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edigitaltranscription.comVELOCITEACH

EVENT: PODCAST

SERIES: MANAGE THIS

EPISODE: 074

DATE: TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2019

MODERATOR: NICK WALKER

EXPERTS: ANDY CROWE & BILL YATES

GUEST: KAREN CROWE

SOURCE: ANDY & KAREN PODCAST 74 PROJECT EDITED FINAL.MP3

LENGTH: 34 MINUTES

The podcast for project managers by podcast managers.

Table of Contents01:04 … Meet Karen Crowe02:36 … Project Integration07:40 … Project Spike09:13 … Project Scope12:00 … Cost Management13:08 … Learning New Practices15:13 … Gratitude 16:16 … Project Resources 17:33 … Risk Analysis21:11 … Stakeholders25:00 … Communication 26:51 … WBS and Project Conclusion31:25 … Follow the Journey

KAREN CROWE: I think any time you are organizing, thinking

ahead, categorizing, you’re managing a project. This is

definitely – I would say this qualifies.

VELOCITEACH / PODCAST / MANAGE THIS / EPISODE 074

NICK WALKER: Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project

managers for project managers. We’re glad you’ve joined us for a

conversation about what matters to you in the field of project

management. It’s a podcast where we routinely talk with experts,

trainers, mentors, people who have been where you are now and

where you’re headed.

I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are two guys who guide

our conversation, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates. And guys, I’m

excited about this podcast for a couple reasons. It’s a chance

to get to know our own people a little bit better, both

professionally and personally. But it’s also a chance to hear

about managing a project like none we’ve ever talked about before

here on this podcast. And to help us, we have an extra special

guest in the studio today. So Bill, why don’t you tell us a

little bit about who’s with Andy today.

Meet Karen Crowe

BILL YATES: Yeah, we have Karen Crowe in the office today, in

our podcast booth. It is so good to have you here. This is

clearly a case of the better half of the Andy and Karen marriage

is here. Andy is like me in that he out-kicked his coverage.

And I think today our guests have a chance to understand a bit

more about that. Welcome, Karen.

KAREN CROWE: Thank you, Bill.

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BILL YATES: We’re excited to hear more about the project. But

first, Karen, I think for those who are not as familiar with

Velociteach, you were involved with the company before I started,

right from the start. And just share with our listeners a little

bit about that.

KAREN CROWE: When Andy and I started Velociteach, well, it was a

little overwhelming. We knew, like we had a solid plan. Andy

had spreadsheets; and, I mean, you know, he’s a project manager,

so he had the plan. But there was just me and him to carry it

out. The main thing that I have been involved in and continue to

be involved in was creating the workbooks for the live training

classes, specifically the mind maps. That’s my...

BILL YATES: Yeah, there are some listeners right now that are

going, “Oh, my gosh, I love her.” Others are going to, “The mind

maps, they drove me crazy.”

KAREN CROWE: I hate them. You either love them or hate them,

that’s true.

BILL YATES: Yeah, yeah, but it’s such a great memorization

device that we use. And you’re really – you’re the mother of

that. You really are.

KAREN CROWE: And I feel very – they are my baby. I feel

protective of them.

3


Project Integration

NICK WALKER: So Andy and Karen, the reason we’re all together

here is that both of you are headed on what amounts to not only

an adventure, but also sort of a project management challenge

like none you’ve ever encountered – a long-term sabbatical aboard

the sailing vessel Gratitude. It’s a project that has obviously

involved untold hours of planning and preparation. But before we

get into this, Andy, why? What’s the reason for all this?

ANDY CROWE: I think because it’s there, Nick. You know what,

this is something that started out as a question. We’re not

retiring. But it started out as a question: Is this something

we could do and enjoy in retirement? And I think after we

explored and answered that question, the next question began to

be, well, why wait till retirement?

BILL YATES: What triggered this for you both? I know, you know,

I see Andy a good bit in the office. I know he started getting

this desire to be on the water. And then I know Karen, forgive

the pun, but she got onboard with it, too. But Andy, looking

back in 2018, back in the summer you took a sailing class; right?

ANDY CROWE: Correct. Yeah, we went through American Sailing

Association certifications.

