Leading an Elliott 7 Crew

by Neil Primrose

An E7 owner needs leadership and management skills of a reasonably high order. These don’t just “happen”. They have to be learned somehow.

They may be adapted from the owner’s professional life; otherwise they will have to be acquired n order to campaign the boat. If they have to be acquired for this purpose, they will likely also be of benefit in the owner’s professional and/or personal life.

Sailing with a crew of four or five requires quite different management and leadership skills than the usual dinghy configuration of two people, or the usual trailable configuration of two or three. This is a team combination, as distinct from a close personal partnership. The group dynamics of a five person team need to be studied and understood.

The team needs to be carefully developed and constantly supported.

The following comments are designed to provoke further thinking and study. They’re not the complete answer to crewing an E7. Most owners probably do many of the things suggested below already without thinking too much about them. However, the quality of team work and enjoyment could possibly do it better if they thought more explicitly about the management techniques that should be employed on their boat.

Recruiting

Putting a crew of five people together to sail for a season requires planning and persistence.

The obvious start point is family and friends. This can be very rewarding. However, at some stage the owner will need to go beyond people who are personally close. This requires making contacts and actively seeking knowledge of who may be looking for a sail and who is available.

It pays to get to know your club‘s office bearers, especially the Secretary who will usually be the person who knows most about who is around and looking for a sail, or who may be moving into the area and intending to join the club. If your club has a sailing school, establish a relationship with the instructors and offer to take the graduates out sailing a few times, especially in a twilight event. This allows you to assess who you may want to invite to join your crew and allows you to develop a reputation for welcoming people into the sport.

As you become known as a “skipper of choice”, people will start to seek you out.

Becoming a “skipper of choice” is particularly important in attracting the increasing number of capable women who are taking up the sport of sailing.

For a crew of five people on the boat, you’ll need to have one or more reserves for those occasions when the regular crew can’t make it. And, given that people come and go from the sport, this means recruitment is an on-going business.

Be careful that being a part of your team isn’t a burden to people in your team – they need to feel able to come and go when they have other commitments.

Everyone is important

Sailing is our game. Although some people get far more serious about it than others, for happy club-level sailing people need to enjoy it. And it’s voluntary. We do it because we have fun. If you don’t provide an enjoyable and rewarding experience, people will go elsewhere.

Central to people enjoying their sailing with you is for them to feel valued and their skills used to achieve best performance. Mutual respect and liking are essential.

If someone is damaging the good spirit of the team, or of individual members of the team, they need to be counselled by the owner. If that isn’t effective, they may have to be “moved on”.

Everyone’s skills are different – as are peoples’ level of commitment. Most people want to contribute in some way to the common effort. Few enjoy being dictated to and treated as if they have no ideas to contribute. This means the owner needs to be perceptive about what input the people in the crew want to make to how the team operates and to give constant attention to giving them opportunity to contribute.

The contributions that members of the team can make will vary from ideas shared over a drink about how to support one another better or do things more quickly / efficiently, to providing information about wind, waves or what other boats are doing on the race course. All contributions should be encouraged, but there also needs to be understandings developed about the appropriate times and places for that information.

Different leadership styles

Leadership styles on a boat vary constantly from servant leadership to extremely directive, depending on the circumstances. The skipper and the crew need to have talked about this well before the warning signal for the race.

People want to spend their leisure time in a well organised and a carefully structured environment.

Individual preferences vary enormously, but every leader needs to be wise enough to apply the right style at the right time. Likewise, there is a skill of “followership” that needs to be built up among the crew to know what style is appropriate to different situations and how to respond to it. For further information see the section “Leadership Styles” at www.primrosesolutions.com.au.

Agreeing the work flow

Most people want a well organised work place and an effective structure to work within. Few people enjoy chaos. Even fewer want to waste time in confusion.

A relaxed and effective crew combination requires a lot of thought about how four or five people can work effectively in the relatively confined space of an E7 without falling over one another and getting frustrated. This needs input from all the crew. It’s then important to write it down. This makes it easy to teach to newcomers and is also the basis for continuing to improve it with experience.

The work flow used on Huntress for setting, gybing and dropping spinnakers is attached at the end of this article to give an idea of what should be a normal part of team management.

Training

The race is not a good place for learning. With all its focus on doing well and the stress of achieving, this is not the right place for pulling a manoeuvre apart into its component elements and experimenting with different ways of how to do it. Nor is it a sufficiently relaxing environment to try new ideas.

