It was midnight and my finger was hovering over the transmit button on the radio microphone. For the first time in 40 years of sailing I was about to call the Coastguard for real. Suddenly without warning the static ceased and the speaker spluttering into life.

“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday…”

Someone else had beaten me to it!

We had been racing in Cork Week and were returning the boat to her base on the West Coast of Scotland. It had been a great regatta, our results weren’t outstanding but the racing against the cream of Irish sailors had been exhilarating and the craic as lively as we had been lead to believe.

Leaving Cork we’d had 20 knots of wind from the West, pushing us home at a good speed and we arrived at Dublin harbour with enough time for a meal, shower and short nap before heading back out to make the short hop back to the UK mainland.

The forecast was good, the wind had dropped and was on our nose but it was expected to swing right behind us and strengthen. A sailor’s dream, someone up there was smiling on us! We left Dublin Bay in good spirits.

The predicted increase in wind duly arrived but as we expected it to swing round, it didn’t raise cause for concern. However, as evening came, the wind continued to rise and seemed firmly stuck in the North West. The funneling effect of the North Channel whipped the Irish Sea up and the waves started to get very big.

We had too much sail up and the foresail need to come down. However, with the bow disappearing into the waves I couldn’t send a member of the crew up there. I crawled forward myself, ducking the crashing waves and hanging on tight the lifelines. After a great deal of effort, we had a small jib on – and I was soaked from head to toe! A change of clothing inside a cabin that was being tossed around like an out of control fairground ride was not easy but raised my spirits considerably. While I was below a check of the charts showed no convenient ports of refuge so we battled on up the Straenraer coast.

By now the waves were big and black, dwarfing our vessel. With breaking tops and vertical faces, she was climbing the fronts well but crashing full square into the troughs. Soon after midnight, having been at the helm for thirteen hours, I went below and left David at the wheel. For twenty minutes I lay on my bunk and tried to rest, wedged in with a duffel bag and some sails. David was doing a great job but every time we crashed into the trough my imagination ran amok. Would the mast stay up? Would the keel bolts hang onto the ton and a half of lead suspend beneath me?

And so I decided to call the Coastguard. Not a Mayday, not even the less severe PanPan. I would call and tell them where we were and what was happening. I’d let them know our status every couple of hours and I might even tell them what I thought of their weather forecast! So there I was, finger on the transmit button, Channel 16 and the VHF set on high….

“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This Coastguard calling vessel Osprey*. You have sent a distress call, please confirm that you are in distress? Over.”

And so the conversation continued, although the vagaries of VHF radio meant we could only hear one side of the interchange. I noted the position of the distressed vessel as the Coastguard read it back and was alarmed to realise it was not very distant from our own. Would we be required upon to offer assistance, just as we were thinking we might need some of your own?

The speaker continued to emit half of the exchange:

“Number of people on board?”

“Could you repeat that please?”

“Could you confirm that you have two adults and TWELVE children on board?”

Twelve children, gone midnight in a Force 8 Gale. Suddenly our situation was thrown into stark perspective. We had a sound boat, four adult crew and the Coastguard had its hands full. I put the microphone back on it’s hook.

The Coastguard dispatched a lifeboat to escort the other vessel to safe harbour. “Escort” means they weren’t sinking and we wouldn’t be needed to help. Relieved, I returned to my bunk.

Through the night, the wind slowly subsided and dawn showed us the hills on the West Coast of Scotland. By eleven we were tied up in harbour and eating a late breakfast. Over our bacon butties, we all agreed that sometimes, after a little reflection, your troubles aren’t as big as you thought they were.

* name changed to protect their dignity.

LittleBigAdventure contributed by Alan Moore.

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

Andre Gide

We were blessed with sunshine and a good amount of wind which meant the racing amongst this very competitive fleet was close, intense and exciting. In this type of event there aren’t many tactics, the short courses and identical boats mean that most races are won by making your boat go faster through the water. A 1% drop in performance will cost you 60m over the race and probably about 5-6 places.

What struck me out on the water that a small yacht like the Sonata, normally crewed by 3 or 4 people, was a perfect medium for team building.

It is a high pressure environment

Yacht racing is a bit like close quarter jousting using 23 foot, wind-powered horses on a field that flows in one direction and bounces up and down. It has a complicated set of rules for defining who has right of way that require constant reference to the wind direction and an understanding of what every boat in the near vicinity is doing.

As you approach a buoy marking a change in direction on the course, you must go around it without hitting it, reset your sails or raise new ones, find the next marker and make a tactical decision about how you are going to get to it. Meanwhile ten or more boats, many within touching distance, are trying to do the same thing as you, only faster and no-one has any brakes.

At times the boats are less than a metre apart, there is frequently a lot of shouting as people claim their right to clear water and the damage if a collision occurs can run into tens of thousands of pounds. This high pressure environment demonstrates clearly that a cool head and the knowledge that your crewmates are doing their jobs are essential.

You have a clear goal

Everybody on the team understands the goal, to win this race. Everybody on the team understands how they are going to do this, by being faster than any other boat on the water that day. Since the boats are identical, everybody understands that the only way to achieve that goal is to do their specific jobs to the best of their abilities.

Everybody has a specific role to play

On a Sonata there are four roles,

The Helmsman, who is also normally the skipper, steers the boat, makes decisions about direction and sail choice and leads the team.

The Trimmer, who handles the main sail, making tiny adjustments, frequently as small as 2-3cm, to gain the maximum amount of power out of the sails to allow the helmsman to sail his chosen course as fast as possible.

The Winch Grinder, who is the muscle on the boat, pulling in the foresail every time the boat changes direction as quickly as possible to allow the helmsman to reset his course. He raises the sails and shifts his weight around to keep the boat as flat and as fast as possible.

The Foredeck who deals with anything that happens forward of the cockpit. Launching and recovering sails, making alterations to the rigging, they also move their weight to where it is most useful.

Bigger boats may have more people on board but the roles are as clearly defined and everybody knows, at each point in the race, what they should be doing.

You have a clearly defined leader

Upon seeing a person on another boat wearing a jumper that had ‘skipper’ on the back, one of the crew quipped “If you need to wear a badge to tell the crew you are the skipper, you are doing it wrong”. Clear, defined leadership is essential at sea, where not only are races won or lost but potentially lives too. The skipper has complete control over the boat and all on-board. They oversee everything going on and make the decisions, which the crew then enact.

Responsibility is automatically devolved

The skipper doesn’t have time to think about how to get the most power out of the sails or whether a fastening is attached correctly so responsibility is automatically devolved to one of the defined crew roles. He relies on his crew to do the right thing at the right time. If the crew take up that responsibility then the boat performs well, if not, they are likely to lose.

It is obvious if you are performing as a team

Since yachts are very difficult to sail single handed, if the boat is moving, you are performing as a team. If the boat is moving fast, you are performing well as a team.

You have to work together

Once out at sea, if you don’t work as a team, you won’t get home. There is nothing like rough seas or the call of dry land and the bar to persuade people to put aside personal differences and to work together. In high pressure environments it is easy to snap at someone or to take affront at an off-hand comment but for the sake of getting home, you must learn to let it all wash over you.

You can’t get away

Confronted by a high pressure environment and uneasy team dynamic, the temptation is to walk away and not go through the difficult learning process that is team building. On a 6.9m boat, you can’t go far!

Sadly, our results in the Sonata Nationals suggests our teamwork could be better but it certainly gave me food for thought.

Photo from Roberto Venturini‘s flickr stream. Used under CC-deriv license.