The future of the sport of sailing might depend on the hierarchy on your boat. 

From something akin to a dictatorship to something much closer to a democracy, there are four ways that crews tend to organize.

The first is organic: Someone with a boat invites others and they often have a great time. But many guests lack experience and need instruction to contribute or to be inspired to return. How do they get it?

Sailing’s dominant organizational model centers on a “skipper,” creating a master/servant command structure on our boats.

We can see skippering everywhere. It is written into most sailing literature and teaching. Classes are structured around a lecturer who is a skipper who teaches crew. “Here is a winch and handle. This is how you wrap it and grind it. Do it when I tell you.”

Skippering is baked into boat design. I’ve written before about the oversized steering wheel on small sailboats as a symbol of authority; the place from which decisions are handed down. A turn at the helm is conflated with a turn to take command, though that status is in name only.

In a sailing seminar I attended recently, the instructor avowed a military hierarchy as the only effective way to manage risk or make progress, even aboard boats sailed leisurely. There may be a place for a taskmaster in some endeavors, but there are better models for recreation. In fact, in sailing, skippering usually produces mediocrity and sometimes sparks mutiny. Why? There is no growth in the skipper model, only orders and passable effort. Hopeful newbies are told where to sit, directed to watch, may be shouted at when things go wrong and, lacking context, many jump ship.

The good news is that sailing is outgrowing the skippering model. 

Many sailing organizers have adopted the coach/athlete model found in other sports, shifting to a constructive approach to practice and play. Athletes and parents often embrace the personal attention that comes from a coach. Coaches find positive feedback to be a motivator so they do a lot of it. An athlete’s skills may improve rapidly with a coach, and a good coach will help teams through social or interteam conflict when needed.

But the coach/athlete model has its limits. Game theory presupposes rules; a box defining scope, time and behavior as a manageable space in which the coach directs the work and the athlete plays. Coaching extracts performance, but only within this box.

Indeed, sailing overwhelms the coaching model, except in narrow forms, like inshore college dinghy racing or on one boat in a  one-design campaign. For most of us, sailing isn’t a game within a defined box, it is a blend of social, emotional, physical, communication, mechanical, navigational, endurance, economic and environmental challenges that mix and morph differently each time. Most sailors have no athletic or sporting aspiration; they seek skills for practical reasons like safety, fun and to meet and make friends. Imagine a soccer coach trying to teach flute playing to all the people at a family reunion in crummy weather.

Finally, coaching costs time and money. Only athletes with means can afford them, creating sailing’s haves and have nots. 

So if skippering centers the skipper, and coaching has limited reach, what underpins sailing’s resurgence?

The mentor/apprentice model has its origins in sailing and evolved to productively impart experience, curiosity, and wisdom via collaboration across genders, generations, bodies and beliefs. It’s how the Polynesians navigated the Pacific for centuries without writing. It’s how one becomes a shipwright, a rigger or a sailmaker. And it is what makes sailing matter for many of the millions who do it recreationally today at community centers and neighborhood clubs.

In this model, the mentor knows that they are not the main source of knowledge; experience is. They are there to create the space and time for knowledge to be discovered by their apprentices. First, the mentor sets aside their ego and centers on shared process and progress rather than their own past or paradigms. Then, instead of commanding or containing, they challenge. Instead of coaching, they collaborate; often as crew. Instead of defining the box, they break down limits, especially those imagined by the apprentice or imposed by the format. Mentors engender trust and ensure safety inspiring confidence to explore. To the apprentice, the mentor embodies generosity, compassion, acceptance, dedication, imagination and purpose. 

The mentor/apprentice model shares the benefits and risks of sailing broadly through high-functioning teams. There is leadership in times of stress and leadership development around the clock.

It’s not always perfect. Skippers sometimes ghost as mentors. Wannabes sometimes just want to be told what to do. A bucket-lister isn’t looking to grow.

But when it happens, the process itself regenerates. Apprentices become mentors who find new apprentices who become mentors. And sailing grows.