Training Blog

As I previously rambled, we have just returned from sailing around the Northern Ionian in Greece. For anyone interested we used Kiracoulis Yachting and chose a Gibsea 37 for six of us – two adults and four children. I thought I´d share the leadership experience…
 
Firstly, what can go wrong when you are in a 37´ space with nowhere to go? Well, where do you start? Clearly, most of activity in sailing is time driven e.g. if we don´t tack NOW we will be in that fishing net or if you don´t get those ropes organised well will look very stupid trying to moor a boat stern to a quayside without a stern line! Equally, swift action is paramount for safety, especially in rougher seas. We sailed in everything from a force 1 to a force 6, the latter creating quite a sea.
 
I started by establising some clear lines of authority. I was overal skipper and whatever I said went, regardless of opinion at the time, although I was always happy to discuss courses of action post event. Although this sounds autocratic, its motivation was to ensure that in the event of an emergency or safety issue I had the maximum opportunity to ensure we ´won´. I then established roles – my wife was in charge of foredeck, mainly for anchoring and the children had a strict rota for helping out. All ´nice´ tasks such as reclaiming the anchor, helming, collecting the fenders etc were rotated through the children according to how helpful they were. We did introduce a further rule that any niggling about who´s turn, they´ve done more than me etc resulted in an automatic bar from the day´s fun tasks. This completely cut out all further moaning.

 
Overall, we felt the trip was a great example of how to utilise effective leadership, in a planned way from the outset, to ensure that a potential stressful and sometimes risky pursuit was conducted without hitch and in a fun way.