Goal Setting Versus Practical Routes Towards Goals

Goal setting is such a big thing in sports pyschology and career /lifestyle coaching. Dream. Think big! Or else "any road will take you there, if you don't know where you are going". 

According to this school of thought, ve high goals should be set, as a challenge, as a comfort disrupter, as the best way to g high acheivement. However, how many high goals are never, ever realised and how many poeple just fall off the carousel, without even making any improvement? How many managers change lots without really acheiving anything? How many sports people train vaguely towards a massively distant goal only to blame mediocre performance on lady-luck?

The last point is far from mute in sailing. In reality, few champions have actually started out with the goal on outset of an Olympic medal or a world cup series win.

I will not mince my words here. Throw out lofty, precise goals, and bring in imprecise ambitions. Ambition is an emotional status rather than an actual arithmetic, qualitative goal. Ambitions can easily be right-sized, without the driving emotion being destroyed. Unachieavble goals, by being unrealistic or distant, serve only to frustrate and demotivate along the way to greatness!

Let us not throw the baby out with the bath water here by any means here, regarding goal setting. We need goals - we must have goals. Only that these goals are much, much smaller,  supremely precise and tenable in the next session out on the water, or in the gymn, or in the 'library'. We will cover this modest and incremental goal-achieve philosophy in depth later, and go back to the principles of 'marginal gains' in terms of goal-setting and box-ticking.

Be Ambitious !

Back to ambitions, and the emotional drive we have in sport. It should be a Yin & Yang thang actually. We should on the black side, hate losing and chastise ourselves for idle mistakes. On the white side we should love winning but also love improving. Delight in self- correcting. Dare in trial-and-error.

We come then to the learning curve. There is an initial sailing competently round the course, after getting off the line on time, and this is a steep first portion of the curve in any career.  We then maybe plateau a bit while we make small gains in use of rules and boat speed. Many, many sailors get stuck somewhere on the second steep bit where we start to eat our way up the fleet and need to learn boat length-by-boat length, how to beat the boat just ahead. On this ramp, we have to learn to be competant with all the rules, consumate in manoevres, polished in team coreography and commanding over boat prep' and rig tuning.

After this steep 'mid section', we may reach a portion of diminishing returns, where we have to put in much more effort to learn something from which we actually get a smaller positive effect. We need then to consider the removal of minor obstacles and unrequired stress on competitors and teams, and look at the net quantitative of small improvements ie the theory and practice of Marginal Gains.

Gains and Goals - Small is Beautiful

Each and every step though up that steep, amd often long, middle hill in racing includes definable, measurable and acheivable goals. They need to be really small, and you need to train away from the race nights or days in order to isloate the challenge and work to overcome it.

So for example, i needed to learn a great deal more finesse in dinghy helming. Firstly i was able to analyse the issues- i was too harsh on the tiller, and fumbled the sheet. Outside of racing, I booked some specific instruction, including as a bit of a challenge, roll tacks and gybes, in a Laser II at a sailing school. I also hired a Laser single hander to tootle around in myself, and focus on tiller control, sheet grasp, and my new found roll skills - which were a fortuity to have chosen at this point because in fact rolling and pitch are very key to smooth helming. My sailing leapt up the results board and I actually won the first yacht race that i had ever helmed from start to finish, by a country mile that year.

Now you see that it is a very low level break down for small goals which join to build achievement. Also the outset, the problems- to paraphrase, any road will take you there if you don't know where you're starting. "Challenges" is so hackneyed a euphenism....what are you crap at ? When and where do you fall behind other competitors?  These should be minor problems, components of a larger performance picture, which lead to low threshold goal setting, and even further breaking those goals down into sub elements which are simpler to focus on solving and then performing.

The  learning curve is steeper here not because it is per se harder to learn in the mid phase - the gains are higher than the same input earlier or later. You have a base learning which was often slow, fumbling and frustrating. You then have a base competance and you start to guilp down new skills and improvements at an often exhiliarating rate - on each start, each beat, each new wind/wave condition and each coaching session.

Meeting Ambition with Stepping Stones en Route

All the time along the curve, AMBITION is our fuel cell. Yet like climbing mount everest, we maybe live in fear and trepidation of the huge goal, but set out up the foothills to see how far we come and enjoy the way. The next small summit we can get to and hold that altitude, is a building block on the way to higher things.

Now going back to my clumsy dinghy helming, i used to own and race (badly) a Tasar which has a rectangular cockpit and broad gunwhale/decks. The tiller end should not need to go outside the inner edge of the deck, otherwise you are braking the boat with too much rudder angle. It was quite easy to fix- just concentrating , looking firstly, at keeping the tiller in, and then getting the feel for it "blind" : on- and off-wind, and during tacks and gybes. Combined with heel, pitch and sail balance sheeting I made a lot of progress that year from a small area of identifiable problem.

Starts arw often a bug- bear , fitness /strength can be a limiting factor, beat strategy can be a mystery, mark-rounding can be nervous, boat prep and rig setti gs need gto be learned.  If you sat a goal to be champion, and thougnt that x hours per week get you there, then you might not see that you have one of these issues.

Coaching and Sailing with Better Sailors

Getting perspectives from outside your own bubble is vital to the process of keeping your learning curve in an upwards direction. Otherwise you will be 'myopic' to two things-

i. which elements you are truly weakest in

ii. how little a threshold there is to improve markedly.

My own personal approach to getting coached and cajouled is as an adult, and never part of the whole youth sqaud and teen-yachty scene. So I use either sailing schools or sail with better racers. In the first, I either have just gone and done an RYA certificate ( 2 and 4 in the old system) or I have booked one to one sessions to examine specific weaknesses or techniques. This has paid huge dividends and kept my learning curve steep, rather than unproductive from my own Tasar sailing alone. Also it informed by yacht and sports-boat racing immensely, adding finesse and even courage.

Secondly I was invited to sail with really competitve sailors, by pure chance or by them becomijng friends through the scene. What I immediately noticed was that they do very little different in fact from mid fleet 'dog boats'. There was no quantum leap. I have blogged on this before, but to summarise :

a)  better boat prep, newer equipment and sails,  everything works on board
b) confidence and aplomb on start lines, usually avoiding the worst of possible 'stramashes' at the biased end, or being in an aggressive, controlling position up there.
c) Spotting mistakes and wind shifts early and making correction or preparation
d) better boat handling - fewer mistakes, good team work, equipment fully functional
e) good wind and tide strategy. A bit more knowledge about all this on the course, and being able to interpret the natural signs of changes and shifts.

'Challenges" Are Actually Problems to Be Eradicated

I prefer to think of eradicating problems rather than tackling challenges. The latter is too soft a language- in my opinion you want to stamp out mistakes and performance issues. Challenge should be something longer term, part of your ambition.

