Hi Team,

Well, I have finally had a look at all of your homework #2s and prepared some solutions. Firstly, thanks to everyone for getting this done.

In general your answers were good and the good news is that on the whole at least one of you had the answer I was looking for at each question, this means that as a TEAM you know what you are doing. Now the challenge is for EVERYONE to have EVERY process crystal clear in their heads.

Another comment is that I think that almost everyone, if not everyone picked up something that no-one else did. This again shows how the diverse backgrounds of this team provide great breadth to your knowledge base for this project, now we just need to share all the information and get everyone to that sold base level of knowledge I keep referring to.

My intentions were to try and highlight the key points that individuals found in each each question so that you can see who is coming up with what however I have chosen to keep it anonymous for now, you will see where I have made changes based on your comments.

Finally, these answers and procedures are meant to be a starting point, that is a basic foundation for more complex manoeuvres and higher pressure situations / short handed manoeuvres. Please do not be offended if you think that you made a valid point that was not included in the solutions, this does not mean that I disagree or disregarded it. All of these points can be discussed and practiced once we get together in October.

All the best, and make sure you get your fitness benchmarking exercise done soon!

Cheers,

Jonno

HWK#2 Answers

Bearaway

Bearaway Set

Gybe Set

Straight Drop

Here’s a link to the word document: Homework 2 – Kite Sets

Introduction

Your task is to consider the two manoeuvres in part a) and b) bellow and make corrections as best you can remember.

Once complete your results will be compiled, reviewed and used to put together an accurate crew guide that we will continually practice in Sydney at the end of the year.

When editing the steps in the processes below be sure to consider:

• Communication, what are the calls being made and by who?
• List the priority of each person involved in each step, i.e. The priority of the mastman in a spinnaker set is to get the halyard to the top of the mast as quickly as possible before the spinnaker sets
• Is the order of the tasks correct?
• Is there anything else going on that has not been mentioned?
• Add any relevant tips or tricks that you know or have learnt

Good luck, remember doing this will bring the entire crew up to a very solid base level when we arrive in Sydney in October so that we can get straight into training and maximise the benefits we can gain from three months of training there.

Question 1: make changes, additions and deletions to the following information for how to bear away a Sydney 38 from being close hauled to a reach prior to setting a kite:

Bearaway

Question 2, a): make changes, additions and deletions to the following information for how to complete a bear away set:

Bearaway Set

Question 2, b): without completing a step-by-step table for this (we will do this later), consider a gybe set, where the spinnaker is set during the bearaway that is immediately followed by a gybe, what are:

1. i. the most important actions to get done right
2. ii. the key roles on the boat to make this work
3. iii. must be done in these key roles? What is the focus of the crew in this position?

Question 3, a): make changes, additions and deletions to the following information for how to perform a straight kite drop:

Straight Drop (Forward Hatch)

Question 3, b): When should you drop the kite to windward / leeward? What changes in these situations? Should you still ‘smoke’ the brace on a tight reach when dropping the A3 back to a Jib Top? Discuss.

Jonno’s been busy pulling together some of the answers from the crew for homework 1 (tacking and gybing) – and even put in a few of his own suggestions. Have a look at the two solutions provided below.

Tacking

Gybing

A nice video of Jess and I talking about the alliance and the project thus far can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/6z8ulwr (Jess is clearly a bit more polished in front of a camera than I am!)

On a personal note, it’s been very rewarding getting to know and work with the Marketing, Communications and Business Development team in Sydney. Having the support of this team, as well as other deep skillsets across Deloitte will make an appreciable impact on the strategic objectives of this campaign.

For example, one small part of this alliance is the way we’re working hard within the team to make everything as transparent as possible. So far a few blog posts, e-mails, and homeworks have been published – but with the help of Deloitte’s Social Media team we’re looking to take that a step further with coaching videos, more updates on both facebook and twitter (from individual and team accounts), and further insights to life as part of the crew.

As such, not only will this alliance be a win/win for Jess, the team, and Deloitte – it’ll also benefit all our other stakeholders: yet to be announced sponsors (that we’re all very excited about), the sailing community, the media, and anyone else interested in the project.

- Chris Lewin

Task 1 Questions_110429

Chris even piped up – cracking a few jokes in the car journey to the hotel, which told me he could easily relate to us and I hoped the rest of the team would get the same vibe. Bad luck for him as his name joined Jess on the list to get some banter!!

After a day or two and waking up at 4am the crew finally arrived. Jess kindly took us for a crew dinner at a nearby Italian where you could certainly see some nervous faces. Of course that’s normal when joining any new team, but we’re all similar ages and we all share a passion for sailing. Conversations flowed before Mike Perham was introduced several times by Jess as ‘The 2nd’, Mikey decided to unleash the Pomm within asking about Jess’ age, which is certainly a touchy subject. Dinner became a full-time fun experience and not your average crew dinner. Both round the world sailors changed the atmosphere and from that point, everyone was super comfortable with each other, a great start to training.

The team was summoned to Deloitte offices (Chris’s proper job) for a classroom day where we met Chris again and Jonno, our other coach. Shorts and thongs were on and we were out the door, it’s safe to say everyone was in the same dress.