BILL YATES: And before that, what really started to foster, for

both of you, kind of your passion for wanting to try this out?

4


ANDY CROWE: You know, it’s probably a long winding story. I’ll

condense it down to this. Years and years ago, and it’s probably

been 20 years ago, I read Jimmy Buffett’s autobiography, “A

Pirate Looks at 50.” And in that he described his routine of,

when he wasn’t performing on the road, he would get in a plane,

he would fly a float plane out to some uninhabited island in the

keys, and just go surf fish all morning. Then when he was tired

of it, or when he caught as many as he wanted to catch, he’d put

them in the cooler and fly back home. And that idea captivated

me. And I thought, well, thank you, Jimmy Buffett. You’ve just

defined what I want my retirement to look like.

And so that idea persisted. And then around 2014, 2015, I

started going fishing down in Islamorada in the Keys with a good

friend of mine who has a fishing boat and is actually quite a

good fisherman. And I started doing that and realized I really,

really like being on the water. And sort of the third thing that

triangulated in is that Karen and I were in Hawaii. We were on a

dive, I believe, or snorkel...

KAREN CROWE: Snorkel tour.

ANDY CROWE: Yeah, snorkel tour at this point. We hadn’t started

scuba at that point yet. And we were on a boat, and it was a big

catamaran, and the captain cut off the engines in the middle of

the ocean. I said, “What are you doing?” And she said, “We’re

going sailing.” And she raised the mainsail and raised the jib,

unfurled the jib. And it just overwhelmed me. I realized this

5


is something I absolutely love. So that’s kind of the three

things that sort of triangulated in.

NICK WALKER: Tell us a little bit about your trip. I mean,

we’re talking long-term. How long?

ANDY CROWE: That depends. That’s going to be a really

interesting question.

KAREN CROWE: Depends on who you ask.

NICK WALKER: And where are you going?

KAREN CROWE: Well, my discussion continues on how long this trip

is going to last. My first kind of concern about going out for

an extended period of time was how am I going to do leaving my

kids, leaving my community? I’m very involved in the various

places in my life. I’m very grounded and rooted here. So how

are we going to make friends? How are we going to have that

sense of belonging?

So when we first started talking about an extended time, my first

thought was, well, we could kind of just dip our toe in the water

and just go out for a few weeks. But the longer we discussed it,

and the longer we talked about the different factors that were

making it possible for us to do this at all, we realized, you

know, it needs to be longer than that.

6


So I finally kind of put my stake in the ground and said, okay, I

think I can do a year. If I can still have time, if I can still

see my kids from time to time and come home and see my friends,

then I think a year will work. But Andy’s opinion is different.

NICK WALKER: Aha.

ANDY CROWE: Yeah. I feel like we’re looking at two years. I

would not invest this much in a boat were I only going for

one year.

NICK WALKER: And it’s just the two of you.

ANDY CROWE: Well, yes. Yeah. We’re sailing together. We’re

going to have friends and family down to join us in different

legs of the journey from to time. But, yeah, I mean, and what

people say is, regardless of your plans, 85 percent of the time

it’s just going to be you. And so a lot of people do this type

of thing in different ways. We’re going to take a sabbatical.

We’ve got an open window in life. And we’re going to set out for

a while, and we’ll see.

Project Spike

BILL YATES: I remember laughing as – I can laugh about it now.

But back I think about the middle of 2018 you guys were, you

know, we talk about spikes; right? Just experiments. And I look

at this project, and I see this spike that you guys had back in

7


August when you went to really, okay, let’s do this. Let’s try a

class for two weeks, both to get certified and to see if Karen is

going to get sick on the water for two weeks.

KAREN CROWE: Right. An important question to answer.

BILL YATES: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

ANDY CROWE: And this is something we can do together because

there are scenarios where our training skipper would say, “Okay,

Karen, you’re the skipper for this. And Andy, you’re going to be

working the lines,” or “You’re going to be on the helm” or

whatever. And there were times when it was inverted. And that’s

not necessarily the way we really relate at home. We don’t give

each other orders. But you do when you’re the skipper in that

role. You’re basically calling the shots, and somebody else is

carrying them out.