You see the challenge as say a 20% improvement in your placings over last season. The first identifiable issue is getting a good start. Nerves are the problem at the route of this. Pratice starts; not taking some races so seriously; letting someone better helm; understanding the 'burn time' approach - these are your tools to overcome the issue and core nervousness problem.

  Each problem, issue or gap in knowledge is then fixable,  and gives quantifiable results in terms of boat lengths and in turn, results lisiting. Here we come back to marginal gains, because at the top you are looking at less than single boat lengths to beat your oponent by, especially off the start and on the first beat and run.

Marginal Gains and Mistake-Reduction

As all the good texts written by the medalists write, this aim of getting it right and also then making marginal gains, begins off the water with boat prep'.  Small tweeks and improvements gain half or even qaurter boat legnths off the start line by superior boat speed, or the same margin of gain in ease and ergonomics for hoists or on-water gear changes. Add some more work in the gymn, some more hours on the water training, and you start to see that small improvements add together.

Sailing to win in a fleet is by in large a case of stretching your neck out ahead  of the pack. After this, the gains are almost exponential becasuse you sail in your own wind, with fewer boats to encounter or slow you down at mark roundings. Very many OD races i have seen are characterised by the end of the first round by there being one boat in a definiative lead with a second maybe five boat legnths back, a third a littke bavk again but with a posse of chasers right on her heels. Then there is often a little gap or sparse patch, followed by the masses. The fact is that there is no miracle that the first three have built clear air for themselves- yes undoubtedly they know what they are doing anhave good boat prep. But the combined marginal gains they have made over the rest of the top third of the fleet results in them stretching their neck out.

Back to my favourite Uffa Fox philosophy for the common situation of "feast or famine" with the leaders eating greedily at the table of fresh wind - the third boat has maybe made three small errors- sheeted on too late by a second or two at the start, maybe not got the jib leads quite right, have a poorly faired rudder....boat two has just made two errrors and that affords her second place, while lead boat has just made one minor error and is going to win if she gets the second beat right and covers her followers appropriately. Sometimes her lead is erroded because in fact the chasing team have better boat speed, but she has the luxury of free wind and either a leisurely light cover on boat 2,  or an aggressive, match-race-style tight cover dog fight.

As in many endeavours, identifying a problem and describing it is often more than half of the cure.

Experiment and Factor Isolation

Knowing your problem is one thing, but sometimes we are more left with a blank sheet of paper. We have to experiment in order to progress, or sometimes to solve a problem we have defined very well. This is very true in handicap racing, or when you live  a long distance from the main fleet's or indeed when you are st the top of your class and looking for more gains.

As in lab' science, good experimentation means testing one element under one set of conditions, such that the cause-effect relationship can be firmly established. This entails that the sailor looks to firstly measure current performance in a relevant wind and sea state. They then look at what they want to introduce or alter- just one element, separated to it's definable little package.

So for example, you may want to experiment to make a quicker gybe. The manoerve has many elements, so which one would you choose first ? Is it a light air gybe which is your weak point or area to look for gains in? Will it be the roll into the gybe first? Or will you look at the snap roll out of the gybe? Or will you try to ease the both sheet and guy out when the pole is off to get the kite filling more ahead of the bow ?

Measurability is important and the latest super accurate 64-bit GPS will help. Some things in sailing which are fast don't 'feel" so right, like being in the groove on a modern short chord foil boat- a neutral feeling after acceleration is finished feels slow, but is 'groovy'. As a different example You may want to compare active sailing in waves versus setting the boat up for low and fast. This could be tested very well boat-on-boat in say a wednesday regatta or a 2 boat tuning session, but GPS is a verry good tool for single boat experiment. Failing gopd gps, or in addition to it, there are various means of using bouys and transits with stop watches deacribes in High Performance Sailing.

Paychology and Ambition Again

As i mentioned Ambition is a great fuel to improve - while each improvement itself is taken at outset as very objective. Achieving each small goal gives more satisfaction and lets you drop your shoulders more and enjoy racing with your new found skills, and perspective on the learning curve.

Another motivator I used to have, and know many sailors harbour, is hating losing. It really is a double edged sword because hate often leads to anger which in turn clouds judgement. But on the other hand, it drives you to be better.

Older and much wiser, I find that poor results are something to learn from. These days I know  it is important to train often and I just dont, but I am pleased to get out racing and try new boats, like the 12mR not really caring about the results. I know there will be something to learn which will enrich my sailing later.

As a novice, I would recommend that before you even join a club, that you get out on an RYA dinghy course ( or your particular national association or private school) and set getting a couple of certificates underr your belt as a goal - the first of the foothills on the way up Mt.Everest.

Further up the curve, you do have to look at your budget and how to solve the issues around ving evrything in very good working order, and new sails as often as allowed. It may be the case that you want to consider right-aizing your boat to your budget and changing club even to get into a more economic fleet. Or alternatively findi g new sources of income, like sponsorship or investment from your crew.

High up the learning curve, you should be aware of the nature of the diminishing returns on effort, but also that these often hars won, small gains when put together make for a significant gain on the race course.

The Joys and Tribulations of Yachting Photography

Photographing boats and races is another kind of obvious side hobby, and indeed you can read more on my sailing exploits and ponderings themselves at Lost Sea Soul. I have enjoyed taking shots of regattas but often yearned rather to be out sailing in those very regattas. Last weekend I had the opportunity to have my cake and eat it, being out in a RIB one day down the Norwegian "Riviera" and then crewing on a 12mR the other.

It reminded me of the challenges of both disciplines - team work, stregnth and wisdom on the one while a sense for a composition and wisdom on the camera side.

The biggest challenge in sailing photography to me is not having a water resistant camera. For others it is likely to be getting close enough to the action or being able to predict when the most exciting and interesting shots can be captured. The first is fixable with either a different camera system, Pentax and Olympus offering mid end weather sealed systems, while on the other, asking some spectators or race organisers what is going to happen can solve problems of where to stand on the shore, or where to go on the water in a motor boat to catch those shots.

My other challenge is not really my own- it is the percieved need for new fangled stuff all the time and how much more "obsolete" camera bodies are considered these days after they are but a few years old. When i started SLR 35mm photography, you would see a lot of older folk with good Nikons and Canons from the early 70s slung around their necks, seperate light meter round their wrists. There was also the OM revolution and the followers at Pentax and Ricoh. All before we went all "electronic operating system" and then much worse, APS film cameras were pushed onto the market to the detriment of photography in general. These days many hobby photographers think it laughable that I persist with a body launched 7 or 8 years ago, but as I stated before, it is way in excess of what was available to me in the 1980s.

