Join RYA Yachtmaster and Psychologist, Tim Harkness, on a journey to deeper relationships, stronger team performance, and personal growth.
“For centuries, sailing was the best way to reach new places. For Sea Trials, it still is”.
Sea Trials
Sometimes a different setting helps people see things differently.
In order to grow as teams or individuals, we need to step away from noise, screens, roles, and routines. Sea Trials creates that opportunity.
Sea Trials is, in its essence, a psychologist on a boat. As both an RYA Yachtmaster and psychologist, Tim is uniquely qualified to be your guide on an outer and inner journey.
Sailing is a unique combination of serenity and excitement, solitude and companionship. This makes it a effective platform for reflection and discussion.
Sea Trials has four destinations. Connections focuses on workplace, family, or couple relationships. Performance focuses on leadership and teamwork. Reset focuses on the present, to give a fresh perspective on the past or future. Race brings it all together, at speed!
No previous sailing experience is required. Journeys can be one day or several days.
On the day, you arrive and are welcomed onto the boat. We brief. You get kitted up. Then we get going. You may take an active role, or be more relaxed. At the end, we return to shore, discuss, and reflect.
Get in touch and we’ll begin to plot your course.
What is Sea Trials?
Leave distractions behind to focus on relationships that count.
Create a high performance crew with clear roles and a shared goal.
Take time and space for recovery and reflection.
Let’s go fast.
1. Sea Trials Connections
Sailing has many qualities that make it a good setting for building relationships. It’s slow, it’s close, and everybody on board has a shared goal.
Sometimes, all a relationship needs is time and space. At times, sailing is hard work. But there are also periods in every trip where the work is done. In these moments all that remains is to let the wind and the tides to their work, and to watch the world go by.
These are the times when it is natural to share comfortable silence or reflective conversation with your companions on the boat.
Tim uses this ideal setting, and his training and experience to open up conversations about relationships.
These might be general discussions, or specific investigations into how members of the crew share values, care for, communicate with, and sometimes misunderstand each other.
Sea Trials Connections is an opportunity for families, couples and teams to spend proper time together building bonds that really matter.
Trips can be scheduled for a duration of several hours to several days, and we sail in a choice of locations.
2. Sea Trials Performance
All high performing teams share certain characteristics. Amongst them are shared goals, language and values, and clear roles, processes and standards.
The essence of Sea Trials Performance is that within a day it transforms a group of sailing novices into a crew capable of safely and effectively operating a modern sailing yacht.
It achieves this accelerated outcome by combining the inherent collective nature of sailing (we’re all in the same boat) with a practical, memorable and informed use of performance principles, like clear roles and shared communication, that are relevant to both sailing, and the workplace of the client.
The new crew are inducted into the watch roles of navigator, helm, sail trimmer, and steward. Within these roles, they interact to operate the boat to the required standard. But every thirty minutes, the watch roles change, and outgoing officers brief incoming officers on the responsibilities and situation.
The effect is a powerful day where universal performance principles are modelled in a way that is practical, memorable, and directly applicable back to the workplace.
3. Sea Trials Reset
When you are fully engaged with the present, the future and past hold you more lightly.
Sailing is engaging. It rewards attention. Whether it is a velvet ripple on the water surface as a breeze moves towards you, a landmark on the changing horizon, or the set of the boat as it responds to your instructions, the sea’s secrets are all revealed over time.
By contrast, applying vigilance in the human world and trying to decode every tone of voice or facial expression is exhausting when other people’s thoughts and intentions are not always knowable.
When sailors say to each other, ‘You will sleep well tonight’ it acknowledges more than the fresh air. It’s the peace that comes from applying your mind to the physical world.
This space may simply be experienced for what it is. Horizons can be gazed upon, time can be taken.
But it can also be used. During the calm moments of a sail, or in the glow that comes from safely returning from an adventure, our minds are primed for reflection.
Tim has decades of experience as a psychologist, and a deep interest in people. Sailing with Sea Trials Reset is an opportunity to examine and master the anxieties, ruminations and melancholy that can keep us caught in the past or alarmed by the future.
4. Sea Trials Racing
Speed and competition are not essential to Sea Trials, or Sailing. But if you enjoy racing, we have something for you.
The United Kingdom has a long and historic race programme. Sea Trials can enter boats in events such as Round the Island, Cowes Week, JOG races, and selected Royal Ocean Racing Club offshore races.
Racing raises the stakes of a sailing day. Teams have to align more quickly, and relationships, communication and processes are tested. The objectives of Sea Trials still apply, just under a little more pressure. Even the Reset works, in the calm after the challenge.
Tim’s background in elite sport makes boat racing a natural choice. Join Sea Trials Racing for the adventure, but also to accelerate your own or your team’s development.
Race days can be arranged as single events, part of a wider Sea Trials programme, or as a progressive route through the UK race calendar.
6. Safety
Our first performance principle
A good sail is a safe sail. High performance starts with sound judgment. The objective is disciplined execution. Sea Trials is designed so that safety and performance reinforce one another.
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Activities are selected and adapted to suit the crew, the boat, and the prevailing conditions. Avoiding unnecessary risk is part of high-quality decision-making. Traffic awareness is the responsibility of the skipper.
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Before sailing, all crew take part in a structured safety briefing how to avoid problems, and what to do in the unlikely event that something does go wrong.
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Crew are guided in correct on-board procedures, including use of lifejackets and safety equipment, and movement on deck.
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All boats are professionally skippered and fully equipped with all required safety systems, including communication and distress systems and lifejackets, safety lines, and life-saving equipment.
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Crew are given guidance on staying warm, dry, and comfortable with appropriate clothing expectations set in advance. There is practical support and advice for managing seasickness.
7. FAQs
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Safety comes first. All skippers and staff are trained in safety protocols. If medical attention is needed, we return immediately. For non-urgent issues, the group uses the Sea Trials decision process to adapt.
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No. Every Sea Trial is tailored to the group, and all participants wear life vests at all times. Every boat has a skipper local to the area.
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Yes. The physical and mental intensity is calibrated uniquely for each group. We stretch comfort zones while maintaining physical and psychological safety.
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Options range from 2 hours to multi-day formats.
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Yes. Sea Trials run year-round, weather and conditions permitting.
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Yes, boat, crew and passengers are fully insured.
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Yes. Lunch is included. For 4-hour Sea Trials, we provide an onboard lunch option. For longer formats, we can include a marina or onshore stop. Additional catering can be arranged, as desired.