Newsletter - Summer 2009
The Power of Teamwork, Cowes Week 2009
Eurosaf Beneteau 40.7 European Champions
The Power of Teamwork, Cowes week 2009
Why is it that the fastest yachts are always the quiet, composed ones?
If you have never had the privilege to sail with a quiet, calm, composed crew, this should be the aspiration for us all.
Because each individual is responsible for their actions, because they are accountable for their contribution to their performance, because they are focussed on doing their job to the best of their ability, the boat sails fast.
As individuals they do not hide, nor worry about the performance of others but focus and commit fully to their personal contribution.
The reality is that the majority of yachts are not being sailed with this level of teamwork, many individuals do try and hide, keeping their heads down to prevent being shouted at. Many others are much more aware and critical of other crewmembers roles and performance than their own.
A common model of “Conscious and Unconscious Competence and Incompetence” can be used to describe the key stages crew work develops through.
Unconscious Incompetence:
This stage is often visible on the water, there is no discipline, no structure and no individual responsibility. Often this is apparent through many crewmembers all reaching at once to do one job, the sailing equivalent of elementary schoolboy football with a pack of players all swarming around the football trying to get a kick!
Another way this is visible, or often audible, is with the skipper shouting orders to the crew. No one is prepared to, or is able to, take action on their own, relying instead on one person to shout instructions to the 8, 9, 10 or more crewmembers on board.
At this stage the crew do not even realise that this is not an effective way to perform.
Conscious Incompetence:
Once the crew realise the limitations of their current behaviour and appreciate that there is a better way, there can be a real breakthrough in performance.
They realise how inefficiently they are working and are prepared to change. The key point here is the willingness to change their behaviour, changing behaviour is difficult and is often a major hurdle to success.
Conscious Competence
Once the crew does realise that there is a better, more effective way to work together, they have to consciously change behaviour. They need to develop the structure, discipline and individual responsibility that are required for really skilful and complex boat handling.
Individuals need to be given and accept responsibility for specific roles, and more importantly, given the opportunity to learn to fulfil those roles.
They need time to build into the role without fear of being shouted at, they need time to make mistakes.
Unconscious competence:
And slowly, through time, effort, focus and application a crew will move into ‘unconscious competence’. They will realise that, as a crew, they are working in harmony. That each individual is fulfilling their roles and responsibilities, that they work instinctively with one another; there are no raised voices, no panic, just clear, calm communication because they TRUST each of their colleagues to fulfil their role to the highest level.
Trusting you colleagues allows you to focus fully on your own contribution, and once you have every individual focussed entirely on maximising their individual contribution to the team, without distraction, you have a very powerful and undoubtedly, a very successful team indeed.
Cowes Week 2009
I recently moved through the first stages of this process with a crew at Cowes Week 2009, with the results reflecting the developments we made.
Our start was not ideal, meeting only 2 hours before the start of the first race, but we had the strengths of sailing a very well prepared boat and having a very talented crew.
The Beneteau 34.7, Captain Fantastic, was very well set up and had the potential to do well, our crew ranged from 16 yrs upwards and contained a remarkable depth of sailing talent and experience, from RYA youth squad members, experienced dinghy instructors, round the world racers and a very highly ranked international dinghy sailor.
It was clear from the outset that we had the potential to do well if we could gel as a team and work as a unit rather than a collection of individuals.
The first couple of days saw us exhibiting some of the classic signs of the ’unconscious incompetence’ stage, and, although the results of 13th and 17th were in the top half of the fleet of 43, they were way below our potential.
The next couple of days saw us move through the ‘consciously incompetent’ and ‘consciously competent’ stage. We started changing our behaviour, giving individual time to do their jobs and settled into a stronger structure. We were finding ourselves at the front of the fleet, until isolated mistakes cost us time and places.
The results were not yet reflecting the progress we were making as we posted another 13th and 17th.
But, slowly, we started sailing with a structure and discipline that allowed each individual to perform, and, the results at the end of the week of 4th, 8th and 2nd reflected the progress that had been made.
Yes, we had learnt a little bit more about how to get the most out of the boat, but mainly we had learnt how to get the most out of the individuals as a crew.
Please contact me for more information on developing your team at james@jdclcoaching.com
Eurosaf 40.7 European Champions
I am delighted to say that we got the bulk of the 2008 40.7 National Championship winning crew together over the weekend of 19th & 20th September to compete in the inaugural Eurosaf 40.7 National Championships.
Our score line of 1st, 1st, 1st and 3rd looked a more comfortable winning margin than it actually was and we are very happy to be "Eurosaf 40.7 European Champions"!
"Standby to Tack"
This is the first in a series of articles intended to give you some practical input to developing your manoeuvring around the racecourse. We will look at tacking, gybing, bear away sets and standard leeward mark rounding, so, lets start with tacking.
