Joe Glanfield gave a talk at the Dinghy Show recently, talking about the subtle art of good communication in racing dinghies. This was a talk I really wanted to see but failed to because of the usual problem of getting carried away yakking to old friends that I bumped into around the Show. So I gave Joe a call to find out what I'd missed. Just in case you didn't know, he and helmsman Nick Rogers won the Silver medal at the Olympics two years ago in Athens, having so painfully and narrowly missed a Bronze in Sydney four years earlier.

Joe kicks off with a fundamental observation about sailing, one of those obvious-now-you-mention-it things. "The main point is understanding the sport, and coming to terms with the type of sport you're in," he says. "In sailing we have a stupid number of variables to control, which is complicated by the fact they change every day - the weather, the size of fleet, size of course, everything is different from one day to the next.

"So my first point is that in doublehanded boats, the roles of helm and crew need to be split enough to cover those variables. For example, if there is any discussion between the crew, can you still cover the variables? And on short courses is there time for a committee meeting or do you delegate the decision making and move on? I would say as much as possible it's better to have separate roles."

This is certainly the way that Nick and Joe operate, and have done since they teamed up in 1997. "Nick and I settled down quite naturally straight away," explains Joe. "That was partly to do with our strengths and the sort of people we are. Nick had a very strong view about the sort of crew he needed, probably based on what he had learned from John Merricks and Ian Walker [who won the 470 Silver in the 1996 Olympics]. Nick said: ‘I need a crew that can allow me to sail the boat fast and take that off my shoulders, to allow me to concentrate on my helming and getting the settings right.' So he was responsible for boatspeed and my job was tactics. That suited me fine. As a youth sailor I never was terribly good at all the settings, my strength is much more looking at the tactics and getting an overview of the race course."

As a youth sailor Joe had a strong background in helming, winning the Cadet Nationals before deciding that crewing was his future. I was already 5 foot 11 by quite an early age. I  also lived in the same town as Stevie Morrison, who won the Cadets the year before me. He wanted to helm a 420 and I was pretty big by then so I started crewing at that point." Joe later teamed up with Graham Vials and they won the Youth Nationals before going on to take the Silver Medal in the 1997 ISAF Youth Worlds. The rest is 470 history.

But having taken the tactical role upon himself, something that is not all that common among crews, does he believe it was important to have had that strong background in helming? "I do," he concedes, "but only because of the way we traditionally operate with helms and crews. The only reason you need that background in helming is because at youth level everything goes through the helm. If the crew was given more responsibility from an early age, you wouldn't need to."

Joe sees the bias towards the skipper in many aspects of sailing. "I think it's endemic through the sport. It's the skipper first, then there's the crew. With the ISAF World Rankings, if the helm and crew split up, the crew is dumped off the rankings and the helm keeps his position."

It's clear that Joe would like to see more equal status accorded to the crew but when pushed on the matter he admits: "If I'm completely honest it has to go one way or the other, and I would say in most boats the helm is harder to replace than the crew. I'm not naïve to that. If Nick and I went our separate ways he would probably get back up to the top of the 470 fleet quicker with a new crew than I would with a new helm, but a lot does depend on the dynamics of the partnership. Bringing stability to the team and being a good team member counts for a lot, whether you're helm or crew. And if you look at Simon Hiscocks in the 49er - he has sailed with some talented helms - but he has been the consistent force at the top of the rankings."

Joe is aware that even at Olympic level there are many different approaches to the division of labour, and his role as tactician is by no means the norm even in the 470 fleet. "I think the 470 is very split. I know a lot of our rivals operate in a different way. In some boats you have the crew doing the boat balance stuff very well, but not having a massive input tactically, leaving that to the helm."

In many conditions, particularly on a sea breeze day where the decisions come slowly and predictably, Nick and Joe see little benefit to their division of labour. On days like that they are as good as anyone, but what they really like is when it gets shifty. "Our strongest condition by a long way is a very shifty, unpredictable wind. This is where our split roles come into play. There are so many controls to change in the boat that Nick can concentrate on that and I look at the intricacies of the wind conditions. OK, the wind might have headed 10 degrees, but is it going to last or is that another gust we can get if we hold on another two boatlengths? I think where some helms are missing out in these conditions is trying to do it all." Better, in Joe's view, to give the looking-around and decision-making to the crew.

