Marbella Marlo: How to Become a Great Crew

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Marbella Marlo: How to Become a Great Crew

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The 2024 Mitchell M. Brindley Crew of the Year on building confidence, talking to your skipper, finding speed, and why learning to drive will make you a better crew.

Almost every sailor gets taught how to steer. Very few get taught how to crew.

That is a strange gap, because in a two-person boat the crew is half the team, and at the top level crews win and lose races on their own. The good ones are not just fast. They see the course, they feed the skipper the right information at the right moment, and they make whoever is driving better.

Marbella Marlo is one of the best there has been. She won the Mitchell M. Brindley Crew of the Year in 2024, the award for the most outstanding crew in college sailing, while sailing for Harvard. She was also Crew All-America and All-NEISA Open First Team the same year.

She is also a skipper, and that turns out to be a big part of the story. One of the first things she says in this interview is that learning to drive is what made her a great crew.

We covered a lot of ground. This is the interview I wish someone had handed me when I was in high school.

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WHAT SHE COVERS

Why time on the helm makes you a far better crew
Confidence: why it is the main barrier holding girls back in sailing, and the specific ways she built hers
What the crew actually controls when it comes to boatspeed
Tactics from the front of the boat: what you should be looking at and when to look up
How much input to give your skipper, and when to say nothing
Communication that works, and the habits that quietly wreck a team
Sailing with a brand new skipper versus someone you have sailed with for years
How to sail well with a range of different skippers
Her junior sailing background, and what carried over to college and what did not
Managing your time in college so sailing and school both survive
Why doing the things you love in college matters more than people tell you
Life after college, and how sailing stays with you

WHO IT IS FOR

High school and college sailors, and any crew who wants to be the person a skipper asks for by name. Skippers should watch it too. Understanding what your crew is doing and thinking is one of the fastest ways to get better yourself. Coaches and parents will get a lot out of the sections on confidence and time management.