Ahoy, mate,
Tall ship offers new venue for corporate team building

By Jill Keech
for Virginia Business
August 2006

A gentle breeze billows the sails of the schooner Virginia as it skims along the Elizabeth River. Aboard this reproduction of a 1917 pilot schooner, it takes all hands to stay on course. So what better place to build a team than aboard a tall ship?

Views of shimmering water and blue sky beat sitting around a conference table. Plus, office politics tend to go overboard when people work together to sail a ship. “The hierarchy is completely destroyed, because everyone gets the same treatment,” says Jonathan Gorog, executive director of the Virginia Maritime Heritage Foundation. “Those who can’t carry their weight are exposed very quickly.”

Those are some of the selling points the foundation can use as it gears up to market the Virginia as a fun, new way to build corporate teams. To get a feel for what a sailing adventure might entail, a Virginia Business writer went out on the 122-foot long, two-masted ship, which is docked at Norfolk’s Wisky Pier. It didn’t take long to see what schooner Captain Nicholas Alley means when he says, “No one can sail this boat by themselves.” Everyone’s job is important, be it hoisting the lines, raising the sail or steering the ship.

Out on the water, profit and loss statements don’t count for much. Knowing port from starboard does. Free of their office cubicles, corporate teams can learn new skills in a setting where survival depends on teamwork. And the dress code? Shoes with rubber soles or dressed-down togs.

Commissioned in June 2005 and sailing for its first full season, the Virginia is certified by the U.S. Coast Guard as a passenger-carrying and sailing school with an underway capacity of 40 people and crew of 12.

Matthew Manock sees the ship’s potential as a team-building tool. Manock conducts an annual team-building experience for Hampton Roads’ Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, where he’s director of sales. Outings have included camping on the Eastern Shore and a visit to a Portsmouth go-cart track. When faced with different tasks out of the office, “you just learn so much about your fellow associates,” he says. “Leadership is really simply finding people’s talents and finding their weaknesses, and if you can manage someone’s weaknesses and work around or remove the things that they’re weak at, they will be more productive and obviously a happier employee.”

The foundation is developing the corporate team-building program as an overnight excursion. In the works is a five-day program, with a day of training and briefing sessions in a meeting room setting, followed by a three-day sail and a final debriefing session back at the hotel. Cost could run up to $800 a day per person for 12 people. Eventually, there could be shorter options, such as full- and or half-day team-building sails. “When we do longer sails, we add on skills every day,” says Alley, who works with youngsters on day trips.

For instance, Alley might divide a group into sail-handling and navigation teams, with timed tasks. Goal-setting is key. A team might be assigned to arrive at a particular buoy at a certain time. Sometimes, a natural leader “steps out,” is chosen or is voted into a role, says Alley.

Aboard ship, it’s difficult to hide behind a title. Once a team is working well together, says Gorog, “you shuffle the deck so they have to learn how to do it again and again and again with a variety of different challenges in front of them that they haven’t thought about ahead of time.”

Besides providing an unusual venue for corporate training, the Virginia offers weeklong and 10-day summer youth sail-training voyages. It’s also being used as a promotional tool for Virginia’s upcoming 400th anniversary celebration of the settling of Jamestown in 2007, with sails throughout this summer to ports up and down the Southeastern seaboard.

The tall ship’s informal setting is also available for corporate receptions. Robert Gulledge, a BB&T bank executive in Norfolk and foundation board member, noticed during a recent party that “we didn’t have a lot of obstacles in communicating that you have around a table.”