Race 7 - Day 16
Crew Diary - Race 7 Day 16
15 February

Becoming a High-Performing Team

As we head west on our final approach to Ha Long Bay, I find myself observing our team from the helm as they execute an efficient and calm reef of the mainsail – an evolution that has us reduce the size of the mainsail exposed to the wind.

Just a few weeks ago as we waited out a cyclone in Airlie Beach, half of our crew were new joiners to the boat. Now, other than the brightness of their Musto gear, you’d be hard-pressed to identify the new joiners from those in the middle of their round the world journey.

How does this happen?

We’ve learned a lot about integrating new crew members and helping them translate their training into performance under whatever conditions we face within the race. Some of the key strategies include:

• Pre-race ‘all hands’ crew meeting where we share our key learnings.
• Pre-race watch meetings – helping set expectations for everyone on the watch.
• In the pre-race and early on-water stages of the race,
• We do a detailed review of each step in the proposed evolution before we begin.
• We do a phase-by-phase (prep-execution-close) review of each role through the evolution.
• We identify a single voice leading the evolution.
• We debrief after an evolution, focusing on how we can get better.

And for helming the boat, which for most is a very steep learning curve from exposure during training, we focus on partnering up experienced crew with new joiners in pretty much all conditions.

Beyond all of these strategies, I think the key to our improvement has been an approach that puts as little emphasis on being new or being experienced. We all benefit from these strategies, helping all of us to get better.

On on

Andrew Moss