Main system equipment aside, what do you need for a good day's yattin' phottin'?

Firstly you don't necessarily need a boat or loan of a boat. You do then need to be within reasonable distance of sailing, and that means either knowing that the racing is at least in part, going to come near land, or positioning yourself at a natural narrows where boats have to sail regardless. Also another alternative is as I found out, to use local route ferries or tourist boats when racing or other 'muster regattas' are on, such as over to the Isle of Wight, Kilcreggan on the Clyde, Syndey Harbour or San Francisco bay area. How I cursed not having a good camera on the way past Alcatraz when a rather infamous I 14 sailor, "The Captain" Came shooting past the "Rock" in his high performance dinghy, bright spinnaker resonant in the mute californian colours.

Lens choice, given that you have them. Firstly for dock side photting a 28mm eq zoom or prime is quite sufficient and unlike the wider end, does not distort perspective so much on yachts that you become very aware of the wide treatment. For example - 28mm eq

A typical kit zoom in the range 28-85mm eq ff, will provide for on shore images not only dockside, and passing boats close by on the wide end, but what I really personally like and that is "in context" shots of boats in their often beautiful or interesting seaside land- or town -scapes. At the long end you will get kind of cut off shots though of boats racing at distances of a few hundred yards, which are neither between having enough background to give context nor enough detail to be a photo of a boat. The same will be true of primes in the eq nifty fifty 50mm to portrait semi telefoto, but the added speed of a fast prime at 120mm to say 150mm can make up for lack of composition freedom in capturing detail shots when boats are near enough.

When I say detail shots, this is often in the sailing magazines close enough to recognise crew members, which helps sell copy or gives an otherwise anonymous top competition boat, a relevant human face, such as the instantly recognisable handsome profile of Sir Ben Ainsley. Alternatively, they can be technical shots, which show either nice detail on a wooden boat, the motion of the boat in the sea, or particular action or mishap sequences. In harbour the "wide to mid" zoom will suffice, but for shots at greater distances you need to go up to higher telefoto ranges for both detail shots, and whole boat shots when they are further away up the racing course.

At the telephoto end, I have looked at my own EXIF focal mm, and some other folks on and off the water. From the land, I use quite a lot of 300mm for boats sailing on their race courses, but once out in a boat I find that the shots are split three ways in fact:

Whole boat circa 85mm

cropped action in context 100-120

Close up of action and crew 200- 220

The last shot is a bit misleading probably taken at about 80 actually, because we could drive close to them since they had finished racing and were enjoying the spinnaker run to the harbour. But usually this type of close up would be on the race course, keeping a respectful distance at 200mm approx. More on positioning and courtesay later.

I find the longer end off shore is pretty unworkable above 220mm because you usually are bobbing about in a RIB or small boat, so framing shots becomes difficult as can even getting focus on the boat rather than fore or back ground points.  With f stops on my kit being lower, the shutter speed drops too low on programme, or the images get too dark on S, or worse, if you have forgotten auto ISO then it bumps up high.

I recommend using shutter prioirty at base ISO, there is usually more light than you think at first and shadows and quarter tones can be lifted in post. Shutter speed wise, I find that I cannot get sharp images by in large at under 1/320th and prefer at least 1/500th. Remember if you have a fast lens that this will be pushing the aperture more open and reducing your depth of field, which can be an issue for example here :

If you look closely, you can see that the depth of field is quite shallow and the nice, shiny chrome winches are out of focus, while the hatch is sharp. Be aware to too thin a DOF with boats.

On exposure and light conditions, the vast majority of boats white or light coloured sails and also a large number have white hulls these days, and even ye olde varnished hulls reflect a lot of light. Also as mentioned there is a lot more light around at sea because so much reflects up from the water. I prefer to use a polarising filter which reduces reflections and total, scattered light from the sea and therefore that kind of odd brighter blue in images from the sea. This helps with texture of the sea, while also helping tone down the white of hulls and sails allowing more detail to come out. White, blocky hulls and sails detract from photos IMHO and a polarising filter is a good means to vastly reduce this glare, while maintaining a balanced exposure.

Of course a digital optimised polarising filter reduces the scene by up to -2EV.  Alternatively a ND (neutral density) -0.5 or -1.0 EV filter can be used to achieve some of the effect, and also open the aperture up just a little more to get thinner DOF on very bright days, when you want to throw the background.

Once on the water, in a small boat, it is pretty desirable not to change lens because no matter how waterproof the camera is, when the body cavity is exposed, it is highly vulnerable to water, and salt water is so much more dangerous. Filters can also be fiddely to mount while bobbing about, which is another advantage of a polarising filter because you can vary the darkness or density by rotating it.  Also given my tips based on years of photting myself and recent EXIF checks on some 'pro' flickr images, it is best to have a zoom lens with a range of around 80 to 250mm, and not change lenses.  "Big Whites" or those "Bigma" long telefotos with sub f5.6 apertures, are the reserve of either land based photting or being on quite a substantial vessel where roll and spray are minimal for the same weather conditions.

Camera techniques out of the way, as with any sports photography,  or landscape photography if you like context as I do, knowing your subject and what is about to happen next makes the difference between " i took some shots at a sunny regatta" to the "wow, see what we captured!" Direction of light and time of day are important, with the shadow cast by the sails to one side of boat something to either avoid or take advantage of. For the non sailor reading this, generally speaking boats under sail go through three interesting 'states' and do a couple of interesting manoevres in terms of action beyond "boat heeled over on water"

1. Beating - this means the boats have their white sails closely hauled in, with often elegant curves on their trailing edges. They are sailing up towards the wind, so you can work out where they are going to be next, as they zig zag in that direction.

From the front of the boat, approaching you is the best angle usually, with the bow wave and crew being points of interest, and worth taking multiple shots at high shutter speeds to select the most interesting wave or crew shots.

2. Reaching - This is when boats cross the wind at about right angles, and for many boat types this is their fastest point-of-sail. Often racing boats will have spinnaker up, and out to one side. Sometimes this angle can put a lot of pressure on the sails, and the helmsman is on a knife-edge of being overpowered and spun round into the wind in what is known as a "broach", in spectacular fashion sometimes. One note is that the boats will be sailing fast away from where ever you are stationed.

3. Running - Here the wind is behind the boat, and the white sails are either pressed out, often like "goose wings" on either side of the boat, or on many racing boats, the bright spinnaker will be most prominent, out to one side of the boat. Given a good light direction, then this can make for spectacularly colourful shots, and also with a degree of shadow with back light, interesting semi silouhette shots can be had. Here the light was failing, and I had a polariser on a non WR lens, so this is how it turned out, a little dark and flat:

The manoervres of interest racing boats do are

1) Tacking their bows through the wind in order to zig zag up to the direction the wind is blowing from

2) Gybing - the opposite, swinging their sterns through the wind with it behind them,  and changing sides with the sails, often in interesting fashion with the spinnaker up.

