What a long, strange trip it’s been.
February 17, 2010
St. Pete NOOD Regatta
After 47 days on the road; a trip of racing, teaching, coaching, team building and more is over. For at least three days. I am back off to the British Virgin Islands on Friday. No rest for the wicked.
Most recently I coached and raced in the 2010 St. Petersburg NOOD Regatta. This is one of my favorite events because of the venue and because I think the NOOD series is well managed. Sure, you can gripe about a few things; but on the whole these are some of the best events in the country.
Over the next few days I’ll be posting thoughts and commentary about lessons learned at this event. These events are so much fun and challenging because as a coach I am trying to balance my need to both teach my clients new skills and coach my clients’ skill to a higher level, and then try to compete. That is no easy task when there are more than a dozen other boats trying to beat you on the race course, and you just met your team a few days before. But we try to cover all that.
Every time I am reminded of the fact that it is exceedingly hard to do all that in the heat of battle. But, at the same time there are no other programs, that I do, where clients get that full excitement and experience. I think it comes down to being able to articulate exactly what are reasonable expectations for each event and each client. That clients can expect to improve every day and learn experientially. I guess what I am saying is; we put learning first.
On top of all that, I like to think of the final debrief I do with my clients as the start of our racing relationships rather than the end. So I write. I write down my lessons learned, what I think they team improved on and areas where I think they can improve. Here is the first email to my St. Pete team, taken from an email sent to my them this morning:
Well the aches and pains are really starting to set in. And the “I wish I was still racing” blues are definitely in full effect.
One of the first things I like to do after these events is review the pictures that the photographers take. First it is fun, but second there are lots of analysis that we can do about sail shapes, body weight positioning and more. Here is the link to Tim Wilkes’ site that has several pics of our boat from the St. Petersburg NOOD regatta. Fortunately, there is a series of images from one of the upwind legs with Christe (a good boat to gauge off of). There is also a decent series of our lighter air downwind set up on Day Two.
Take a look and let me know if you see anything interesting. I know I did. There are some pretty neat shots there, and Tim is a great guy. So buy a pic while you are at it.
Much much much more to come.
kb
You’re sick of hangin’ around and you’d like to travel;
Get tired of travelin’ and you want to settle down.
I guess they can’t revoke your soul for tryin’,
Get out of the door and light out and look all around.
Sometimes the light’s all shinin’ on me;
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me, What a long, strange trip it’s been.
Truckin’, I’m a goin’ home. Whoa whoa baby, back where I belong,
Back home, sit down and patch my bones, and get back truckin’ on.
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I am the owner of Gale Force Sailing and write about all things related to coaching, instruction and team building. contact me>>