We then arrived to find a load of dudes in suits. One being Chris and Jonno, also smartly dressed in a boardroom I’ve only seen in the movies.

It was then everyone realised, after team building exercises, that we all shared the similar goals. Jess and the coaches had certainly done their homework on us but what about the coaches? It became clear that Chris led the current youngest team and the year I was thinking of certainly wouldn’t have impressed him… Jonno introduced himself and had some pretty high sailing credentials, a coach that I was looking forward to working with. Until he mentioned his undying love for Deloitte’s complimentary mints and I quote him…. “Once you pop, you just can’t stop”, he obviously found that in his last Christmas cracker!

So I sat there and thought – these are the coaches that are preparing us for the Rolex Sydney Hobart, one’s an office boy who likes computer databases and the others a mint addict with the worst one liner in history……

The following days were high intensity sailing and very beneficial for all, Jonno clearly wasn’t here to go cruising and told Jess to lose her ‘please and thank yous’ and she did. Tack after tack after tack, gybe after gybe and some were certainly feeling the effects. Aussie male model Sean Lindsell was first to fall but with great regret, Pommie Will was soon to follow with sore backs and biceps.

So we debriefed over dinner and Jess pulled up the matter in a jokey fashion. She turned on my typical Pommie sun burnt face along with Gen and Alex – the other girls within the team. Little did they know it was giving me added motivation, Aussie cat sailor Leigh Thorne along with Mike Perham were in my corner and before I had a chance to reply, Mike took it upon himself to throw cheesecake at Jess. After Jess had cleaned the smallest spec of cake from her face I saw a woman on a mission for revenge, although it came at my expense for my previous comments. I’m now involved in the cheese cake war, remembering the start at the airport, the car journey, Deloitte day and sailing to and from our training area I took it to the next extreme and Jess fully got some and came off worse:

We all share similar goals for this campaign and they’re goals we take seriously but as you see we’re having loads of fun along the way.

Pete Woodward.

It’s been far too long since I updated you guys about what’s been happening recently so I thought I’d get it all down in one. As the Rolex Sydney Hobart project has now been announced, we can all talk about it freely which is great as it was all a bit of hush hush leading up to the launch. The project has been a long time in the planning and it’s been fantastic to see it come together bit by bit, right from the outset back in the middle of last year.

The crew got together for a week long shake down prior to the launch which was great, as we wanted to see how the crew would gel, and what level we are at with our technical ability. Will, Pete and I arrived in Melbourne late Monday evening, with totally messed up body clocks and pretty starving too. We met up with Jess and Chris who very kindly drove us to our place and we immediately set out to hunt for some food. Our stomachs sure were very unhappy to see that everywhere was shut, and so, we raided the vending machine!! 20bucks later we were much happier!

Most unusually for Pete and I being typical students, we woke up at 6am bright and wide awake. Our body clocks were slowly adjusting… That day we took a trip around Melbourne to get our bearings and the rest of the crew arrived and it was fantastic to meet them all. A super bunch!

The next two days were straight into sailing, but with a very relaxed approach. Some of the crew hadn’t done much yacht sailing having come from small performance boats and so it was a great relaxed learning curve. I was sure pleased to see everyone gel naturally into some positions. These two days were all about just being together as a crew, going through some manoeuvres, and making those manoeuvres a little more smoother. Also, getting a bit of a tan!

The yacht we have for the Sydney Hobart is a very well looked after Sydney 38. The yacht, appropriately named another Challenge is pretty similar to a Farr 40 from the outset, but when you look at her closer, she’s nowhere near as stripped out. There’s cushions! It’s a brilliant yacht though despite the cushions, as it is a one design which means that we have to carry the same equipment everyone else does. For example, everyone has to carry their cushions so it is a very fair class.

Our third day of training was at Deloitte. We spent the whole day talking about teamwork and just how key it is. We’ve got to be able to rely and trust each other completely to reach our full potential as a team. I learnt a lot that day and I was really impressed with a lot of what Chris and Jonno had to say.

The next few days before we headed offshore, we had a really in-depth look at the yacht in detail to see what improvements we could make long term and also what we needed to do short term before we headed offshore for a night. We also continued sailing with our lovely and pretty determined coaches Chris and Jonno working on some finer points of boat speed and practicing loads of safety manoeuvres. Always a good idea!

Our last two days of training crept on us far too quickly in my opinion, but I was truly most excited for our night offshore where we were hopefully going to be able to get out of the heads and see a bit of action! For one of the crew Alex, who had never been offshore overnight this was going to be a total first for her. For some of the other crew who hadn’t done much night sailing, it was going to be interesting to see how everyone faired when sleep deprived and also sailing on a pretty dark night (there wasn’t much moon).

We set off just after lunch and sailed due south with a frustratingly diminishing wind. By the time we arrived at the heads, the wind was all but gone with a very glassy sea and so we slowly drifted out/ sailed out at around 1 to 2 knots as night started to arrive. We were working on 3 hour watches and so that gave a really nice amount of rest and also made sure that everyone got 6 hours sleep minimum! The night went without too many hitches and was a great success for the crew.