3) Starting - Most boat races have a common mass start, so the boats line up and start all at once. In competitive fleets this means a neat line of boats which is amenable to a 28-35mm from the water. It can be very difficult to spot a given boat btw. It is the sprint, the most stressed point in sailing and crashes do happen.

4) Taking up and down sails (hoist and drop/douse). Usually racing photographers get shots of the spinnaker work as it is a coloured, interesting sail and involves a lot of team work on deck to handle up and down- see image above of a boat 'fishing' with its spinnaker, while the crew do their best to haul it onboard again after it was droped. But other sails can be just as interesting.

Other Equipment 

I am going to invest in a second weather resistant camera, most likely the Pentax K series with a single, WR lens the 18-135 (just the ticket as it covers all my usual focal lengths, and with the latest 16 and 20 / 24 mpx sensors without AA filter, cropping can compensate for lack of 300-400mm reach) , but for those of you maybe either with a water proof DSLR or not, a second waterproof 'tough' camera like the Olympus TG4 or a good water resistant mobile can be a good option, despite the fixed or short focal ranges- here a boat is handy to 'leg zoom' near to the action, while often tough compacts and mobiles have a nice do it all 35mm FF eq focal legnth. 

Weather jackets for cameras are a good idea for any DSLR camera on the salty sea, because salt is not worth the risk of getting into your camera- a single tiny grain will destroy a sensor or lens mechanism. No amount of being careful will stop a sudden wave splash reaching you on a small, open boat. A full waterproof diving box may be a bit excessive, but if you have many thousands of spondoolics in equipment, worth perhaps the bother. Water proof 'kayaking' bags are a good idea too, just taking a single camera 'snout pouch' bag as I say on a RIB (rigid hull inflatable boat ) or the like,m you dont want to change lenses really at sea.

Tripods are ok for cruise liners, but on a small boat or busy public ferry alike, you are better with a monopod to add maybe that one to two stop benefit in steadyness, while also synchronising with the hull's movement on the water, so at least cancelling out your own body's weather leg movements and getting you used to when you will have the subject in frame as you bob up and down. IBIS/ILIS andbest shot selection, will generally speaking be enough to compensate in light conditions at mid shutter speeds for the combined effects of your boats' movement, your body's movement and the subjects movement. 

"Eplilogue" in a non Police Squad sense 

I hope this has been of some use and inspiration to sailors in particular, to get out and take shots of their sport from a motor boat or even land. Use your knowledge of how races operate to position yourself for the best images, and decide what type of shot you are setting up for. Remember to get out of the shadow side of the yacht or course unless you are looking for silhouette effects that is. Take bursts of photos in manoervres, when boats cross each other or if you are trying for a close up 'people shot' -. Otherwise for 'in context' shots or general shots, position yourself and wait until the boat is at the sweet spot, and perhaps use an exposure bracket series if light conditions have either high contrast or very flat light.  Remember to just check that the camera is focused on the points of interest or tracking the boat well, the dof is not too shallow on the subject, you are using shutter priority at say 1/500th or faster, that you are not overexposing white sails and hulls or getting that unatural 'denim' blue from the sea.

For the non sailor, get to know the basics of sailing and racing and look up some youtube clips to understand what boats are up to and when is interesting to get shots. Being on land may severly restrict you if there are no racing bouys near by, but 'narrow' sounds, harbour entrances or peninsulas can get you close to the action. As can using a ferry or tour boat if you cannot persuade someone to take you out in a boat and spectate actively.

Remember that a RIb infront of a boat racing can be both a destraction, a potential collision hazard and casue a wave as you gvet out of the way which can slow a racing boat down,so keep the engine running keep clear by several of their boat legnths , don't make large waves near competitors or which will roll through the whole fleet as you blast off to thge next spot or home with your 'catch'.

The safest and best places for photographing a race on the water are usually just outside the triangular or in effect diamond shaped racing course layed out with three bouys, sometimes it is just two. The 'diamond' shaped racing area in a typical race round marks, is usually about 20 times wider than the start line, and often the start line is half way up or at the 'foot' of the course in relation to the wind blowing down the middle. Best, safe spots outside this 'diamond' are usually to the left of the start line by 30 meters or so, being just slightly ofrward of the bows when they gather and start; being at the windward mark, longest up towards the wind direction where the boats turn and often hoist spinnakers, and being at the converse 'leeward' mark where the boats sail with the wind behind them and usually spinnakers up, and then take them down and go back up to hauling their sails in and sailing in the typical zig zag fashion up wind. 

Other races work in longer distances following the coast sometimes or heading offshore. Typically these have an inshore start and finish line near land, the latter could ential much waiting if it is a long race with variable wind during the day. Also often an inshore 'harbour' or club house start or coastal course  will necessitate the boats passing a harbour wall, or an estuary mouth, and coastal courses often have to pass headlands or peninuslas and want to use minimum ditance to do so, so that is where they come closest to land.

A weather sealed camera system is really what to get if you are going to be on the water often or in rough water, and that is what I am investing in, before I explore the joys of on water yacht photting more!

Big Boats- I Get It Now...... a Spot of 12mR Racing for Fred

Last week I managed to combine my two passions of Sailing and Photography in a couple of sweet days at a wooden boat festival and regatta for meter raters down the Norwegian Riviera. Like many of you blog readers I dare say, I have often wondered about the appeal of sailing boats over 45 feet with their huge sail area and thereby necessity for lots of able bodied crew, and extra attention to correography on the decks. Now I have to admit to being a bit hooked. But lets cut a short story long....


 I volunteered as dock and RIB boat crew for the festival and wangled my place firmly at the meter quay to enjoy just looking at the scene of  seven 60 footers and various 8mR and 9mR wooden delights which began to arrive mid week. Like all regattas with boats sardined in at one end of the visitor harbour, there was a good deal of stress the first few times in and out, not helped by an unusual summer storm blowing up enough swell to make for trouble through the harbour at Risør. It is very unusual in summer because the opening to the sea,  between their own mini ' Hebrides' otherwise so sheltering for the town,  is only about 150m. A bit of chaos and extra anchoring ensued until 11 pm, I had been drenched working in the inner harbour with only a tee shirt under me oily so had gone to my lodgings for a smuggled Lemsip to nurse my worsening cold.