Tacking is a pretty straightforward manoeuvre that is easy to execute. Lets face it, novices can tack with some competency within their first couple of hours on the water so it shouldn’t be too difficult for experienced racing crews to get it spot on, right? Wrong.
My experience has shown that there are still a number of crews making fundamental flaws that can add up to them loosing ¼ or even ½ a boat length against a well executed tack, adding up to a considerable amount over the course of a long beat!
The overview of a tack is simple. To go from optimum close hauled course to optimum close-hauled course on the opposite tack with minimum loss of speed or ‘de-powered rig time’. However, passing through the ‘No Go Zone’ needs to be balanced with giving the trimmers sufficient time to set the sails whilst also gaining maximum ground to windward.
I still see a number of helms throwing the helm over to get into the new power zone as quickly as possible and end up shouting at the headsail trimmers for not getting the sail set quickly enough! A tack is a complex manoeuvre that requires complete coordination from the crew and a full appreciation that the overall goal is not just to get through the wind, but to loose minimum speed.
So, let’s think through an optimum tack (this assumes we have space to execute the optimum manoeuvre and is not a ‘crash tack’) and break it down into 5 phases:
- Preparation
- Entry
- Transition
- Acceleration
- Optimisation
1) Preparation.
The boat starts out on the optimum upwind course, giving the ideal blend of speed and height for the prevailing conditions and the helm and trimmers have a good handle on Target Boat Speed. This is the time for each individual to go through their role in their mind, a little mental rehearsal will help each crew member ensure that their controls are ready (winches loaded, handles in winches etc) and that they are clear on where they are putting their hands and feet. This applies to the choreography of the crew moving from rail to rail as well as the trimmers.
The tack is called for, my preference is to count down into a tack rather than the traditional “Ready about” followed by ”lee ho”. A call of “Standby to tack”, “3”, “2”, “1” “Tacking” allows each member of the crew to anchor their movements and choreography against a definite rhythm and routine. The headsail trimmer will want to come off the rail first in preparation to ‘cut’ the working sheet, whilst the others should remain on the rail and respond to the roll of the hull.
2) Entry.
The helm may bear off 1 or 2’s in coordination with the trimmers softening the sail leeches slightly; inducing a little more twist will alter the sail trim into speed mode. This will allow the hull to carry more momentum into the tack and, combined with steering a curve rather than an angle, gain more ground to windward. The middle of a tack is the only time you are actually pointing where you want to go on an upwind leg so make the most of it!
Mean time the crew remain on the rail. Depending on the size of the boat crew weight is critical to success, not only is their weight still providing power by balancing the heeling forces but coordinated movements will gain maximum steering from the hull form reducing the negative steering influence from the rudder.
A reduction of lee helm, (combined, where possible, with a hardening of the main leech) should induce the steering. This neutralising of the rudder blade will allow a smooth and efficient initiation, which will also result in a slight increase in leeward heel adding to the steering moment. The reality is that on larger yachts the main trimmer may not be able to reapply the leech tension to assist the steering, and, knowing that they will be looking for the twist to help accelerate up to target boat speed on exiting the manoeuvre they will need to prioritise for their own class.
3) Transition.
Once the steering is initiated through neutralising the helm, the headsail trimmers need to ‘cut’ the headsail at the optimum time. Too early and you miss out on the extra squeeze of power in the sails. The steering into the tack is going to give the headsail a little more apparent wind and bring the apparent slightly aft giving the sail a small lift – so use it! Releasing the headsail too late and the sail will back. This is advantageous in some classes but also can have the effect of blowing the sail too far out on the new side once the old sheet has been released. This can hinder the trimmers from getting the sail set and pulling early, negating some of the ground that could be made to windward.
The second headsail trimmer would now be in the cockpit and be starting to tail the new working headsail sheet from a position where Trim 1 is able to move cleanly from cutting the old sheet, onto the handle in the new working winch to start winding and trimming the new sail.
Coming through the main body of the tack will require some more positive steering from the helm. Much of the efficiency of the tack is pinned on the smoothness and accuracy of the steering input from the helm. It is at this stage that the rudder movement can be increased to ‘catch up’ with the sail trimmers or slowed down to give them more time to set the sail, the aim is to have the ‘foot on the accelerator’ to power out of the manoeuvre. The key is to steer a curve not an angle – think ‘S’s not ‘Z’s!
The main trimmer will be moving the traveller into it’s anticipated position and the rest of the crew will be timing their movement across the boat with the brief period of time it is flat, or waiting together to move ‘en mass’ into a roll tack, creating leeward heel before moving over the coach house roof together once the sails are set and can take advantage of additional airflow as the rig is brought back to vertical.
4) Acceleration.
