Crew " or asking the club committee members who is both looking for crew and worthwhile racing with. A goes-without-saying word of warning here is that some of the poorer boats and boats with shouty-sweary helms are always looking for crew because they have a turn over. Even some very good boats can have intolerable helms or arrogant crew-wranglers.

Racing on a poor performing boat is usually a very bad place to start. Often they lack basic seamanship skills and they can have poorly prepared boats where things are even likely to break. If you want to be a competitive racing crew with skills in demand and an interesting, challenging "career" ahead of you, then there is no point what so ever in sailing with "dog" boats in the lower third part of a fleet or handicap results table.

Once you have a couple of races under your belt with a reasonably good boat, and have ascertained that you are good enough to continue with them, then you should look again at doing a longer passage race with them, or another boat, where you get to try new skills out under less pressure than you get 'round the cans' in a modern typical 6 race per day regatta weekend or a crammed wednesday night point series.

Continuation.....

It can always be a little diplomatic not to ask to come back on the boat before you are invited. Also it can be worth sitting with the owner or crew boss alone and engaging them in a little conversation about learning so far and goals to set at the end of a race or in the bar. No communication is usually on a boat a bad thing- it shows that they maybe didn't think a lot of you, or are maybe not such a people oriented boat or that they are embarressed to have to say that this was the only time they really needed you, thanks and good bye.

Being asked back is a good sign that you fitted in and could do what you were assigned. You can then ask for feedbakc and look into doing a job on board. I guess you could spend your entire life on the rail of a 45 foot regatta machine without learning to do any specific job, and just being rail meat on board, movable, brainless ballast, but that is unlikely. You will either get board or get to do jobs when other people arent around to do them.

Come back then to offering to do a longer passage race on board, and as above ask to be taught how to work all the various sail trimming jobs. You may like to actually race on another boat, perhaps with even better results or one with old sea dogs on board, or sail makers or instructors such that the learning curve gets a little steeper for you in the course of a single passage race.


Next Stage - One Design

If you really want to know about how to make a boat go fast, how boat on boat tactics work, and how small strategic and wind tactics can have large benefits or pitfalls, then the only place to really hone your skills as crew, or helm for that matter, is in One Design racing- a fleet of identical boats.

These days many clubs and even regions are devoid of one design racing yachts unfortunetly, so it can be well worth sailing dinghies which tend to be still in fleets, somewhat gaurded against disintegrating into HC racing by keen members. An alternative is to find a club up the road who do have keel / sports / yacht one design fleets or give up on midweek racing and travel to a good venue for weekend races.

A note of caution though, is that some one designs have quite peculiar equipment or running rigging. For example in the Etchells, you use the jib halyard when off wind to pull the mast quite far forward, a set up which may be quite bad for a stiffer mast on a higher rig. On some modern boats like say the first 31.7 or Elan 333, when you round the leeward mark you can preset the genoa ie sheet it in for the beat before you round up in most winds, while on the venerable old broachy besom, the Sigma 33 you are likely to induce a broach up to windward by doing this, as an itinerant crew visiting a siggie I sailed on showed us all!

On a small to mid sized OD boat with a competitive fleet locally, you should be able to get a "job" to learn, like bowman or jib trimmer quite early on in your career, even if you are just back up. Quite a few boats have different wednesday night crews versus the weekend these days with the pressure on some to work long hours on week days, so you may get a part time promotion which can be worth its weight in gold on a good OD boat.

In OD there is a lot of pressure to get things right and do things as fast as is practical and safe, sometimes faster! Here do not be worried about really being whipped into shape, or giving the odd dressing-down for making mistakes or being a bit slow off the mark. They need you otherwise they would not have asked you out to sail! So take it as learning and get some off the water tips from the more experienced crew if things do go a bit wrong of a race.

Be prepared to be "flicked" ie some other probably more experienced crew takes your place for some races or events, but if you are on the bench most races as reserve crew then it is time to find another boat. Committ to a season with a boat, but if they do not committ to you by signing you up in advance for a concrete series of racesdump them asap if you have a choice of boat to go to.  Having said that, I have had a very nice couple of seasons on the Melges 24 being just that, reserve crew for first wednesdays and then weekend OD travellers. In fact in terms of quality time on the water, I have enjoyed almost as many of the best races in the last four years as the helm himself!!

Be prepared to float around a bit in a competitive fleet if you are always on reserve for one boat you have tried to establish comittment with. Maybe you have to go a hack down to a middels performer to get a fast place doing a good job, like jib trimming.

Job Descripotion Needed !

The best job as a new beginner is being ballast next to an experienced bow man or jib trimmer on the rail. After this on boats who need one, being "mast man" can be a very good position to have because the agile bow man will be someone you can learn team work with, and you can spend some of the race hoisting and getting sweaty, while the rest you can often see around you, perhaps lounging on the boom looking backwards on the run for example.

Jib trimming is often a job which the New Kid gets thrown in on. The snake pit. The Grinders. On any good OD boat, the jib trimmer is actually a really key speed-maker and it should not be left to a new beginner. Boats over about 26 feet will have two people doing the jib - a slipper outer- tailer

The Big Leaps on the Learning Curve

I am naturally biased to one design, so the real big leap you can do on any boat you choose to sail with, is to go and crew on