The next day's racing was offshore beyond the outerst of the wee noggie Hebrideans, where there was true wind and left over swell to sail in, at the easter extremity of the North Sea aka the Skagerakk. Some local lads and various interested folk were on some of the slightly short crewed 12mRs and I wondered about my obligation to the dockside service and my heavy cold, versus popping out with one. I also was pretty keen to get out in a Rib and take some photties. I hummed a bit too much on the first day with the best light conditions, and one of my oppo's snuck out for a couple of hours with one of the RIB "tug" drivers after all the 12mRs were nudged out the harbour mouth.

I managed an hour of photting on the slightly duller day, and in fact for the conditions and my now virtually prehistoric DSLR, (olympus E450, see other blogg) I got some good enough shots, let down only by leaving a polarising filter on and knocking the camera wheel onto aperture from shutter priority at one point. It was bouncy and a light rain shower came on. The E450 was the smallest DSLR in the world when launched, and being also their lower model, it lacks any form for weather proofing other than due care, a jacket at hand, the camera bag and a good plastic bag over that.

There we are, some photting of boats some grown men lust, dream and drool over. For me "big boats" seemed something for Cowes and Newport in most ways. Scottish waters since the 1980s has had a bit of a mixed experience with some well known 60 foot plus racing boats and the odd egos of those who owned them, and generally sailed them pretty badly. They did also attract the usual groupies who like matching sailing gear and big beers to go with the size of boat. I kind of hate groups, yet I love teams.

That is the crux of the matter then. I saw that one boat, Le Cid, a 1956 12mR crusier kitted racer, was being helmed by a guy called Stein Victor with a chap called Gunnar on bow. I had sailed with them in Hollenderen and Færderen races on a 362s ten years ago. They needed crew, so on Friday while I had booked a RIb trip, I found a couple of crew for them pronto. Saturday I sailed with them.

Another thing that kind of put me off bigger boats is the lack of immediacey, the lack of self responsibility and the following lack of control I had percieved. Also things like crew coreography bosses, having met a couple off the water or very snobby owners and so on were kind of preconceptions I had. It seemed the thing to do, since it was my first sail actually this season, to ease my way in with guys I had spent a good few days training and competing intensely with at least, and it prove very much to be the case.

I have sailed on a few 45 footers and in fact the 12m rater at a length of just over 60 ft (18.4 m) just didn't feel all that much bigger. The pole, boom, shackles and all the sheets were twice the size it has to be said. Rather hoping to be second on bow and avoid the ridiculously small offshore cockpit, I was indeed given mast, being the tallest on board forward of the beam where I had been loitering with intent..... so mast and inward end it was .....with help of two others.

Experience and being awake are really what equiped me to come on board this boat and do a good job, while also fitting into the general coreography on board. The core team had all sailed lots together and eat and breath sailing up in Oslo, so there was no stress and never a raised voice. In effect the coreography was helping each other out, rather than say in the hoists, actually being a closely honed machine of whizzing arms. I am so big that a fast hoist by the only way I know, jumping and pumping, excludes most people from a 3m radius, so I just let someone spell me when friction and wind took up the strain, and then I tailed the winch for the last few meters. That was one difference though, the spinnaker seemed to take forever to be 'made' at the top, and the clutch was shit too.

We could see other teams with all their matching, logoed up regatta gear not bothering to hoist or trying the stupid code zero thing with a standard kite, which doesn't really work. Also one boat, which will remain nameless but was Danish and being helmed by a former Finn olympian, did a text book bad leeward rounding, due to a late drop mess up the preceeding day, as captured on digital brick above. She sailed her self down three places with one little mess up, and that goes to show that the way these boats carry, the sail area and the lack of gaurd rails on most of them, means that risk taking has to be minimised and recoveries cannot be taken on the edge of a broach as with smaller 'tupperware'.

I must say I am hooked on big boat sailing, as in much the way I was when I sailed each new 'category' of boat and each new job I progressed to in my career. I enjoy teaching sailing skills to less experienced folk and there were guests aboard,  and there are some new techniques of working hand-over-hand with a larger team which I find a new challenge. The schmelges is up for sale, and it is fast approaching end of season so maybe I will just sit on the idea, and live off the new experience a little over the winter.

Dropping Your Shoulders....More Sports Psychology

I think the biggest change in my overall enjoyment of sailing as a sport was when I won the first race I ever helmed in a keel boat. There was a healthy tension and a great crew, with the owner tweaking the boat to get optimum speed. I felt both butterflies in my stomach, but I felt I could drop my shoulders and use my years of dinghy sailing experience and nouse as would-be-tactician over many years to do my best and cooperate with the crew. We won by a country mile. 

I am currently on an evening management course  on understanding and tackling stress - emotions, motivations and peri-conscious thought patterns which disturb our performance and ability to handle the challenges life and work present.

The course is a superb distillation of a large body of work done by pyschologists and clinicians over the last 60 years. ( I studied two years in Pyschology at University btw) . Towards the end of last night's course we were introduced to a concept of  "esteem and confidence silo's" which was kind of a Eureka moment for me when I thought back to my sailing career and those around me.

The Assymetry Between Confidence & Esteem 

I think we all know people who are very practical and able to get things done, often to the point where they are outright irritating and or even overbearing. The equation though is not that they have necessarily high self esteem.

The theory here states that self-esteem is something which feeds into self-confidence, but not really the reverse. There is a non reverse proportionate, or assymetric relationship. The gas filling you get in self confidence from feeling good in your 'soul' is largely a one way street.

Self confidence is closely linked to our ability to react and handle the world. Self esteem is a deeper premises from which we find the root to our opinions and starting point for how we then go on to experience the world and take the learning experiences which lead to self confidence. There is a slight feedback there though, some leak from Silo 2 to Silo 1. But the second silo of self confidence will not back-fill, and it can get pretty full - there is almost a one-way valve, we fill up but it does not go back out and as the pressure builds to act apparently 'assertively' we can appear increasingly arrogant and aggressive.

So appearing to be highly confident does not mean that a person has high self esteem, and can mean the exact reverse.....

Self Esteem then gives us our outset , our ego- articulated values, long lasting inner feelings about our selves, and unwritten life-rules  - not only how we steer our own lives but also of course how we interact with others. How fulfilling these encounters, relationships, overcoming-of-challenges and interactions with the world are depends mostly on our self esteem and not our self confidence per se.

Think Sailors!

Now sport and not least sailing is a very particular part of our lives. For many of us from 'Anglican' countries, sport is the only real outlet for adrenaline spun competitive spirit. We are stiff upper lip and to be honest, a little pussy-whipped in our offices and oh-so-safe work sites. In sport we often expose an underlying self esteem and display a different self confidence than in the very emotionally inhibited and temperament neutral careers we live with.

