Q&A


Peter Homlberg On Team Building


Holmberg is a world-class skipper and professional sailor who’s adroit at stepping aboard a boat full of people whom he doesn’t usually sail with and quickly helps them achieve superb results.


By David Schmidt


Building a racing team or improving


an already existing team is always a process. Simply lumping a group of great sailors together doesn’t spell success. Likewise, organizing a fledgling group of friends whose ambition levels exceed their technical proficiency can devolve into an experience similar to herding squirrels. The key, of course, is to get the


right blend of talent, ambition, and a penchant for learning, all underscored with great communication, common goals and excellent leadership. While the last item is an elusive skill to master (some argue it’s an innate quality), the rest can be tackled with the right mindset and a shift in the way you and your team typically sail. After all, if you’ve been employing the same strategy—and yielding the same mediocre results—it’s clearly time to shake things up. I recently caught up with match-


48° NORTH, MAY 2011 PAGE 42


racing great Peter Holmberg at the inaugural Gill BVI International Match Racing Championship (part of the 40th


Anniversary BVI Spring


Regatta) to get his thoughts on how to build a successful racing team. While Holmberg is a world-class skipper and a professional sailor, he’s adroit at stepping aboard a boat full of people whom he doesn’t usually sail with and quickly helps them achieve superb results. For example, his crew for this event consisted of sailors with a mixed background. Interestingly, the match-racing regatta was sailed in IC 24s—modified J/24s that have an open, Melges 24-like cockpit, as well as a modified sailplan—making his thoughts applicable to boats of all sizes and complexity levels.


Tell me about your crew. It’s a mixture of professional sailors and amateurs. We try to integrate the


crew so there’s a professional sailor on the bow, another trimming and another pro doing tactics. Right alongside of us there are amateurs. For the amateurs, it’s a fantastic opportunity; for the professionals it’s a nice way to contribute to the whole sailing sport; to bring people up and help raise the competitive level of the sport.


What advice can you give a group


of solid, competent Corinthian sailors who want to transition from being a group of individual sailors into a well-oiled racing crew? I would honestly say that you


get a professional sailor onboard. For example, if you took up tennis, you could go and play against a wall for years and only get incrementally better. I think if you go to a pro and get the fundamentals down, then you’ll rise up a lot quicker. Not to promote myself or my profession, but I think a lot of


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