Sailboat Racing: Complete Campaign Guide and Training Program
If you like sailboat racing, whatever your main goal may be, it lies on the path that leads to complete mastery.
The basic structure captured in this template is tried and tested: it works for Olympic athletes and beginners alike. Take a few moments to have a look around it: check out how we have broken down all the major goals into subgoals and read the detailed Notes on each.
Set your own long-term and short-term goals, define specific action plans in each area and track your progress as you go. Review frequently: update your priorities and adapt as circumstances change.
Goal setting
Think about your long-term sailing goal, describe it in positive, inspirational terms. With the talent, time and money you bring to the game, you want to achieve as much as possible, whether you are aiming for an Olympic medal or the club championship.
Enter your main goal in this central circle by editing the text at the top of this panel. The building blocks in successful sailing are always the same, and they appear here as the 6 innermost 'Level 1' subgoals.
Three of these are about arriving at the starting line in the best possible shape:
- Complete Logistics
- Finance the Campaign
- Optimize Gear
These goals are all about preparation. Decide what you need to do in each area and how you are going to do it. You can work all by yourself or enlist other team members, friends or family to help. If you have the budget, you can even hire people to help in the organization or in specific areas.
The other three also require help; the difference is that once the starting gun is fired you (and your crew) are on your own. These are the core goals for maximising your performance on the water:
- Perfect Boathandling
- Sail the Best Course
- Be Fit
You might want to add or delete some lower level subgoals (or change their importance) to suit your particular class or personal goals.
A short note about Time:
The importance of any goal can only be set in relation to a given timeframe. Bear that in mind when you define the relative importances. The timeframe might be a month, a year or a full 4 year campaign.
Some days you might focus on only one goal: that will bring some progress in that area, but it does not change its importance in the overall timeframe. Setting the importances and being able to see them at all times will give you peace of mind and prevent you being overwhelmed by the complexity of the challenge.
Working towards your goals
We like to divide work up into four areas:
Collecting work
Planning work
Doing planned work
Doing work as it comes along
Goalscape helps you directly with 1, 2 and 3. Your timeframes should be related to the periods when you are doing planned work. We think two to four weeks are good timeframes to execute and evaluate. If you make them longer your plan might fall apart; if you make them shorter you might spend too much of that time in planning.
Having a work plan also helps you to deal with 4: you can see immediately whether you can fit in any new tasks – and if so, when. This protects you from the 'tyranny of the urgent' and its distortion of priorities.
Metrics
You must be as specific as possible when you describe your goals: you need to know when you have achieved them! Decide how you are going to measure your progress in every area: for some goals (like Budget and Fitness) this is quite easy; for others (like boathandling skills and gear tests) you will have to be subjective and imaginative, especially in areas where you can only compare your performance to others.
Think too about defining some milestones along the way – and how you are going to celebrate passing them. In a long campaign this really helps to keep you motivated, especially at top level where there may be long gaps between regatta victories.
Using this template
To use this template for your own sailing campaign:
- Rename this central goal to reflect your Main Goal: make it inspirational!
- Go through each subgoal and update them with your specific goals
- Adjust the Importance of Subgoals by dragging their borders or sliders
- Define success criteria in each goal (quantitative our qualitative) and write them in the Notes
- Mark your current state using the Progress sliders in the outermost goals.
(Hint: use 'Center On' to zoom in on a specific goal like Boat handling).
Enter some progress in a few bottom-level subgoals and see how it reflects upwards into the parent goals. Play with the sliders and watch what happens.
Of course this is only a sailing goalscape. Even if you are a full time professional sailor, there are other areas in your life where you have to spend some time. Many people find it very useful to build a 'Life' goalscape to capture everything they have to do in one central place. If you choose to do so, you can copy this entire model into your Life goalscape as one of your major subgoals (along with your goals for Work, Family, etc).