You can then think about your own sailing and those of your erstwhile helm or crew or competitors and start to recognise that many who exhibit self-confidence are actually quite abrasive and are not really fulfilling the spirit of sporting. I suggest further that they are not actually being very fulfilled emotionally, and that they need to have a series of little wins within races and grab wins and flout their glory when they can if they are good sailors. This is often the loud-mouth, bully and outrigh cheat and every club has at least one in their fleet.

An alternative type is the "frustrate". Someone who make bold desicions, often doing a course side flyer, trying to roll a better competitor on the run, or gybe setting and the like when they just can't carry it off. Worse they are intolerably bossy and often ill tempered with their own crews.

Eternal Orgasms of Unfulfillment

The same thing is true of shopaholics, these two types of helms are not being fulfilled by an inner sense of well being from the sport. They have a need for pushing and being arrogant is the symptom of that. They need small wins and the feeling of being in control to feed into their quite weak ego system. They need small ego boosts all the time to feed their mean-machine outset and under developed self esteem.

What is Positive, Sporting Self Esteem in Sailing ?

The best people to see positive self esteem in the context of our sport are actually eager  new beginners believe it or not. They can be a little irritating in the club house of course, always pointing out the obvious, asking 'stupid' questions and talking excitedly about their minor improvements and incidents on the race course as if they were in the Americas cup.

Back up here you cynics!!  These types of people often come into sailing as adults with a great deal of life experience and fulfillment, or a children with optimism and enthusiasm. They come with the attitude " I can learn this, I can master step by step, and I can enjoy this beautiful sport".

We as more experienced sailors need to learn to learn again, and come with a new set of inner feelings which maybe force us to jack down our self confidence, eat some humble pie and go back to admitting we are learning. We also need to question, as I often point out, if we are enjoying the sport and competition locally on  a weekly basis? What are we seeking through sailing and are we feeling fulfillment?

Driven and Fulfilled by Competing 

This does not mean you have to leave behind you those things which drive you - for me originally it was loving the experience of racing, and hating to lose. For others it can be the rush of the start, or coralling their crew or following the rules as if they were the letter of the law so to speak.

Think realistically about where our sporting self esteem lies and if the silo is actually much emptier than our self confidence. Consider further then that if we are over confident we need to seek values and goals which feed our self esteem and not try to find short cuts to 'quick wins' or pushing other people around.

High self well being and esteem with low self confidence is then a matter of learning experiences and seeking out mentors and sailing courses which can help you overcome the nerves, the mental blocks and the lack of eye-hand coordination you may have.

Sporting Spirit and Your Ego

I think personally that sporting spirit is then very closely linked to your self esteem, and that self confidence and ability on the race course is a following positive result from having a good set of values and feelings before you step foot in a boat.

Sporting spirit means respecting the rules, your competitors and most of all the crew around you. It means conceding small battles in order to win wars. It means congratulating people who beat you in the last tack to the finish line, or get water on you at the last rounding. It means dusting off your failures and accepting them as learning lessons and defining these then as challenges to overcome by learning and experience. It means dropping your shoulders and enjoying your sport.

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This concept of the two Silos lies a little deeper in the 'soul' than the concepts of assertiveness on the racecourse but are a better start point. I think I have blogged on assertiveness on the race course a couple of years ago, will see and republish or update that.

Mastery in Sailing

How can we approach mastering sailing and racing our yachts, sports boats and dinghies?

What can we learn from philosophy and other sports which can help inform our own mind set on how we begin to learn and move towards mastery in our own sport?  Should we consider perfection and undisputable methods and goals to which we should aspire and comply to?

Most grand masters in sailing are not self professed. They are accomplished by matter of the races they have won, the overall ratings they have, the adulation from their peers and not least the audience they command.

Many sailors would however profess to be old masters at their art, and quite a few quietly consider themselves to be mastering the waves. Complacency is the first sign that someone is not a master nor that they are on the road to mastery.

The first concept then we grasp is that we are on a journey of both experience and discovery. It is no surprise that you often hear top sailors like Russel Coutts and Sir Ben Ainsley saying " We learned a lot today". In fact being on the continual, never ending learning curve has become a mantra of sailing professionals and their coaches the world over, and is almost a cliche. However it is a way of seeing yourself and your sailing which will never wear out.

Views of the Journey

Another wonderful term made to sound a little trite by its use in advertising,  is from a japanese concept " If perfection was achievable, it would be worthless" . Here we take the humbling thought that we can only strive towards perfection, but in fact never reach it. It seems from a distance perhaps a given goal, a peak to climb, a race to win while when  we approach than point in out achievements we just raise our brow to see the next step on the path to perfection.

In his book "  According to Uffa" , the great old Fox himself he proposes this through-the-looking glass view point.
" If you make three mistakes in a yacht race, then you may be rewarded with a third place. The boat ahead of you makes one less mistake. To win a race you can only make one mistake" or something very along those lines I paraphrase.  I dare say that if the Gods on mount Olympus could see down upon a race and analyse the boat which came in 10th place they could well see perhaps ten obvious mistakes which seperate them by a factor of nine steps from the boat which wins. The prestart positioning, the start , the first and second shift, going right for the layline, the rounding, und so vite und s[ vite

In think that is a very informative or even a kind of road-to-Domascus approach to deconstructing your sailing ....as long as you can like the Gods above recognise each mistake. Sailing isnt like running a marathon in that you don't make large gains in outset from focusing on small technique improvements. There is a sprint to consider first = the gains on being able to start well and achieve free air and a forward position versus the fleet's main body of boats is so determinant of being able to further build upon your sailing.

Another viewpoint which takes us back to consider the old adage of "practice makes perfect" is a darn good read inspired by martial arts and Zen Budhist philosophy, Mastery by George Leonard. In this light text he considers that the journey is long and characterised by long periods of practice on a plateau of performance before some quite unexpected gains as the learning curve suddenly hops an increment

10,000 hour "Rule" was a concept developed by Malcolm Gladwell from observations and studies of musicians and top atheletes. This is pretty aligned to George Leonard's very good summation of the japanese martial arts approach to mastery. However it has since been disputed, with other studies showing fewer, more variable hours and contrasting the difference between achieving fitness levels and actually mastering techniques. There is no doubt though that the more hours you put into a sport, the better your resulkts become. To paraphrase, the more you practice sailing, the luckier you get.

Break on Through to the Other Side...

My own philosophy follows indeed that you need to practice and you need to have bouts of training at a plateau level before you make progress. However I disagree to the kind of attrition concept of throwing enough hours at it to get each gain. Instead of the plateau leading to a surpising improvement in skills, you have to actively challenge yourself and seek new inspiration to come out of what can be in sailing in particular, a plateau which is a comfort zone.

