How to get the winning mind

Howie Hamlin explains how important mental attitude is to his sailing

Howie Hamlin turned 50 last week, just a month after he won the 18-foot skiff World Championships for the second consecutive year. He also won the 505 World Championships in 1999. This week, Hamlin tells The Daily Sail about the importance of achieving the right mental approach in the high-octane world of skiff racing. It’s all about getting in ‘the zone’.

The thing about racing skiffs is, especially in strong winds, they can fry your nerves. It’s easy to get too nervous when you’re starting out in the 18, although once you get too used to sailing them it can also be possible to get too relaxed. It’s really important to find the proper level of concentration.

It’s hard to say what’s right for everyone, because each of us has a different arousal state. But I know it’s really critical for me to be in my zone. If I’m too relaxed or too wound up it’s not good either way.

I start thinking about the state I want to be in from early in the morning and pay attention to where I’m at mentally. We have a team meeting before the race, where we’ll talk about the weather, talk about the conditions, and how we want to set up the boat. That generally helps get me into the right state. The other thing is, as I’ve got older my sailing has got better. I think mental maturity is the key, and in the past I was not able to control my mental state so effectively.

In the past it could go either way, I’d either get too stressed, or just go flat, and neither is good. Actually I had one of those moments in the penultimate race of the recent 18 Worlds. We were doing well, and I wanted to bear off a little downwind to get under Shark Island without gybing. Rod [Howell, Hamlin’s Aussie front hand on the skiff] was telling me not to do it, but I was too relaxed, not thinking, and we capsized in the wind shadow of the lighthouse. Stupid.


The strange thing was, when we started sailing skiffs, we started capsizing in the 505 – which we never did before. It took us a while to work out what was going on, but I think the 18 teaches you how to sail with a lot of adrenalin in your body, but sailing with too much can be a bad thing. I think it made us complacent, so when we got back in the 505 we’d be too relaxed and then wham, capsize!

Fortunately in the last race of both this year and last year’s 18 Worlds, I was in my zone, fully focussed on the game. They were both really difficult races, it would have been really easy to get nervous and it would have been really easy to make mistakes. But we kept everything pretty routine. I’d never think about the outcome, and never start thinking: “We’ve got to beat so and so.” In fact, when we crossed the finish line, we thought we’d got second overall. All we could do was sail our best, and finding out that we’d won was an incredible bonus.

For me, the key to getting in the zone is to make sure I am focussed on the big picture. If I keep a general, looking forwards, head-out-the-boat attitude, I tend to do a lot better than when I’m focussed on myopic stuff, the detail stuff.

Obviously, communication with your team mates is also a key thing on a boat like the 18. I’ve got a routine with Mike [Martin, Howie’s middleman on the skiff and crew on the 505]. Mike does all the tactics, while I work on headings and the picture immediately in front of us. I tell him whether I feel we’re lifted or headed and see how that tallies with him and what he’s seeing.

This year we raced with Rod Howell doing bow, and we had five days’ practice with him beforehand. The great thing about Rod is he has a tremendous amount of experience on the Harbour. He’s very skiff oriented in his thinking, calling the puffs and lulls, and he’s great for general local knowledge. I think he’s won the Worlds twice before with Trevor Barnabas.

The year before, we sailed with Trevor Baylis [last week’s contributor to this series]. That was a quite a bit different to sailing with Rod. Again, we only had five days to get used to sailing with Trevor, who had no previous 18 experience, and that showed up in our spinnaker drops, and he was learning about 18s all the way through the week. But generally his boathandling is excellent, and he is really good for set-up and boatspeed.

We were slow on the first day of those Worlds, and then Trevor suggested we let the forestay off one hole. We made that change and it was right for the rest of the week. I think the ideal forehand on the 18 should be a boatspeed expert. They’ve got control of the jib, the Cunningham and the vang, so they’ve got all the speed controls to hand. This certainly works well for us, as it leaves Mike to focus on boat-to-boat tactics, and me to get on with the steering.

Obviously, teaming up with a new crewmember so late goes against what you’d expect, but freshness can be good. I always find I go well when I sail with someone for the first time. Everyone is trying really hard, and everyone’s in their zone.

Mike and I have sailed together long enough now that we have a routine, and our forehands have adapted to our style. Whenever we learnt anything from them, we would take it and incorporate it into our sailing. But once we make a change we stick with it. It’s important not to change too much all at once, and Trevor commented on how we were so choreographed for each manoeuvre.

The other thing is, we have fun sailing. We never swear at each other, there’s never any reason to get like that. The only time I yell is if I see the spinnaker going in the water, and I want the crew to hear me. Apart from that, we’re pretty quiet and controlled.