Owners who understand the importance of their crews feeling confident and fulfilled know that time for training is critical to people enjoying their sport. “Mucking about in boats” can be very enjoyable, as well as a good place to learn.

Continual improvement

Most people get a kick out of improving. So leading a team includes setting goals and intermediate improvement points that people can feel good about.

The owner needs to be careful to set small increments for improvement on a week by week basis, so every member of the team can see progress. Race results will be the primary measure, but be careful to emphasise long term improvement, not impatient about the results of any one event.

Celebrating

The bad things are easier to believe than the good things. Ten good things get lost in the consideration of one bad thing. So, in a context where we are constantly evaluating what needs to be improved, we need to keep a clear overall perspective of the progress of that improvement. Celebrate it.

We’re not generally good at celebrating people’s successes. A good leader gives careful thought to including celebration in with the teaching and encouragement to continuous improvement.

Where to from here ?

There is a huge industry teaching management and leadership. Some clubs run courses in management and leadership of crews. Beyond the club scene there are training organisations like the Australian Institute of Management which runs courses ranging from the most basic management techniques to advanced leadership. The various TAFE Colleges also run relevant training courses. Use the internet to work our which is the best way to develop your management and leadership skills.

Setting, gybing and dropping the kite on a 3/4 run

Note:

FH = Forrard Hand
MH = Mast Hand
JH = Jib Hand
SH = Sheet Hand
Sk = Skipper

Sequence for standard leeward set/drop.

A. Setting

Problems/Issues to be resolved

1. Boat heeling and staggering in rounding the mark and settling onto new course.
2. Traffic jam of people.
3. Kite trimmer needs to be sitting on windward side deck just aft of cabin.
4. Sheets/braces/lines lying in middle of cockpit floor with people standing on them when they need to be worked.
5. Brace catching under foot of jib as kite is hoisted.
6. Pole not being squared quickly to fill kite after set.
7. Gear not set up beforehand for set/gybe/drop sequence.

Objectives

1. Prepare boat beforehand.
2. Boat to be sailed flat up to and around mark (with crew staying on the gunnel) and sailed up onto the plane as it transitions from working, through reaching and settles onto new course with breeze three quarters of the way aft.
3. Halyard and brace to be taken on together in one smooth action and sheet cracked as soon as the halyard reaches full hoist. Time to set and drawing – 5 seconds.
4. All crew to be seated in the boat (no one to be standing as kite is set and drawing).

50 metres before the windward mark

1. FH release halyard from the shrouds, take up slack of halyard to keep forward of spreaders and free corners of kite from the fore hatch.
2. MH check the kite halyard spinlock is fully down.
3. Sk take mainsheet.
4. SH dump free part of mainsheet behind mainsheet beam to windward.
5. SH uncleat braces and lay them over the cabin coaming in front of winches for easy pick-up by MH and JH. Ensure kite halyard ready to hoist. Return to gunnel.
6. FH set pole on mast and return to gunnel.
7. In final metres before rounding the mark, SH take up some brace and sneak clew of kite out to luff of jib.
8. FH, MH, JH, SH and Sk all keep weight on gunnel and keep the boat flat in final approach to mark and during rounding.

Rounding the mark – early part

1. Sk and JH ease main and jib sheets, keep the boat flat in the turn and plane boat away from mark.

Rounding the mark – latter stage

1. JH move to leeward, sit on leeward side-deck just aft of the cabin and take brace on as kite hoisted. SH move to centre front of cockpit to hoist kite. FH, MH and Sk keep weight out on the gunnel.
2. FH hold skirt of jib tight from tack, hold pole forward and look up at kite to ensure properly hoisted with no twists.
3. SH hoist the halyard.
4. JH pull on brace to ¾ position and cleat the brace.
5. MH come aft, take kite sheet and sit on windward side of cockpit. Use leeward winch for sheet, if needed.
6. Note:
1. 21 to 24 to be done simultaneously. Delay filling the kite to full weight at 25 until halyard fully up.
2. If halyard not completely up, SH and FH grind up on leeward winch.

Settling down on the new course

1. SH release jib halyard (for #1 jib only). JH ensure jib sheets are uncleated.
2. FH take jib down and push it forward. Don’t strap it.
3. FH come back to cabin top and fine-tune height of pole with the topper. Release cunningham line (but not mainsail foot for ¾ run.
4. SH move to cabin top and clean up kite halyard ready for drop. Be ready to move weight around as necessary.
5. 32. JH ease both tweakers about ½ metre.
6. FH and SH call the gusts.