I will introduce another concept which arose in the UK Military, with a claim it originated during the training and fighting the early Royal Marines Commando undertook. An officer's expression during training to lead men into the unknown with new commando tactics "  Experience that quality you attain the exact moment after you most needed it" . It means for the sailor that you expose yourself to something which is well outside your comfort zone and learn under intense pressure to either perform the task, such as a heavy weather gybe, or fail in that task and take the lesson with you further.

In athletic sports, there is a type of training which was the newest fad a few years ago- "disruption". Really it is a pretty old approach and can certainly be traced long back into the history of training soldiers. You allow routines to develope, a certain performance level achieved and then bang! You throw a new challenge or totally alter the routines, change the intensities, or introduced something way out of the box. Basically this psycholigically breaks the comfort zone or challenges the brain to work differently. Sometimes it is rather playful in fact rather than a stressful, high pressure change.

Physiologically I have not seen the evidence of how successful changing from say, standard intervals to speed-play (fartlek), and for the majority of amateur sailors sticking to a PT and gymn programme is about as far as you need to worry. But in the mind pushing yourself outside the comfort zone , or breaking with what can be a period of monotomy, pushes you out of where you are and can let you see where are going. In other words you either perhaps go beyond your boundaries , maybe  way beyond and then come back to a new level, or you get to have a perspective on your learning curve to date and where it is needing to go.

A very good disruption technique for sailing would be jumping into a new boat, or as a helm, taking a crew position on a big team boat with more than 10 crew. Alternatively it may mean sailing in very heavy weather, when racing is cancelled. Or taking the helm of a compatriots OD boat with their usual crew line up.  Another very good option would be doing a long delivery trip as skipper, or a long passage race if you are used to round the cans.

An excellent means of learning about racing as anew beginner or a seasoned racer, is to participate on the race committee. Laying marks at a national championship with a former world champion one day, I learned more about racing that I had perhaps in a whole season. Up there at the windward mark area, with a compass rigged under a windex, I could see there was a small variability followed by larger osciallations in the wind stregnth and direction. I could see that the top four or five boats usually had a pretty clear rounding, having at least half a boat lenght between them, whilst the rest of the fleet had a far more messy affaire at the top mark and offset.

Teaching sailing is also a good way of stepping back and being able to deconstruct your own techniques in order to communicate to others and understand what mistakes they are making. Very often these are actually very amplified versions of our own mistakes, or they show the way to where we may be weak, often in tacks, gybes, or reacting to windshifts and changes in strength.

For the team as a whole, it may not mean sailing at all, but maybe a team building exercise- corporate style. One very applicable exervise is taking up an organised course in rock climbing and paying for instruction towards a team pitch up a local route or if possible to a mountain top. This helps develop the feeling of responsibility between each other, we actually being dependent on each others safe actions on board. Also it involves rope work, balance, stregnth and bravery. Knut Frostad's team on Kvernaer Innovation did this. Considering this as a very good type of exercise for a  newly formed team with some issues "gel-ing" or a long established team which are becoming a tad complacement, taking each other for granted and blaming each other or the helm intermittantly for any bad results,

Team dynamics are a bit tangenital to this blog, and I have made some observations on democracies vs dictatorships before, but obvioulsy once you are out of a single hander  and sail in a team, the way it functions and what goes right and wrong is part of your learning curve. My parting comment on this in context of this blog, is that you have to recognise when others in the team are not on an upwards learning curve and do something about that: this may need to include surgery if the motivation levels are to put it mildly " mis aligned " , and that may either be dumping people or moving yourself out of the boat.

Metrics - Milestones on Your Strategy

"Any road will take you there if you don't know where you are going"...perhaps this is becoming an over used proverb, but it rings true for me in sailing and working life. Ok, I admit I am a bit aimless in both right now, going with the flow! Hardly even plateauing , not even tredding water, just drifting. I would drown but I am striving to find the answer at least to what the next building block of my sailing career will be and how far forward it may take me.

Metrics are very available in sailing, especially in one design fleet sailing, where not only the finish line results provide you with metrics. Every stage of the race you can check the leeches of your competitors, see if they are going faster and higher than you, see how different boats fair off the start and at the marks, see how much faster some boats are on the run and so on and so on.....

Other metrics are more statistics which are really deadly dull, but useful. For example, number of badly executed tacks, time to tack, etc  Conservative start versus risk starts by number and result link to these.

From a base of metrics, you can define your ground zero: where you stand now. How good you are. Are you back of fleet, mid fleet or top 20% ??  You should be able to identify your weaknesses and also then quantify them: ten bad tacks up a long beat or 10 bad starts in a series may tell you that these are the two areas you must focus on!!

Going back to the Uffa Fox quote, if you know what mistakes you make AND how often in a race you make them, you can start to see how many places it is worth to train out those mistakes. You can diffrerentiate between occaisional foul ups, like bad hoists, and those mistakes you make most often.  Even if they are quite small mistakes, like falling off too far coming out of a tack, it is an area for improvement.

Learning to Learn, Improving to Improve Even More

Once again we come back to the modern cliche in proff' sailing, the humility to admiting we are all learning, every day.

I guess in a perfect heavenly world somewhere, the wind blows evenly and there is no tide, and no waves to hinder us> a helmsman and crew make a perfect tack which in no way can be surpased by its qaulity and achieved goals. However, the wind changes all the time, we get waves and tide, and wind sheer, and odd gusts....our crew maybe change about a little, some have bad days, some have good days, the sails maybe are a little newer or older than last time we sailed in this exact conditions...the competition are a little harder against us this time....so on , so on.

The point from metrics above, is that you can identify and quantify a weakness as something that has to be learned out; overcome; unblocked; surpassed. In just finding one fault to work upon, you have learnt that focus is important and that you can continue to learn.

I told my youth group back  a few years ago, that yes there are a few tricks in sailing, but in general we have to just polish away at our techniques and get better and better by practice and from instruction. Two brothers from the group have recently had a top third of fleet result at the 29er worlds at Pwhelli, with one race win, first time out at a World's!! I hope something rubbed off on them, and I know they have had pro coaches after me, but getting that mind set to learn to master small details and then open your mind to new learning, is a key part of my philosophy.

Summarising My Philosophy on The Zen of Sailing

I may seem to be contradicting myself from the last paragraph above, when considering the sections before this where I question the concept of mere repition and practice-makes-perfect.

I believe that mastery has no real short cuts, but does have some important increments in sailing, which are in some ways rights-of-passage, while in others are quite definable steps you have to climb in order to be able to perform at the next level. Practice is used then to gain this incremental gain, and then to consolidate it, hard wiring it often literally into your brain as a motor/sensory program. You then do need to practice it, but in fact what you are doing is consolidating that program, polishing it slightly but also exposing that to varying conditions.

