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By Airwaves writer Joe Cooper
I have previously suggested that sailing and sailboat racing in particular is a leadership and management exercise.
Part I: SAILBOAT RACING IS A MANAGEMENT EXERCISE  
Part II: Team Building
A good definition of these two fields is ‘giving the team the tools to do their job, to best advantage’. When we go racing we have a pretty well known list of mechanical things to do in advance: good hardware, nice strings, good sails, nice blocks, nice bottom and so on.
The next and I would argue one of the most important tools team members need is confidence. When people are confident in themselves and with their teammates, the TEAM can perform at higher levels. One of the biggest elements to this confidence building is numbers of hours doing it, tiller time, practice, or in other endeavors, training.
It is unfortunate that in “yacht” racing, unlike dinghies, the idea of practice is not so well grounded, but even a modest schedule, if done properly will be a more than most other boats are doing. Frankly I have not heard of any Corinthian programs that actually go out and practice on a regular basis, but if you have sailed dinghies, you know that practice is a key element.
Harkening back to the professional sports team or military elites analogy, practice is a high level asset for success. But the planning and drive needs to come from the top. The ‘buy in’ when building the team needs to articulate the practice schedule too. In the crew meetings goals and outcomes need to be articulated and results recorded. And practice does not mean just sailing up wind and down with nothing to go wrong. Done the right way practice can involve all manner of mishaps found on the racecourse. Crash tacks, last minute changes to the kite set from bear away to gybe set and so on. A dedicated schedule of practice does a few things.
It of course solidifies in each crew’s mind their task and timing in each evolution. It allows them get used to and to build on, each other’s shorthand voice and body language. If they are paying attention they will figure out, individually and as team members short cuts that they can use. This environment, practicing, and re-working maneuvers to be smoother and smoother, are facilitated by the yachts management, the owner. Any enterprise is a reflection of what the people at the top do and how they conduct themselves. You can tell the difference between owners who show up late and hung over versus those who are early to the boat fresh from the gym and have the days game plan mapped out. Ok there are extremes, but you get the picture.
In advance of last years Block Island Race Week, I was working with a group of people committed to Race Week but with varying sailing skills including a couple of rank novices.  I had earlier on discussed with the owners the idea of leadership, much as I have written about previously. The owners, being successful in their business embraced this idea early on and were very active in the inclusion and team tasks aspect of my suggestions. After quite a few hours over several weekends we got to the point where everyone knew what was required in the half a dozen basic maneuvers.
One weekend I brought down a set of marks and we set short W/L course or starting lines just off the harbor. Here for a few weekends we practiced starts, mark rounding’s, starting from a dead stop, turning the boat at dead stop and so on. We rotated different people to each position so that each team member got to learn a bit more about the overall process, understand what the ‘other’ guy was responsible for and in particular the relation ship to the various tasks they would do, as seen by the crew holding to the other end of the line as it were. The increase in confidence in each crewmember, and the individuals as a team as these trainings progressed was palpable. The practice sessions were scheduled so that the crew could get experience not only with the gear but working with the team also within themselves. Regardless what you are doing, confidence is a critical element for success. This is more important if the crew novices or lesser skilled members, who will naturally be nervous for all sorts of reasons.
The first day with the marks I set up a starting line for the first time. I outlined the basics and instructed the tactician, the owner in this case, to position the bow of the boat on the weather end of the line going full speed when the buzzers sounded. For purpose of expediency I used a three-minute count down. We fired of into the first sequence and I sat back and watched. Mind you these guys had never raced let alone contended a start, even by themselves as we were doing.
Within 30 seconds it was clear to me they would not be in the same county as the starting line at the gun. At one minute in, the tactician looked at me with a ‘is this OK’ kind of look. At 90 seconds his face was longer and at a minute to go he said ‘this is a complete screwed up isn’t it…’? No problem.
We stopped and broke down the process. By the end of that afternoon and perhaps 15 starts, they were hitting the line as requested, windward, middle and leeward ends and were even over once. In between starts we would debrief, answer questions from the crew, review video I would shoot and continue the circle of fine-tuning. Making 15 starts would commonly take an entire weekend or two for a keen program maybe in a usual weekend or “Race Week”  regatta. For some boats it might be an entire summer of starts. Imagine if your program spent four hours one day JUST doing starts?
After the last day of racing at Block Island I met up with the team and inquired as to how their race had gone. The owners, and the crew were ablaze with satisfaction and joy. They proceeded to tell me about their last start. Full speed, on the line, clear air all around AND the rest of their fleet two boat lengths astern. They were SO pumped and attributed that start without doubt, to the practice. This success was made all the more sweet because they had a mechanical breakdown prior to the start, the repair of which cut into their “normal” pre start routine. But because of the practice they were able to get back in the game post haste resulting in the start they described.
If the boat has speed and you go the right way, the only other opportunity to go slow is going around the corners. This includes approaching rounding and exiting. In other words, setting up the kite, hoist or drop, calling the hoist or drop and making sure the boat keeps fast, smooth and free of fouls. In hot and heavy one design racing of course there can be several, big and expensive sail boats with 10 people on them all trying to get around a mark at once, more or less. Such close quarters activity renders the ‘usual’ practice smooth roundings less beneficial-pretty much any sailor can get a kite up and down with no pressure. The way our minds process such high tension and three dimensional activity is of course very different, as anyone who has been thru a mark rounding protest can attest. The more times the crew can experience such “pressure” the less the outside noise, yelling and so on affects their own performance.
A sea story: After a year of sailing the 12 meter Australia with interminable practice and several rounds of finals, we finally go up against Freedom in the first race of the America’s Cup Challenge in Sept. 1980. The conditions in the starting area bore little resemblance to the conditions in all the other starts we had contended. The chop from the spectator boats messed up our performance calculations and the roar of helicopters made any verbal communication impossible. But since we had so much practice time together it was pretty clear to everyone what was needed at any evolution, and they come thick and fast in this level of racing.
In ’83, Australia 2 had the wing keel and related ruckus, but the driving force behind the entire program was Warren Jones, the general manager. The boys had all the mechanical tools they needed, but Jones’y was the guy in running gear first out the front door of the house for the mornings exercise. Leadership by leading cannot be underestimated in any enterprise, and sailboat racing is a perfect venue for such efforts.