Putting it together

We have all been impressed by watching a racing yacht creaming around the top mark with the crew working in harmony. The spinnaker snakes up and bursts open. The headsail comes down. The boat settles quickly and gets on with the race at hand. A tight synchronised crew is probably a boats biggest asset. A tardy one its biggest liability!

Getting a successful crew makeup, it takes time and patience. Last edition I wrote about how hard it is to get crew, let along top crew. It is a lengthy process from simply getting a group of people on a boat to making them a competent crew. But one that can be incredibly rewarding!

Develop crew tolerantly

The reason your new crewmember has joined you is a desire to go sailing, to learn a new activity and to have fun. The owner and existing crew members need to keep this in mind at all times. Keep your sailing upbeat and enjoyable. It is not always idyllic out on the water but even a bleak winter’s afternoon can be a lot of fun and provide great post race anecdotes.

Right from the first day go through the setting up of the boat, do everything with the new guys. Introduce them and show them the protocol, spinnakers packed, sheets and braces run, water bottles etc. Don’t let them stand around like a fifth wheel, looking and feeling awkward. They are there because they want to learn.

When starting off from scratch take a little time to explain things. Invariably the novice crew will be given the more basic and menial of tasks, even so take the time to give details what piece they are playing in the manoeuvre. Don’t let the topping lift just be a line that disappears into the mass of ropes around the mast that they haul on until the black mark appears. Explain that it hoists the pole which is an integral part of setting the spinnaker. By taking this approach they will become aware of the other factors in the spinnaker hoist. This will broaden their awareness and make the natural transition to more complicated tasks a lot easier. A few pedestrian spinnaker sets in the learning process will be repaid multi fold in the long haul. In terms of crew work speed comes with competence not haste.

Educate

As an experienced sailor you have a responsibility to guide your charges into the sport of sailing. Knowledge is the best resource you can have. Have a cockpit chat after the race going through the day and what happened, highlight the positives and address the negatives in a genial manner.

Set up a crew email list and encourage your crew to learn. Send them articles on sail trim, rules and boat handling. Encourage them to attend yacht club organised events. A lot of greenhorns will get benefit from learn to sail programmes. Most yacht clubs will run evening classes on radio licensing, navigation and first aid. All good life skills!

If you can organising some training sessions on an evening or pre-race, take it slowly and let the competence build, teach them one way to drop a spinnaker. Once they have mastered that start bringing in the variations.

Mentoring

Get your practiced crew to work with the newies, in a typical yacht crew there are a lot of the members that work as a team within a team.

The helm and the mainsheet hand, they work very closely together and constantly interact. It is imperative that a novice steerer have a veteran sailor on the main to guide him and coach him, making him aware of likely scenarios. Alternatively a good helm can help a relative newcomer on the mainsheet through slowly coaching him on what is required to do the job at hand. A big part of the role is assessing the priorities and the helm is in an ideal spot right beside him, plus the sheeting of the mainsail will have direct impact on his steering so his immediate input is crucial.

Trimmers who are usually fairly adept sailors can be placed with the unproven hand as their tailer /grinder to assist them. Once again it is an ideal mentoring situation. He can run through the role he needs to complement his trimming. The novice tailer will quickly pick up the requirements and timing of the mechanical process of tacking. A few quiet words on the rail about the subtleties of jib and spinnaker trim followed up by visual observation will go a long way toward enhancing his learning curve.

Similarly running the pit usually requires a second person; a lot goes on with each manoeuvre. There are sails to be raised and lowered, spinnakers to be retrieved and packed and all the while the trimmers are encroaching on your space. Once again a tight relationship is required. Whilst the pit revolves around perfunctory roles it is important to have a strong sense of priorities as every member of the crew wants their particular task attended to. A newcomer would be overwhelmed left to his own devices.

On the bow of the boat we need to have a solid bow person but coupling them with a lesser sailor on the mast is very viable as a teaching tool. The mast man as well as hauling up the halyards also serves as a ‘through” person for the bow, linking him with the rest of the boat. Working behind him relaying sails, halyards, line etc. He will quickly become part of the bow fraternity.

Appropriate crew

One area that is important in placing your crew is getting them into a role that will suit their personality and physicality. It would be foolhardy to have a big heavy footed bloke pigeonholed as a new bow person or a person that struggles a bit with comprehension working the pit. Find out why they want to go sailing, fun, social interaction or competition. This will have a bearing on their mindset. Their level of enthusiasm will usually dictate if they want to practise or race hard. It would be ideal to gather a group with similar goals and expectations to yourself.

So when you get your new crew aboard, be patient give them time to learn. One of the key indicators to success is keeping a regular crew. Having the same crew each week will lead to cohesion and confidence which will then lead to initiative. If people are having fun they will keep coming back. So treat them well.

Whenever I wander through a yacht club bar post race it is interesting to note all the crew shirts in clusters, a sure sign that a crew has had a good day.