Simon Walker Quotes
[The most challenging sailing was in the Southern Ocean. But the leadership challenge was comparatively easy.] It was muck and bullets -- battleground leadership... These guys were hanging on by their fingernails. As long as I was technically competent, leading was pretty straightforward. 
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Challenging | Sailing | Southern | Ocean | Leadership |
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I wanted my team to specialize in particular areas and stick with particular functions, but that wasn't me. And Mike wanted to be more sensitive to his team and be more collaborative, but that wasn't him. Ultimately, it's not a matter of which style works better than the other. It all comes down to which style works best for you.
- Simon Walker
We were out there in the Southern Ocean, feeling very insignificant in a big part of the planet... At any minute, another storm would sweep in. We hatched a plan: Spike and I would climb up and jury-rig the fitting. As we started the climb, I told the crew that they must helm the yacht very carefully on the opposite tack, as the rigging was only holding up one side of the mast. If the helmsman made a mistake while we were up on the mast, we'd crash down over the side with the entire rig on top of us.
- Simon Walker
[They turned east and, soon after, lost the bet. The wind dropped, they missed the most favorable position to cross the Doldrums, and they slipped to eleventh place. Fed up with the conditions, members of the crew began to lose faith in their strategy. One crew member complained that he had wasted three years of his life training for the race. The solution was to reset the goal.] I called the crew up on deck, and we discussed what had happened... 'We're in the eleventh position,' I told them. 'We can't think about winning. We're going to set ourselves new targets to beat as many boats as we can, one boat at a time.'
- Simon Walker