I’ve written a little about what it takes to be a good crew before. And you don’t get much better at crewing than Will Ryan.

The video below is interesting to me because it backs up some of the things I learned from sailing with an excellent crew, and it also reminds me of some other sailing wisdom.

As those that have read this site before will know, I grew up sailing on lakes and, for this reason, reading shifts is very natural to me. But I noticed that I struggled at big events sailed on large bodies of water, where boat speed and strategy play a much bigger role in how well you do in a race.

On a lake, being good at picking the shifts can get you out of a lot of trouble, but sailing on the sea you can end up tacking way too much, and sailing with your head only focused on the area near you, and not looking at the bigger, whole-course picture. Or, you can end up sailing to the unfavoured side of the course waiting for a shift.

But the other thing this video reminds me about is that you need to keep your head out of the boat. It is one of the biggest cliches, but it is so true. You need to be looking ahead, making (hopefully good) predictions, and adjusting your strategy and tactics as necessary. And the only way to get good at this is to practice.

If you’re not used to doing this, or think you’re no good at it, the best thing to get in the habit of having a guess.

• Guess what shift you think it will be.
• Practice counting it down to the boat.
• Practice preparing for it to hit, and reacting correctly to it when it does.

This is a useful follow up video series to give you an idea of some exercises you can do to practice improving this skill:

Olympian Will Ryan On Reading Wind Shifts