BILL YATES: It sounds like an Agile team.

ANDY CROWE: Well, sort of. It’s an Agile team at home. It’s

more of a hierarchy on the water. And it’s interesting, Bill,

because this is a spike for our listeners who know a spike is an

experiment, and it’s generally considered to be throwaway code in

a software sense. You throw a spike to run a test to find out an

answer to a question. That is exactly what we were doing. We

were throwing a spike with this. We were going to go through

8


certification, figure out at the end is this something we can do

and enjoy together. And the answer was yes.

Project Scope

NICK WALKER: And it’s interesting from a project management

perspective. I mean, let’s talk a little bit about that. How is

this similar to any other project, perhaps, that you’ve worked on

in the past?

KAREN CROWE: Well, it definitely has phases like a project.

We’ve had to do a lot of pre-planning to get ready. Just there’s

finding the boat, then purchasing the boat, then equipping and

outfitting the boat.

ANDY CROWE: And that’s tricky because there aren’t many boats

for sale right now.

KAREN CROWE: Yes.

ANDY CROWE: The hurricane wiped out the inventory.

NICK WALKER: Oh, wow.

KAREN CROWE: And a lot of the new inventory was gobbled up by

the charter fleets. So they depend on...

ANDY CROWE: It’s a two-year wait.

9


KAREN CROWE: Yeah. Basically, if you want a new boat, you have

to wait a couple of years minimum. So we had a lot of – and we

also had a bit of a learning curve. We’d never bought a boat

before. So this was...

ANDY CROWE: Yeah, and this is a big boat. It’s a 48-foot

catamaran. So it’s a sailing boat, not a power boat, even though

it has engines on it. So this is just a big catamaran.

KAREN CROWE: Right. We knew that we were the team. It was

going to be me and him. And we also have a pretty good idea of

strengths and weaknesses. We’ve been married for 30 years, and

so I think we know each other by now pretty well. We did a

little bit of division of labor and said, tasks A, B, and C,

we’re going to give those to him. Karen’s better at D, E, and F.

So there was a pretty natural division of labor.

ANDY CROWE: Basically she went out and found the boat, and I

figured out how to pay for it.

BILL YATES: One thing I’ve got to note, too. Karen’s smart

enough she got a double-hull catamaran; right? So there’s kind

of a your side and his side.

KAREN CROWE: That’s right.

BILL YATES: If it comes to that.

10


KAREN CROWE: And there’s a forward cockpit and an aft cockpit.

So there’s always someplace to escape for both of us.

NICK WALKER: You mentioned hurricanes. Of course the first

thing that pops into my mind is, you know...

ANDY CROWE: Well, being a weather guy, yeah.

BILL YATES: Yeah, Mr. Weather Guy. Imagine that.

ANDY CROWE: I expect a heads-up if you see any headed my way,

just so you know.

NICK WALKER: Okay, I’ve got your number. But really, I mean,

you’ve got to research the times of year to go, where to go, what

the weather’s like.

ANDY CROWE: Yeah, and our insurance policy helps with that, too,

because they say between July 1st and November 1st you are not to

be above 12 degrees, 40 minutes north latitude, which is

basically Grenada. You’ve got to go down to Grenada and hide

out, or below.

NICK WALKER: All right. Well, that sets my mind at ease a

little bit because I do have these visions, you know, “The

weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed,” you

know. I picture this...

11


KAREN CROWE: My college roommates have given me all the Gilligan

jokes you can imagine, yes.

ANDY CROWE: You know what’s funny is there’s probably a third of

our listeners who have no idea what Gilligan...

BILL YATES: Gilligan? What’s that?

KAREN CROWE: Google it.

BILL YATES: Is that on YouTube?

KAREN CROWE: “Gilligan’s Island.”

BILL YATES: Who’s Gilligan?

ANDY CROWE: Go ahead.

Cost Management

NICK WALKER: Well, you know, you mentioned budget. You

mentioned you had to figure out how to pay for it. Okay. The

elephant in the room. Are you guys billionaires? How did you

pull this off?