When setting shy, use same procedure, except that:

1. JH stand in companion-way, put brace around windward winch and cleat brace off at winch cleat. Get it on early and keep it off the forestay.
2. JH get back on the windward side-deck in front of MH for weight and in order to grind the brace on if needed to get pole off the forestay.
3. MH leave sheet off the leeward winch initially to keep clear for SH and FH if halyard needs to be ground up.
4. SH come back to the windward side-deck and take mainsheet.
5. FH ease cunningham and the main foot for cross-wind power.
6. Crew further aft to get the bow up.
7. Windward tweaker on hard and leeward tweaker released by SH.

B. Gybing

Problems/Issues to be resolved

1. Spinnaker collapsing during the gybe.
2. Tangle of ropes on cockpit floor getting trodden on and delaying setting.
3. Pole not going cleanly onto mast at completion of gybe.

Objectives

1. Keep the cockpit as clean of lines as possible.
2. Prepare the boat beforehand.
3. In light and moderate breeze, hold boom in centreline as spinnaker swung across to keep it filling.
4. Give enough new brace to allow pole to be pushed out initially forward of ¾ setting.

Preparation

1. JH clean up cockpit - toss loose sheets/braces/lines into cabin.
2. JH tighten both tweakers.
3. FH loosen pole downhaul and move to leeward at mast.
4. SH on cabin top help with gathering brace / assist with pole and downhaul.
5. JH hand brace to MH and move aft of the mainsheet beam.
6. MH stand in centre front of cockpit and float the sail through the gybe.

At the gybe

1. At commencement of the turn, FH gybe the pole and push ¼ forward.
2. Simultaneously, JH gybe the main.
3. JH move forward of mainsheet beam to new leeward position and take the brace from MH.
4. MH take up new sheeting position to windward.
5. When pole angle set, JH ease tweakers about ½ metre.

C. Dropping

Problems to be resolved

1. 1Difficulty for FH in getting hold of the skirt of the sail.
2. Tail of kite halyard tangling.
3. Brace dropping under the bow.
4. Kite being packed away twisted for next set.

Preparation

1. FH set the cunningham line (and main foot where necessary) for working.
2. SH stand in centre front cockpit and hoist the jib halyard and sort out the loose jib sheets.
3. SH flick the kite halyard over the lee side and check it is clear.
4. SH set the vang and centre the mainsheet traveller.
5. JH let the leeward tweaker right off and windward tweaker right on.
6. FH go forward to lee rail by the shroud.

Coming into the leeward mark

1. JH ease pole forward to just off the forestay and re-cleat it.
2. SH ease the kite halyard part way (about 2 metres) to collapse the sail.
3. MH pull the sheet on hard (to drag the skirt of the kite close to the lee side of the jib).
1. Note: Steps 1 to 3 to be done simultaneously in one fluid motion.
4. FH grab the skirt of the kite from under the jib and drag leech of sail down into the fore hatch. Give clear commands to release sheet, halyard and brace as needed.
5. MH release sheet immediately FH has hold of the sail.
6. SH release halyard. Control halyard in early part of drop to prevent dropping the kite into the water.
7. JH release brace when sail is about half way down.
8. MH go forward and take pole down once clew of sail is retrieved from pole (don’t take it down too early).
9. JH draw brace on as pole comes aft to keep brace from going under the bow.
10. SH and JH return to positions for windward leg.

Turning around the mark

1. SH take on mainsheet as boat turns. Delay to keep slight heel and use the turning moment to steer the boat onto the new course. If in close tactical situation, shoot boat into the wind on rounding to gain ground to windward.
2. JH delay drawing on the jib sheet on to avoid excessive heel and to allow the mainsail to steer the boat.

After the rounding

1. SH hand mainsheet to Sk to clean up braces and lines. Tighten leeward tweaker.
2. FH tape the kite halyard at the shroud and check that halyard spinlock is fully down.

When dropping on a shy reach, same procedure applies, except that:

1. JH leave the brace cleated (with the pole safely just off the forestay) to keep front corner of the foot under control.
2. JH stay on the windward side-deck for weight to keep boat flat.
3. SH collapse the sail by letting halyard off about half way and getting the kite into the shadow of the mainsail.
4. JH release the brace on command from FH once the sail is mostly down and under control.

Version – 01 February 2012

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