At some point, like in being able to drive a car or ride a bike, you can do things on autopilot. This frees up the mind to concentrate on other things, like sail setting and tactics. However it also means that you can see the next challenge. This challenge may actually be within the self same technique you have just been able to automate. You may find for example, that other boats lose less way to windward through tacks. You may need to then be adjusting the speed at which you enter a tack, using roll in all conditions, sheeting in on the main sheet and trying to keep height when coming out the tack, which until this realisation, had been seemingly 'mastered'. 

Being able to understand that you are only some way along the learning curve is the great humility you need to be a better sailor. Time and time again I see mediocre boats, or those struggleing for a final break through in consistent wins, where there is just a plain lack of self admission that things could be done better. Time and time again I hear the boat set up being blamed or the crew being lambasted instead of a more realistic idenitification of faults, which are very often starts and wind strategy on the beat.

Overall I would say push yourself to keep on learning, to keep on polishing and then to find that new increment and step up to that challenge and force yourself to go beyond your boundaries in order to redefine them and make the critical leaps in performance something which you are not afraid to over come.

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

Sailing in Waves ....Again

I come back to this topic again having read a very good summary for the theme on Zim's Sailing Blog on Sailing In Waves http://zimsailing.blogspot.no/2013/04/tracking-upwind-in-waves.html about upwind sailing in the bumpier stuff.

I have read up on the topic, entered into much discussion on forums about it and blogged on my experiences and acrued knowledge, yet still there seemed to be some doubts in my mind.

Zim in their blog focus  on tracking up wind, and combine the two schools of thought if you like- active movement through the waves and tracking under power.

The two have often been discussed as even a little mutually exlusive. On the one side you want to have the boat set up for height in order to actively sail up onto the wave crest, and you want the jib draught well forward in order to see/saw your pointy end down and up without stalliing the jib. The other perspective is to progressively power the boat up and sail lower and faster to punch through the wave train and maintain tracking.

When does each method pay, and can you engage both?

Firstly let us set a bit of a scope here, we are talking about normal boats in displacement mode upwind, not higher performance craft. Within then this lies probably over three-quuarters of all sailing hours upwind full stop! However breaking it down into different boats is now important. Also when to engage active sailing versus the more passive, powered up tracking is an important.

We can start where ZIM takes issue with the problem - you want to avoid slamming down into the furrow from the top of the wave and killing the boat speed. In the US this is called hobby horsing apparently, and that is a good description because you are rocking without getting anywhere! So the first most important factor is wave size compared to boat size put that simply>

There comes a point when the wave height relative to the boat length means that sailing on a close hauled course will result in slamming. In an Optimist this will be pretty modest, 50 cm waves perhaps. At the same time a Super Maxi will be just gliding through such a relatively small chop, fully close hauled.   Wave legnth is also of note here, because a long, swell wavelength you would experience offshore will take a different methodology to tackle than short, inshore chop of the same nominal height. Wind against tide will soon build steeper waves in the course of a race even, and necessitate a different sailing style to avoid banging up and down, losing speed as the bow slams into the trough and gets stalled more by the next wave.

There is then a significant wave height, steepness, frequency (speed of wave train) and length which necessitates firstly falling off, powered up tracking and then eventually for all boats, as the sea gets big, active steering takes over.

The next consideration after size,  is type of boat and especially two factors - power to weight ratio and keel design.

A heavier boat will need more power to get over waves in the first place, although it will 'hold its way' to an extent that the momentum will punch through waves better than a light boat which may be stopped in its tracks. The trade off in a heavy boat is then that you can sail powered up, with more twist, on a slightly lower course most likely, will tolerating a good angle to the waves. VMG is optimised, in that the boat sails high enough to hold a constant speed  the waves are not slamming you at this angle, you are cutting them. Hence active sailing is dropped in favour of tracking lower and faster and responding to the wind shifts on the helm rather than the wave-train per se.

Also a boat with a longer keel will respond to being driven low and fast such that the attached flow on the keel is maintained and it functions well to help lift the boat to windward. Rapid, active steering manoerves in a wave train will shake this flow off the keel, especially if the keel becomes exposed to air as you ride the waves. The same is true of a boat where the big old spade rudder helps the boat lift to windward. Steering will unload this.

The converse then is true of a light sports boat or modern racing yacht, with a high power to weight ratio and short chord lengths on boat keel and rudder. The Platu Beneteau 25 responded very well to being see/sawed with an active helm  in waves above about a meter. The keel flies at a lower boat speed, so as you slow down it keeps flying, or if it does stall momentarilly on the face of the wave, then it can reattach flow as soon as the bow is borrne away off the crest. The rudder is pretty neutral and therefore balanced and can be used actively, with some prudence, to steer the boat up and down with each significant wave.

Is  here a synthesis between the two styles? well you just have to ask any serious laser sailor and they will tell you that the two styles are not mutually exclusive and that you may use both modii upwind or change between them at some point. The key factor here being that not all waves are equal - the old seventh wave, and the new rogue-wave theories hold true. A critical wave height for actively steering up and down the wave may come only on those more infrequent waves, otherwise you want to churn on.

Another factor of the wave-train comes into play here. Most often the wave-train does not follow the current DDW wind bearing. It is skew, for reasons a bit beyond the scope of this entry. In other words, if you sail at 45' close hauled to the wind, you will experience going  nose into the waves more on one tack, and the waves more on the beam on the other tack. So you need to be able to track fast on the gentler tack, while probably using active steering on the other tack.

Boat set up then needs more power relative for the wind, which usually means more twist and depth in the sails. For active sailing you will also need more 'knuckle' in the jib - the draught being further forward and allowing for a more varied angle to the wind while still powering.  Given though say the common scenario above , a skew wave train, then you are still free to make adjustments to the running rigging on each tack. Alternatively you may enter a tidal channel and suddenly meet critical wave height for active sailing.

On the softer tack you can then point a little higher and flatten your jib in to give a finer entry and more power. The sails can be less twisted and the slot is then a little narrower and more powered up. The jib entry is easily adjusted by slackening the halyard and tightening the sheet, less twist by moving the jib car forward and of course the main sail will be more easy to reduce twist on for a higher pointing modus, with better VMG. Backstay will then be a function of how tight the forestay and shrouds are, it must firstly make the rig stable enough to sail in what are still very oscillating conditions, and then take up the forestay sag enough for the wind strenght. Generally on most boats these happen long before it bends the topp of the mast and opens the leech of the main up.

In the course of a race then, you can indeed employ a combination of low/fast sail settings and active sailing, and change between the modes as the angle or critical size varies for the day. A lot can be done with the running rigging to shift gears, or rather make for one modus being chosen, even for very short time spans or even just luffing over a single seventh or rogue wave for the day.