ANDY CROWE: Well, it was through some creative stuff. You know,

a lot of people do it different ways, Nick. And so it’s funny,

there are actually people out there who create a GoFundMe page,

12


and they will do videos of their sailing adventures and get

money. No, we’re not doing that. We’re continuing to be

involved in Velociteach, obviously continuing to sell books and

resources and things like that, and just be as involved as we can

be while we’re on the water. So it’s just a sabbatical, is what

it is. We’re not looking at it as retirement or anything else.

BILL YATES: Yeah, it was one of the funny things, I thought, as

I was thinking about people listening and hearing this story.

It’s like, okay, this is equivalent to buying a vacation home or

something like that.

ANDY CROWE: Yeah.

BILL YATES: Now, there’s some risk; right? I mean, it’s one

thing to buy a house you can walk around in and imagine yourself

in. You can figure out where stuff fits and where you’re going

to go shopping and all that. Not the case here.

KAREN CROWE: True.

Learning New Practices

BILL YATES: It’s very different. But it’s still, you know, it’s

not ridiculous. But there are things about a boat, a sailing

vessel, that are just different. To your point, Karen, you’re

learning to sail. You’re learning what kind of equipment do I

need for this. What special training do I need, certifications

13


that I need. And it made me think about project managers for

some of the projects that we inherit and have to lead. Many

times we’re getting blown away with new stuff. There’s so much

new stuff to learn.

ANDY CROWE: Right.

KAREN CROWE: Yes, exactly.

BILL YATES: So how did you guys tackle some of that?

KAREN CROWE: Well, some of it is thinking ahead to, okay, we

know we’re going to be living on the boat, and some of the basic

tasks of living are cooking and eating. So I start researching,

first on the Internet, then buying cookbooks and thinking, all

right, how are we going to provision? What kinds – we got a

little taste of that when we did our certification class because

we were living on a catamaran there. But I went to the grocery

store with our captain to kind of see what sorts of things are

available in the Caribbean. It’s different than what you can

find at home.

ANDY CROWE: Quite a bit.

KAREN CROWE: Yeah, it’s quite a bit – there are plenty of

stores. It’s not like we’re going to be out in the wilderness

with nothing to purchase. But there’s just different kinds of

things available. Doing a lot of reading and research and

14


planning for how are we going to store food? How are going to

get food out there? My guess is we’ll be eating a lot of fish

because Andy wants to do a lot of fishing.

ANDY CROWE: Yeah, yeah.

KAREN CROWE: So I bought a huge fish cookbook.

ANDY CROWE: And my buddy...

KAREN CROWE: I mean, a monster. I mean, this thing, it could be

a coffee table book, it is so big.

ANDY CROWE: It’s impressive. My friend gave me three fishing

rods that he had made for us with the boat’s name on it.

BILL YATES: Oh, nice.

NICK WALKER: Oh, wow.

ANDY CROWE: And so they’re beautiful. They’re

absolutely beautiful.

KAREN CROWE: Yeah, it was a nice gift.

ANDY CROWE: It was a really nice gift as a bon voyage gift. So

I’ve got to. My pride’s going to require that I catch some fish.

Or at least show pictures of me holding fish.

15


KAREN CROWE: And I figure I want to cook more than fish

tacos, so...

ANDY CROWE: Yeah.

Gratitude

BILL YATES: I should ask, how did you come up with the name?

KAREN CROWE: Hmm. It was a long process. We kept trading. We

started a document together that we both had access to. And

every time one of us thought of a name we liked, we would put it

in the document.

ANDY CROWE: Andy who hates collaborating.

KAREN CROWE: He didn’t have a choice here. Well, one of the

things we had read was, when you’re out on the water, in the

boating community, nobody learns each other’s last names. You’re

known as Andy and Karen on Gratitude. So the name of your boat

essentially becomes how you’re known.

ANDY CROWE: A big part of your identity.

KAREN CROWE: A big part. It’s literally your name when you’re

out on the water. So we were like, no, we’re not going to be

Andy and Karen, Party Central, you know, or Andy and Karen, I

don’t know, we’re just not going to come up with something – we

16


wanted to come up with something that was representative of us.

And I would say we’re spiritual people. We are also, like,

philosophical people. We wanted whatever name we came up with to

have meaning, something personal to us.

