Want to quickly improve your regatta results? One of the best ways to do that is to develop the ability to recover from a position down in the fleet.  The best teams can turn a bad start, OCS or any other mishap into a decent finish. Instead of being stuck in the back of the fleet they seem to always find a way to advance forward. Sounds easy, right? We all know it’s not. 

How to turn that bummer of a start (everyone gets one from time to time) or boat handling screw-up into a keeper? You’ll need some skills and boat speed for sure, these can be practiced and developed over time. What you really need is the ability to focus mentally. To dig yourself out of the back and move towards a keeper finish you need to master the real mental challenge of sailing, and learn how to make lemonade out of lemons. Sailing can be an incredibly frustrating sport, learning to deal positively with the adversity that constantly gets thrown your way can really set you on the path to improving your results

Following are some ideas that I have found that can help you do just that. I’d welcome your comments at the end.  

1)    Focus on the task not the result: You’ve been improving and now some of your buddies in the fleet start telling you that your time is coming to win or place in a regatta. Of course, this makes you proud. Next time out, you visualize yourself actually picking up a trophy at the end of the event. The first start happens and in all your excitement to get a good finish, bam, you are over early. You circle back around the ends and now you are at the back of the fleet to start the first race. Your dream just went up in smoke. 

How to avoid this? Instead of dreaming of grandeur and picking up a trophy at the awards, instead start to train your mind to focus on just sailing well. Before an event, think through the reality of everything you need to do well. Get a decent start, have good steering and trim, stay in clear air and on the lifted tack, etcetera, etcetera the list is long. If you focus on doing these things well and banish thoughts of actual results your mind will calm. You can then really start to focus on what matters. 

With this mindset, when adversity strikes, you’ll already be set up to deal with it in the best possible way. You will immediately be looking at the situation from the point of doing the best you can in that moment. I can practically guarantee you an improvement.

2)    Internalize the fact that everyone racing has as much a right to a good finish as you do: Most fleets develop a pecking order of sorts. Joe usually is near the top, Jim is in the middle and Jess who is less experienced towards the back. As you get better you might find yourself thinking that some of your competitors are easy marks, you might even look at the entry list and think to yourself “I’m for sure better than Jess” I’ll probably be in front of her today”. 

From a mental control point of view this type of thinking is very dangerous. At some point or another Jess will be in front of you. In the course of a normal race she might even tack on you or take away your lane of clear air.  

When this happens, we’ve all seen very good sailors lose focus and start whining to folks like Jess incredulous that they actually would tack on them! How rude, don’t you know your place is in the back of the fleet not up here with me! If you are doing the whining in this situation you need must your focus about your fellow competitors. Everyone has the right to race and the right to do well. Instead of ranking the fleet in your head before the event try to think of the other boats as just that—other boats. This will help you deal more effectively with the folks towards the back of the pecking order and also with the folks toward the front of the order. 

This attitude will serve you well with boats ahead of you in the pecking order as well. Seeing “Joe, the current National Champion” coming towards you as “Joe just another boat” you can calm your mind and allow yourself to focus on the task at hand. 

At some point, you will be contending for a top finish in an event. There will come a time where you need a break, say maybe a cross on port tack. Respecting all your fellow competitors might find you getting that break. Think about it. 

3)    Don’t complain about your crew-after all you picked em!: Hang out on the dock or in parking lot after a day of sailing and you’ll overhear the comments. “I have no idea what our tactician was thinking, we went right on that first leg and the wind went left 30 degrees” or “Of course the wind always fills from the land at night, I have no idea what our navigator was thinking sending us offshore”. 

This talk is very negative and even more so if done during the course of a race, which it often is. Unless you are sailing singlehanded, sailing is a team sport and the best teams always work together to accomplish their goals. So, the next time you feel yourself wanting to complain about your crew to others stand in front of a mirror and complain to the only person who matters, yourself. 

Organizing a team is hard work and there is no exactly right way to do it. Chemistry and attitude can go a long way to overcoming lack of experience or skill. I’ve seen supposedly stacked teams of very successful sailors fail miserably and teams of weekend warriors beat pro teams. It all comes down to chemistry. 

Here are a few ideas you as skipper can use to get the most out of your chosen team: 

a.     Include everyone. Each person on your boat regardless of experience has a skill that can be useful to the team and your result. Figure out what that is a make it happen.

b.     Have frank debriefs on what can be done better. Go around the boat each morning and have every person think and say what they can improve on from the day before. If someone can’t answer that’s a sure sign they don’t know their role, revisit the assignment of tasks.  

c.     Do your job and then let everyone else do theirs. If you are the skipper and also the helmsman you must do your job the best you can and let your crew do theirs. Any managing or micro managing on your part is taking away from you doing your best job driving the boat fast. 

4)    Enjoy the journey: I actually hate this expression. You hear this expression “enjoy the journey” over and over again with regards to many aspects of life. To me it sometimes sounds like a free pass to accepting our own mediocrity. 

We are all on a “journey” to achieve our own goals. Whether that be winning an Olympic medal or just moving up from the back of the fleet to the middle. Without a challenge, there is no journey. Imagine how boring it would be if you went out and won every race you sailed in? It would be fun for a while and a great boost for your ego but it surely would wear off quickly. Many fleets that wither away die because the same person or small group is always winning, what’s the fun it that?  

So instead embrace the fact that you have chosen to challenge yourself to compete both mentally, physically and technically and be proud of that no matter where you are in the fleet.

I’ll leave you with a quote from the most famous animated fish of all time, Dory, “Just keep swimming”.  We can all learn from that.