The trimmers should be able to work with the timing of the helm to have the sails set in acceleration mode, slightly twisted as the boat flops onto them. The trimmers and helm listen to the call out of the boat speed as the boat accelerates, exiting the tack low and fast allows both sets of foils (sails & underwater foils) to re-attach flow, start working and generating lift.
5) Optimisation
The manoeuvre is completed with a slow ‘trim on’ in conjunction with climbing back up into height mode to hit Target Boat Speed and optimum VMG.
From the rail the crew can load the ‘lazy’ primary winch ready in anticipation of another tack.
Key Roles:
The anchor points for success and optimisation of the tack are with the following crew members:
Helm:
- Giving positive steering with minimal use of the rudder.
- Steering a smooth curve onto a new course that coordinates with the trimmers.
- Exiting the tack fast & low to engage both sets of foils before climbing onto optimum VMG.
Main:
- Identifying and calling boat speed on entry and exit of the tack,
- Easing the sheet slightly to soften the leech providing more momentum to enter the tack.
- Re-positioning the traveller for balanced, ‘speed mode’ exit of tack
- Calling boat speed through acceleration phase
- Trimming for optimum upwind VMG as helm converts speed into height and optimum upwind course.
Headsail Trimmers:
- Timing the releasing of old sail to achieve balance of maximising power & speed of transition.
- Trimming new sail to speed mode in time for boat to ‘fall’ onto it on exit of tack.
- Listening to boat speed waiting for speed build up to TBS before coordinating final trim into optimum upwind mode with helm climbing onto final course.
Other crewmembers:
- Coordinating and choreographing your movement across the decks to enhance the manoeuvre.
Drills to practice:
Step 1 – Check the components of the manoeuvre:
Choreography:
Ensure each crewmember knows his or her ‘steps’ relative to everyone else. Working and moving across the boat should be a carefully choreographed routine. If the crew are not going the same way each time, establish a routine until they do.
Steering Input:
Check the rudder input is minimal through the manoeuvre. Neutralise the helm to initiate, apply a little ‘feel’ to guide before neutralising the helm again to exit and re-establishing desired upwind feel.
Timing and coordination:
Match the steering to the trimming and match the trimming to the steering. Does the boat fall onto the newly trimmed sails on exiting the manoeuvre every single time? If not, experiment with the timing of cutting the working headsail and the timing of the steering input.
Slow and Smooth:
Focus on the steering and movement on board being slow and smooth to give you maximum momentum to windward. Steer curves, try steering stretched C’s’ and squashed C’s.
Step 2 – Build the drill into a skill, create some variety:
TBS to TBS:
Time how long it takes you to go from Target Boat speed on one tack to Target Boat speed on the other.
Rhythm Change TBS to TBS:
Change the timing of the manoeuvre by slowing or speeding the steering input whilst timing how long it takes you to go from Target Boat Speed on one tack to Target Boat Speed on the other. Challenge your trimmers to feel and work with the boat to fall onto the newly trimmed sail on each exit. Use this information to help you identify which steering input is most efficient in those conditions and build the confidence of your crew.
Step 3 – Challenge the skill.
Sail a corridor:
Use your optimum TBS to TBS timing to set a rhythm of tacks. Settle into a pattern of 8 – 10 tacks using your established TBS to TBS timing plus an extra 10 seconds (eg 60 seconds + 10), then do another sequence of 8 – 10 tack on your timing, less the 10 seconds (60 seconds).
Sail a Funnel:
Use your optimum TBS to TBS timing + 30 seconds to start an increasing rhythm of tacks, knocking 10 seconds off for each tack. For example if your TBS to TBS was 1 minute. Start off at 60 secs + 30 secs. Give your crew 90 seconds between the first and second tack, 80 to the third tack, 70 to the fourth, 60 to the fifth, 50 to the sixth, 40 to fifth and so on until the quality of the tack’s breakdown. Appreciate that you will not be able to hit TBS on each tack so work on quality of boat handling. This can be repeated at different stages of the day / season to check development, if the quality was breaking down at 50 seconds between tacks, and now it breaks down at 30 seconds progress has been made!
Sail an Hourglass:
As above, but funnelling out as well as funnelling in. For example, if the quality was breaking down on 50 seconds, aim to hit 50 second spacing and then build out to 60 second spacing, 70, 80 and back up to 90. Again repeat at suitable intervals.
No Warning Tacks / silent tacks:
Theoretically, a really well tuned in crew would be able to tack by recognising and responding to the feel of the boat and the slight changes without a noticeable drop in quality. Try tacking without any verbal communication.
Conclusion:
The perfect tack can be quite elusive and tacking is our most used manoeuvre, so put time in on the water to establish what combines to create the perfect tack on your type of boat. Once these core techniques become established in the crew, use some variety to transform movement patterns into skills, once skills are becoming established put them under pressure and challenge their skills without the performance breaking down.
Good sailing.