ANDY CROWE: Gratitude has been an important concept.

KAREN CROWE: Yes, yes.

Project Resources

BILL YATES: I want to shift gears a little. I’m going to pivot

a little bit.

KAREN CROWE: Yeah.

BILL YATES: How, again, as you’re figuring out basics like how

do I outfit this boat, how do I find reputable people that I can

trust to give me good guidance on things like routes we should

take, reports that we should hit, or stores that we can trust, or

good advice to get. How did you find those resources? Because,

again, you’re not, you know, it’s not something local where you

can talk to a neighbor and see who you use as a plumber, as an

electrician, et cetera. How did you guys find those resources

that you felt like you could trust?

17


KAREN CROWE: Well, I would say there are sailing forums. There

are tons of books. There are tons of YouTube channels. So it

was easy to kind of start there, just get a sense of who are

people talking about? Who are people recommending? And

interestingly enough, the couple that we’re buying our boat from,

we discovered from a YouTube channel. They have a very popular

YouTube channel, in fact.

ANDY CROWE: They’re YouTube stars.

KAREN CROWE: When we began to talk to them about buying their

boat, he turned out to be an incredible resource. He’s basically

opened up his Rolodex. Again, if you’re younger than 25, a

Rolodex is what we used to use before Contacts.

BILL YATES: Gilligan used a Rolodex.

KAREN CROWE: Exactly.

Risk Analysis

BILL YATES: Nick mentioned one of the biggest risks in my mind,

which is a hurricane. Talk to me about the risk that you guys

were looking at as you stepped into this? And I know, certainly

with Andy, his brain naturally goes into risk register, identify

plan, take action. How did you guys walk through some of that?

18


ANDY CROWE: That was an interesting process because you know

with risks you do quantitative and qualitative analysis. And the

reason you do that after you’ve identified the risks is it’s easy

for our brains, the way the human brain works, to get tricked and

to start looking at the wrong risks. And so, you know, what most

people are freaked out about that talk to me is about pirates.

Well, it does happen. You know, there are incidents of piracy.

But the cruisers that I’ve talked to, the sailors that I’ve

talked to, not only have they never had anything happen, they’ve

never known anyone who’s actually had that happen. So now you

look at it, and you say, okay, probability and impact. The

probability’s really low. Now, the impact would be high. But

things like that.

So you start to look at the risks. Here’s the real risk. The

real risk is you drop your anchor, you think it’s set, you go to

bed in some marina or some harbor at night, and the wind shifts

direction, and your anchor drags and blows you into a reef, and

your boat sinks. That’s a real risk. That’s something you have

to worry about. So, you know, it’s the things that you look at –

and, you know, so we’ve gone through training on how to do that

and how to set the anchor and how to know and those types of

things. But that’s still a legitimate risk.

Weather is a big risk. Running into another boat, you know, not

paying attention, just sloppiness, things like that. And you

read a lot of horror stories about those types of things. So

people who come into a marina late at night, and it’s dark, and

19


they don’t know the channel markings well, and they miss. You

know, you’re supposed to go through the channel, and maybe they

go on the wrong side of it and run into a reef, and their boat

sinks. And it happens all the time. And so those are the kinds

of things you worry about.

KAREN CROWE: Well, and even running into a sandbar. You use

charts to know the depth of the different areas that you’re

going. But especially in a place like the Bahamas, where it’s

very shallow, a place that’s been affected by a hurricane, the

bottom of the ocean shifts. It’s not a static environment.

ANDY CROWE: We were in a wedding in Florida last weekend. The

groom wanted to come in on a boat; okay? So I’m with him because

I’m part of the wedding party. We’re on the boat. Another guy

is piloting the boat, a very able pilot for this boat. And he

runs it right into the sand, and the boat stops, and the engine

cuts off. Start it up, engine cuts off again. And we’re sitting

there, on the way to the ceremony, you know, and it’s just – so,

yeah, even guys who know what they’re doing can – they say

there’s two kinds of sailors: ones that have gone aground and

ones that lie about it, won’t admit it.

BILL YATES: Nick, I think of Rodney Dangerfield in “Caddyshack.”

