Yuppie Yachties

A bunch of us at work had been told that we were to do some team building yesterday afternoon. I wasn’t exactly enthused by the idea of it to be honest since in my mind team building consists of cheesy introductions, playing “trust” games and being forced to pretend to like the oddballs that normally you would try to avoid in the staff kitchen.

The only details we had been given was to make sure we wore casual clothes and footwear suitable for the outdoors. After the inevitable cheesy intros we were finally put out of our misery and told we were to split into two teams of seven and have a yacht race out on the harbour against each other.

On a regular Auckland day it would be a bit of a gamble with the weather but we struck lucky being blessed with clear blue skies for the afternoon. It was even almost too hot sitting in the cockpit of the boat as our instructors gave us the mandatory safety lesson. As we soon discovered though the wind on the harbour was almost non existent which made for an interesting afternoon since wind tends to be an integral part of yacht racing! Funny that.

Basically our afternoon was spent bobbing around the harbour for two hours trying to get enough speed up to race around a yellow buoy. The problem being that it seemed to only get further away the longer we stayed out there as I swear we were going backwards at times.

Being a team building event you would assume that the teams would work together to maneuver the yacht and hopefully win the race. Our team didn’t seem to take to this idea too well though. I actually think I didn’t touch a rope or winch the whole time we were onboard and I know I wasn't the alone there either. It soon became clear what the females main objective onboard was - to maintain maximum sun exposure to themselves throughout the "race". I even took to swapping sides every time we tacked so that the sail wouldn’t block my precious sunrays. I know, what a girl! In saying that, the guys weren’t much better. We kept joking that if only we had known we were going sailing and we could have brought along the champagne and beers. No matter, it turned out there was more than enough drinking post racing.

Eventually we got the call from the other boat to say should we give up so on came the motor and we headed toward the buoy. The motor was turned off to make our way around the buoy before heading back. Team two didn’t manage to maneuver around the buoy which made for plenty of debate as to who should win the trophy. A.) The team who used the motor to assist temporarily during the race but got around the buoy or B.) the team who didn’t use their motor to assist but never got around the buoy. I think it will be an endless argument, well between those who actually cared about winning anyway.

A few after race drinks in the viaduct somehow turned into several with a bunch of us enjoying the clear, surprisingly balmy evening for a solid 5 hours or so. Once again chatty Tui was out to play which can be a little dangerous while drinking with bosses who don’t know about my travels. Thankfully I managed to keep my mouth shut at all the appropriate times so as to not give myself away. It was not an easy feat I must say!

Bring on the next team building event if it is going to be anything like cruising the harbour followed by hours of drinking in the viaduct…