Take your clients for a sail with us on a J-44 racing yacht. It’s a unique and memorable venue for entertaining, while sharing a common bond in the grand setting of Long Island Sound. Get out of normal settings and enjoy the freedom of being propelled by the wind. Your clients will appreciate the exhilarating and enriching experience you’ve arranged for them.

Reward Your Team:

Make your next meeting, fun, exhilarating and memorable. Incorporate sailing into your sales meeting, awards dinner, or any company gathering. You can choose from a fleet of fine yachts to experience the beauty of Long Island Sound.

Bring your team closer together in a setting where people naturally feel free – to speak and laugh freely, and enjoy being with their colleagues on an adventure close to nature. Individuals may either choose to help sail under the captain’s supervision, or relax, talk among themselves and enjoy the wind and the ride.

Several venues are available:

Let us transport you one-way to or from a waterfront restaurant of your choice: Groups can, for example, sail from our Norwalk facility to any waterfront restaurant in the area, arriving at their dinner site via sail.

Following a local evening sail, choose a hotdog cookout or gourmet catering at our facility, or a private dinner at the restaurant immediately adjacent to our facility.

Select a tailored program from our flotilla of yachts, and sail the time and distance that meets your needs.

Breakthrough Team Performance: a one-day team-development workshop on the water.

The SSC teambuilding process is so much more than a nice softball game that didn’t make any difference back at work. It is an out-of-the-box experiential challenge characterized by accelerated and memorable learning! Each team must find its way to optimum performance, and our sailing discovery process is proven to nurture and accelerate that process. Teams must continually communicate and adjust to reach optimum processes and achieve goals. Possibly no other activity demands such a high level of coordination, adaptability, attention to feedback, and team spirit to succeed.

We will work with you in a needs assessment process to identify and understand core cultural messages that you are striving to embed back at work. We will help you embed them during the experience of the day. The debrief back at the clubhouse is both a celebration of our day and a time to reinforce these core messages. Past teams have demonstrated dramatic and practical performance improvements in the following areas:

• Multiple individual insights from a peak experience of team performance.
• A new level of role adaptability.
• Expanded personal and team perceived limits.
• Improved morale and resolved conflicts.
• Comfort in the face of pressure, complexity and ambiguity.
• Breakthroughs in communication.
• A new spirit of camaraderie and friendship.
• A willingness to step in and do what it takes to produce the results.

Our morning begins with a short “classroom” introduction and gearing up. Then we are divided into teams of four, each with a professional instructor and a 23-foot Pearson Ensign sloop. On the water we begin learning the skills, communication and teamwork necessary to maneuver the yacht skillfully. We take turns learning the various positions and roles: vessel command, steering, control of the mainsail, the jib, and tactician.

Following a group lunch we return to the excitement of match racing. The teams take their skills and engage in “round the buoys” competitive racing. Additionally they may be presented with other objectives.

Participants return to the clubhouse for awards, celebration and debrief. We offer supportive feedback, and facilitate a debrief on what you learned, and what you can take back to work. Dinner is a preferred option.

Your team will depart having had a day full of excitement, fun, inspiration and learning.

Breakthrough Leadership: an overnight two-day executive/team-development workshop on the water.

Big boat sailing and racing provides the opportunity to push beyond the boundaries of what’s “normal” and operate in the “extraordinary” zone. Developing optimum speed on the water and executing winning strategies helps expand thinking, generate innovation and develop new communication patterns that lead to breakthroughs in performance back at work.

This is more than an exciting day on the water; it is an intense executive leadership workshop testing and pushing the boundaries of perceived limitations and opportunities. In the morning the team is introduced to a unique “ensemble leadership” model and challenged to experiment and implement its principles on the water. The team then sets sail on a J-44 racing yacht. Participants learn the various roles essential for safe operation and hone performance throughout the day. We anchor overnight in a “gunkhole” *, enjoy a dinner onboard and continue the quest in evening conversation. We continue our sailing the following morning and return to the clubhouse mid-day to celebrate our wins and to embed elements of ensemble leadership. The team departs richly rewarded for their efforts, knowing the love and lore of the sea, inspired with new potential, and personally renewed in inexplicable ways.

* gunkhole: a solitary little anchorage

At SSC you will quickly find that we are not just outfitters offering sailing. We have in-depth corporate and O.D. experience, and we understand the process of transforming fragile insights born from a sailing experience into gains in team and cultural performance.