Although roll tacking, spinnaker drill and tactics are important, you won't get far unless you and your crew have common objectives. How you achieve those goals can be ironed out later; in the meantime everyone's intentions, desires and wishes need to be put on the table. Even if you discover you have conflicting objectives, all is not lost. One of you might agree to drop his objective for a year, when the situation can be reviewed again.

Before you start racing seriously both you and your potential crew will need to answer a whole range of questions:

• Do we have similar objectives?

• Are our skills complementary?

• Can we get on socially?

• Are we the right weight and shape for the boat?

• How much time can we invest? What are our differences in approach?

Why not try the awareness exercise below? By the time you have spent an hour or so on it you will probably know more about each other than you would have gleaned from months of bar-side reminiscing. Just doing the exercise is bound to produce greater alignment. It is worth repeating the process a few times during the season. I guarantee your ratings will improve - along with your results. Perhaps your list of qualities will change too. Let them. If you feel you don't know your crew well enough to do an exercise like this, you shouldn't be racing together. Sailing effectively is a far more complex business than answering a few questions. Having done a little exercise to raise your awareness, let's get back to those six key questions I listed earlier.

1. Do we have similar objectives?

We're talking here about long-term objectives, such as winning a championship. You need first to define your goal, then look at your respective levels of commitment to it. You should be willing to talk for hours about this. If you find you have different objectives don't gloss over the fact. Be honest with each other about your doubts about each other, and bear in mind that it's impossible to persuade someone to change an objective. Simply talking about your differences may well lead to alignment, or at least to someone suspending his or her objective till later. Often you will not have seen the person clearly; you may have heard that he is difficult to sail with, projected that image onto him, then disliked the way he behaves. He may in fact be a joy to sail with provided he can find a helmsman as committed as he is himself.

2. Are our skills complementary?

A slightly modified version of the awareness exercise might help here. List the things you're good at, then the things you're bad at. Rate yourself out of ten on each, then get your crew to rate you. Meanwhile he can be drawing up his own list, and you can rate him on it. Lots can come of this. For one thing, it is important for you to evaluate your own skills. Furthermore, by comparing scores you may find that the image you project is quite different: 'You gave me a 9 for spinnaker work but I only gave myself a 6 - why do you think I'm so good? Provided you have good communication there need be no charge in this. And by acknowledging your weakness, the other person is far more likely to help. If your friend is a little unsure of his spinnaker handling, perhaps you could give him a hand to set up the sheet and guy. If you have a tendency to throw away the start because you get neurotic, perhaps he can help you to focus your attention and to calm down at critical moments. In any case, if someone has admitted he's bad at, say, spotting windshifts it comes as no surprise later when he doesn't spot them. And no blame can be thrown, either. Sometimes you find that somebody is good at one thing, but wants to do another. If the crew has a desire to do the tuning, let him do it! 'OK, while I'm on boatspeed you tweak the rig. We'll try that in the next practice session and for the first race, and monitor it carefully. But let's agree now to change the arrangement after the race if need be.' Either he'll become good at tuning, or he'll find he hasn't a clue and will stop the stream of 'helpful' suggestions. Whatever happens the boat will gain.

3. Can we get on socially?

Are you going to share a room on the circuit for cheapness? Are you going to drink in the evenings at regattas? Different people have different viewpoints. None is right or wrong; the important thing is that your views are aired. Being irritated by someone's personal habits is going to get in the way, both socially and when you're sailing. You can either say something (which gives him the option of changing the habit) or learn to accept his habits for the sake of getting the best crewman going. That choice is yours. Either 1way, be clear about your choice and don't simply say nothing and fume. But if you are going to discuss the matter, first put yourself in his shoes. In what way would you like to be told about your pet mannerism? That's probably the best way to tell him.

4. Are we the right shape and weight for the boat?

You're unlikely to be successful in a Finn if you weigh 1401bs, or do well as a crew in a 470 if you weigh 200lbs. So either find a boat you can sail well together, or find a crew who fits your boat.