After a good afternoon chilling out we all packed up ready for the launch the next day. I made sure to get a good nights sleep as it was a super bright and early start to fly to Sydney. The launch went off superbly and we spent a great afternoon and evening in Sydney before Pete, Will and I flew off back home to the UK the day after.

To summarise mine and the crews training in Sydney, we all loved it! The crew bonded really well and towards the end of the week there was a good amount of banter being continually shared which was great to see. I’m already really looking forward to going back out to Aus at the end of the year to continue our training.

Since my time out in Australia, I’ve kept busy back here in the UK with university and also continually plugging away for sponsorship for my flight around the world next year. This week I’ve had some really key meetings which have gone well I’m pleased to say and hopefully soon enough I’ll be able to release some more good news about progressing on with my flying trip!

Mike

Having started three months of intense courses to finish off my schooling, I’ve had quite a change of pace the last few weeks. After all the excitement of announcing the new project the other  week, combined with the buzz of all the events and travel in recent months, hectic had somehow become my version of normal! So despite plenty of study, enjoying a slower pace for a little while!

Anyway, if you wanted to keep up with all the latest and hear about what I’ve been up to (or hear me gripe about a particularly tough maths lesson!), the best thing to do would be to jump on to my official Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/jessicawatsonofficial which I will keep updated regularly.

But what I wanted to do in this blog, was to explain a little more about the new project, “another Challenge”. I’m not sure how much you’ve already read in the media about the project, so I’d better start from the beginning.

To put it simply what we’re aiming to do, is to be the youngest crew to compete in the Rolex Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, on a boat every appropriately named another Challenge! The idea is to enter a highly competitive youth team in the 2011 race, (aiming to do as well as possibly in the Sydney 38 class) and by running a professional, world-class campaign, providing opportunities for young sailors to take part in the Sydney to Hobart and hopefully inspire other young people to stretch themselves. You can see all the info on the project website – click on the icon on the front page of my website: http://www.jessicawatson.com.au/anotherchallenge

You can watch some good news segments compiled at the media launch by the Seven Network and Network Ten. These clips also give you a great idea of what it’s all about.

Crew

Choosing/finding the crew isn’t something we took lightly. We (our coaching team and myself) came up with a list of skills needed and we went from there, contacting firstly friends, then sailing contacts, then some of the major yacht clubs and youth programs to find potential crew members. It was important that we had a diverse mix of skills rather than say 10 helmsmen and no foredecky! And most importantly that all crew were dedicated, focused on the campaign, keen to improve and for want of a better word, ‘nice people’!

So jump on the project web page and check out all the crew profiles and pictures (see crew pic below). Throughout the year and during training, you’ll be hearing directly from all the crew so will have the chance to get to know everyone.

Training/ Timeline

With our crew scattered all over the place and some coming from half way around the world, it’s a little hard to get together every weekend to train like most crews would. So instead, we’ll be spending three full time months training at the end of the year, based out of Sydney. We’ll be out on the water pretty well full-time, putting in the hard work, to be as competitive as possible.

There will be lots of time spent offshore, even a dry (practice) run or two down to Hobart and back. Everyone on board will be doing a sea survival course, even though only 50% of the crew are required to and everyone, no matter their role onboard, will be studying coastal navigation. Closer to the race and after we’ve had the chance to shake out any cobwebs of our own, we’ll be training against another Sydney 38 and possibly joining in with some of the local racing to ensure that we’re right up to scratch!

Before we launched the project in Sydney, we had the full crew together for the first time training and getting to know each other for 10 days in Melbourne, which went really well. On top of having a lot of fun, we spent some long days on the water (I had some stiff muscles after a few days!) and headed offshore overnight. It was a great chance to gauge what level we were all at. I have to say everyone exceeded expectations – we’ve got some amazing sailors on board! We will all be working on our own skill sets through our personal sailing over the year. Myself included!  There’s lots of pictures from the 10 days training on our webpage.

Support

It might just be the 10 of us setting off for Hobart come Boxing Day at the end of the year, but it’s going to take a much bigger team and a lot more resources than that, to get us there with every chance of doing well. Along with crew profiles on the website, there are also profiles of some of our support team, including our two coaches.

If there was one thing I learnt from the last voyage, it was how important it was to have a perfectly prepared boat. So throughout the year, another Challenge will be kitted out with lots of new gear including new sails and a new colour scheme…..any guesses what colour?

Anyway, I’m sure that only covers the tip of a rather big iceberg, so I’d better leave it at that for now.  But stay tuned to hear from some of the team and support team and as we announce project sponsor partners, our charity partner and all sorts of other exciting developments!

Jess

The idea behind the blog (and this website in general) – is to provide a central area where people can follow the team, the challenges we’re facing, and how we’re dealing with them as we prepare for the 2011 Rolex Sydney Hobart.

This will include posts from the entire crew and coaching staff – including copies of posts from Jess and Mike’s own sites, youtube videos of the team in action, photos on Flickr, tweets, and Facebook updates.

To get things started we’ve got posts from both Jess and Mike discussing the first week of training from their perspectives….