Then again, Joe is exceptionally good at it. I remember talking to Chips Howarth about Nick and Joe before the Athens Games, and Chips predicting that they would win the Gold if the strong offshore Meltemi wind blew off the city. Chips had sailed a UK qualifier with Joe once and also done some coaching with the team, and rated Joe as the best windspotter he had ever encountered. For the Games, the Meltemi blew some - but not much - of the time. Primarily the 470 regatta was a light-wind affair, which was not a weakness for the team, but nor did it play to their great strength.

Joe says: "We loved the Meltemi breeze. Every time we got that we did very well. We wanted a mix of conditions, because there weren't many teams good in both. But as for sailing in the shifty stuff, I don't think all the credit is on me in reading the conditions. Nick can also sail very fast in that type of wind." What Joe rates more highly than anything from Nick, however, is his ability to place absolute trust in Joe's decision-making. "There is no debate from Nick. If I take us out on a limb away from the fleet, he'll go with it. He'll never question it. And if we round the windward mark in second to last, he never looks back. He's straight on to the downwind tactics and is focused on how many boats can we get downwind.


"One of Nick's biggest strengths is he never gets in a mood. I'm more likely to get in a mood with him!" Joe says Nick's ability to trust him come what may, is vital to his ability to perform properly. "Tactically, as soon as your confidence is hit, it's so much harder to make a good decision. It's hard not to revert to being a sheep and following the fleet. It takes all the flair away from your sailing.

"I don't think I'm alone in feeling this way. I'm a very confident person, but it doesn't take much before you can lose your confidence when making subtle tactical decisions. It's easy to lose your focus: ‘I think the wind is going to head, but I'm not sure,' and so you tack back to stay close to the fleet. If you have a first race of the day where everything goes wrong, where every decision you make loses you boats, one of the biggest skills in sailing is getting back on track and not letting it affect the rest of the day. The other people that you sail with have a big effect on how you bounce back."

How many of us allow blame to creep into the partnership when things start going wrong in a race? Joe says Nick has never allowed that to happen. "Nick has always had a philosophy, ‘For me to win I need you to win'. He wants me to be as good as I can be, and the same goes for me with him. All of this sounds like very clichéd team stuff, but it's surprising how many teams don't operate this way. As soon as the blame thing comes in, you're on a losing battle, because if you refuse to acknowledge your mistakes you can't learn from them."

 

Joe says that having ultimate faith in each other is vital to a team's success. "You've got to have mutual respect for your team mate, for their abilities and that they're doing everything possible to succeed." At Olympic level, this is vital, but in the world of club sailing and open meetings where we more often than not one team member is more accomplished and experienced than the other, how can this division of labour work? Surely it's inevitable that one sailor - more often than not the helmsman - takes the bulk of the decision making on to their shoulders?

Joe acknowledges this point. "You nearly always get one sailor who knows more. But even with an inexperienced team mate you still want them to cover as many variables as you can. The best way to do this is to look at information as facts. By this I mean asking your team mate to look around and get them to tell you what they see. For example, 20 per cent of the fleet on one side of the beat and 80 per cent on the other, is there a black cloud on one side and no cloud on the other, we are 20 degrees more headed than we were 20 minutes ago. You can quickly teach a sailor to find a layline, or to see a dark patch on the water, or to tell you which side of the course most of the fleet are going. They can take a lot off your shoulders, by simply feeding you these facts, and leaving the more experienced team member to interpret those facts."

Building up a communication process is one of the most challenging but fascinating aspects of racing boats with two or more crew. Keeping the discussion factual and keeping the emotion out of it is sometimes a hard thing to do in the heat of battle, but Nick and Joe's attitude of wanting to help each other get the best out of each other is hugely inspiring.