5. How much time can we invest?

Obviously you need general agreement on the amount of time you plan to spend training, working on the boat and racing. Some aspects will be more important to one person; if you want the boat immaculate, make it your job and release your crew from feeling guilty about it. He can reciprocate by being responsible for something else.

6. What are our differences in approach?

How many boats have you seen with tense, tight-lipped crew? Each person is completely fed up with the other, but often the reason has not even been discussed, let alone resulted in an agreement. Before things get to this stage, go sailing with the objective of finding all the differences you have in approach. Air the problems, and make agreements that you can both live with. Once an agreement is made, keep to it. It is vital that you make an agreement you can keep - if you don't really mean to stick to it, if you don't recognise its value, if you're only saying yes because it says you should in this nice book, forget it. If you can agree you will be a much happier crew. If you've both agreed that one of you is going to be boss today for example, and that person makes a wrong decision, the responsibility is shared. I'm very hopeful that you will be able to build a good relationship in (and even out of) the boat. But what if it doesn't work? If you established an honest relationship right at the beginning (and discussed the possibility of breaking up), then dissolving the partnership shouldn't be too much to bear. You could give yourselves six more races, and then re-evaluate the situation, but there's certainly no point in going on with something that doesn't work.

Yacht crews

Much of the foregoing applies equally well to the large crews of big boats. However, with more people in the crew there are obviously a number of additional factors to consider, and it is not my purpose to go into them all here. It could indeed be the subject of a whole book. I will nevertheless briefly describe one theory of group dynamics that I feel is especially appropriate to large yacht crews. When any group is being formed, be it a nation, a business, a community or a sports team, it will display certain characteristics that can be divided into three distinct stages. The shift from one stage to the next is not sudden or clearly defined and, unfortunately, the third stage is a relatively rare occurrence unless the group has been willing to use specific psycho therapeutic techniques to achieve that stage. The benefits of reaching it are beyond anything one might expect but I doubt if many readers will know of a sailing crew who have achieved it.

The first stage is called inclusion . This is the time during which the predominant question in the crew member's mind is 'Do I belong here?' or 'Do I feel included?' Crew members will be a little withdrawn and tentative. This is in contrast to the second stage, known as the control stage in which many members' behaviour will be distinctly assertive. It is the stage in which the pecking order is established. Each member is looking to see where he fits, but is also flexing his muscles to establish his power in the group. Inevitably there is a certain amount of interpersonal competitiveness within the crew which wastes much of the energy and attention which would otherwise be spent on getting the job done. This is, I suggest, where most crews are most of the time.

Only rarely do crews achieve the third stage which is the co operation stage. If they do reach it the crew members voluntarily set aside their individual agendas to co-operate in achieving a common goal. The weaker members are supported when they fail, rather than rubbished which is what happens in the control stage. Trust between members is very high and a genuine affection between them develop. The focused attention of such a crew towards a clearly specified objective, such as a race, a championship or even the America's Cup, is fairly unbeatable. It is a pity that, in spite of the vast amounts of money some people are willing to pour into the boats and latest equipment at this level of sailing, they rarely recognise the value of getting a well matched crew together

It is not difficult, though to do it thoroughly would demand the willingness of the crew to participate with sincerity, and the services of an experienced facilitator. Since such people are not usually to be found at the bar of the yacht club, try applying the techniques described in the shaded sections of this chapter. The imagery exercise for co-operation delves a little way into the wisdom of your subconscious mind - your intuition. This is an invaluable resource which we rarely use, or even experience other than as an occasional spontaneous hunch. By being willing to set aside a little time - and suspending the mental chatter - the intuition can be evoked more or less to order.

You will never know its value if you don't try it. If it does provide some useful answers for you, and it will, there is no limit to the other sailing and life situations to which you might apply this simple technique. Each of the techniques described in this crew section demonstrate how you can become your own teacher if you trust that we all have a wellspring of inner wisdom. This art of self-coaching can be applied to evoke positive qualities or to eliminate negative ones in all the circumstances described throughout this book. You will have noticed that they all boil down to ways of raising your awareness of two vitl questions: 'What is happening?' and 'What do I want?'

sailpower 2000