HARTWIG Match Team

16/10/2026

BUT THEY KNEW HOW TO BECOME CALM AGAIN.

I remember plenty of races when the wind picked up, the boat accelerated and communication became difficult. Wind, waves, sails, water rushing past the hull. Everyone was working harder, concentrating harder and trying to anticipate what would happen next.

And yet, on our best days, there was surprisingly little talking.

We had sailed together for years. My crews knew how I steered, how I communicated and what I expected. Most of the time, we managed to maintain a certain calm on board.

But match racing had its exceptions. 😄

When we believed our opponent had broken a rule, we could become incredibly loud. Suddenly everyone was shouting at the umpires, demanding a penalty.

Then came the decision.

Sometimes in our favour. Sometimes not.

And within seconds, we had to forget about it and get back to racing. The opponent was still there, the next wind shift was approaching and another manoeuvre needed our attention.

What fascinated me was how naturally experienced crews could make that transition.

Nobody needed to tell everyone to calm down.

We simply returned to the way we worked together.

Looking back, I think that was one of the most valuable lessons racing taught me.

And it matters just as much when cruising.

An unexpected squall, a difficult anchoring manoeuvre or entering an unfamiliar harbour can create plenty of tension.

The real test is how your crew behaves afterwards.

I’ve been revisiting many of these experiences while writing my new book, THE SYSTEM ON BOARD, about leadership, communication and decision-making at sea.

And one thing has become increasingly clear to me.

Calm isn’t just something you bring on board.

It’s something a crew learns to create together.

How does your crew find its way back to calm after a stressful moment?

TheSystemOnBoard LeadershipAtSea

03/10/2026

www.SailMomentum.com

02/10/2026

07/09/2026

WE WON THE FIRST TWO TIMES WE WENT RIGHT. THAT WAS THE PROBLEM.

The first upwind leg went perfectly. We chose the right side and it paid.

On the second upwind leg we went right again, and again it was the right decision.

By the time we approached the final upwind leg, something had quietly changed on board.

Nobody had said that right was now “our side”. We had never even discussed it.

But somehow we all seemed to know where we were going.

Right.

What we missed was that the current had changed.

The side that had worked twice before was no longer the winning side. The boats going left gained, and what had felt like a reliable pattern suddenly became the reason we lost ground.

For a long time, I thought this was simply a tactical mistake.

Today I see something more interesting in it.

The first two successes had changed the way we looked at the race.

Not dramatically. Not consciously.

We simply paid less attention to the possibility that the conditions might be different this time.

That is what makes success so dangerous.

A bad decision usually forces us to look again.

A successful one often does the opposite. It gives us confidence, and confidence can quietly reduce curiosity.

The lesson was not that we should have gone left.

The lesson was that we should have kept observing.

Especially after being right twice.

I think this happens far beyond sailing.

Teams repeat what worked in the last project. Leaders trust the same process because it delivered before. Organisations turn yesterday’s good decision into tomorrow’s default.

And often the real mistake begins before the wrong decision is made.

It begins when we stop asking whether the situation has changed.

Sometimes the hardest thing to notice is not that the conditions have changed.

It is that we have stopped expecting them to.

THE SYSTEM ON BOARD
What Sailing Can Teach Us About Leadership, Communication and Decision-Making
Coming December 2026.

02/09/2026

MICKEY. ONE WORD WAS ENOUGH.

For years, Mickey was simply one of the code words we used in match racing.

If I called it, nobody on board needed an explanation. The crew already knew what I was trying to do, what the next few seconds might look like and what each of them had to be ready for.

But the name itself had a story.

Michael Guntsch, Mickey, was an umpire I met many times over the years. He had been a very successful Korsar sailor himself and came from the generation of my older brothers.

We also had quite a few conversations after races.

Usually after a penalty against us.

Of course I knew that a decision made on the water could not be changed afterwards. That was never really the point.

It was probably a small part of my own version of ugly winning.

I liked discussing those situations, sometimes in detail, and somewhere in the back of my mind there was probably also the hope that, after enough conversations with me, an umpire might hesitate for half a second before raising the flag against us the next time.

Whether that ever worked, I have no idea.

What I do know is that Mickey and I had many good, very knowledgeable conversations about racing, rules and decisions on the water.

He has sadly passed away, but I still think of those encounters with a smile.

And somehow, his name eventually found its way into our playbook.

Years later, I realised that the interesting thing was not the word Mickey.

It was what had to exist before I could say it.

Shared experience.
Trust.
Expectation.
A common picture of what might happen next.

The word was only the trigger.

Everything important had already been built before it was spoken.

That thought has stayed with me and is now becoming part of something new I am writing:

THE SYSTEM ON BOARD

What sailing can teach us about leadership, communication and decision-making.

TheSystemOnBoard

29/08/2026

SOME BOOKS ARE WRITTEN AT A DESK.
THIS ONE WAS LIVED OUT HERE.

20/08/2026

THE MAST BREAK WASN’T MY BIGGEST MISTAKE THAT DAY.

The mast came down during a regatta.

I ended up in hospital with a concussion.

And somehow, that still wasn’t the part I remember most clearly today.

What happened afterwards taught me something about responsibility, leadership and the strange habit we sometimes have of looking after everyone except ourselves.

The full story is now on LinkedIn in the Sailing & Cruising group.

MIND BEFORE WIND.

18/08/2026

11/08/2026

Nothing to do.
Nowhere to be.

Just here.

08/08/2026

Nothing to do.
Nowhere to be.
Just here.