ANDY CROWE: “Caddyshack,” oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

BILL YATES: I’ve got control of this.

20


NICK WALKER: That’s interesting because the risk assessment is

sort of looking outward, as well. You’re not just looking at,

okay, what do we need to do for our own benefit, but you’re

having to worry about others that you don’t have any control

over, really.

ANDY CROWE: Yes. Yeah.

KAREN CROWE: That’s correct.

ANDY CROWE: Environmental awareness, big time.

Stakeholders

NICK WALKER: So it’s the two of you, but yet it is bigger than

just the two of you. What sort of stakeholders are involved in

this project?

ANDY CROWE: The first stakeholder is the poor guy that we’ve got

coming down to sail with us for eight days. He’s a Coast Guard

skipper. And he’s going to get us out of all our bad habits and

back into the straight and narrow on this. So that guy would be

the first one.

KAREN CROWE: I would say our kids are definitely stakeholders.

They’re all three onboard. I used another pun unintentionally,

sorry. We asked each one of them what they thought about it, and

21


they each had an interesting response. Different, but they were

all supportive.

ANDY CROWE: And we’re basically – we’re empty nesters.

So, yeah.

KAREN CROWE: Yes, yes.

ANDY CROWE: Recent empty nesters, but still.

KAREN CROWE: Our youngest is in college now, which blows my

mind. She was very supportive. She said: “Mom, go live your

life. I think it’s great.” Our middle son, going to be living

in our home and maintaining it while we’re gone. So he loved the

idea because it means he can save a little money for a house of

his own. And our oldest has always been a boat person, so he was

ecstatic. He was really thrilled. But they’re definitely

stakeholders because we’re going to be depending on them while

we’re away, not just in caring for our home and our other

property, but just to stay in touch.

ANDY CROWE: And we’ve got lots of friends and extended family

that we hope will come visit us while we’re on this. We’ve got

three staterooms on the boat, so hopefully we’ll only be using

one of those most of the time.

NICK WALKER: And those of us here, you know, left behind at

Velociteach, obviously are going to miss you. Have you had to

22


make any sort of preparations? You know, “This has got to happen

while I’m gone?”

ANDY CROWE: Very much. We’ve been putting a lot of systems and

practices and processes into place. We expect to have

communication ability on the boat, so Internet satellite. So

we’ll be able to communicate while we’re gone. Bill and I have

worked together, how long now, Bill? Fourteen years? Fifteen? A

long time.

BILL YATES: Oh, yeah. Yeah, 15 years.

ANDY CROWE: And so we kind of know what to expect from each

other and have worked out most of the kinks in our working

relationship. And so, yeah, we’ve definitely made some changes.

One good thing, Nick, we went through a big project in 2018 to

get our resources realigned with the Sixth Edition PMBOK Guide.

And so those are stable for four years; you know? And not that

we won’t make any changes because I’m famous for tinkering and

tweaking. But those resources are now out there, and they’re

somewhat stable. And then we’re using that. That was a big part

of this window in the timing, as well.

BILL YATES: So Karen, we’ll see you in about three years.

ANDY CROWE: This just got extended.

KAREN CROWE: Don’t put any new ideas into his head, Bill.

23


BILL YATES: Just kidding. No, I think about any organization

that takes on a big new project, people are going to be asked to

drop things or, okay, 60 percent of your job is now this new

thing; 40 percent is here. And I’ve seen you both having to do

that in relationships. You both are very involved with the

community. There’s family. There’s community service that

you do.

ANDY CROWE: Right.

BILL YATES: And then you have two organizations that you run.

So I’ve seen you doing a lot of that. Very similar to the kind

of analysis we have to do when we’re taking on a new project. I

think, okay, there are things I’ve got to get off my plate.

Who’s going to pick it up and run with it?

ANDY CROWE: And you know what? We’re a pretty organized,

process-driven company. But it was funny, that Sixth Edition

conversion was bigger than any of us thought. It was the

conversion of our books and resources, refactoring some of our

online resources, rewriting all of our question content. And the

more you look at it, it was a big project. Would you agree?

BILL YATES: Absolutely.

KAREN CROWE: We created four new mind maps.

ANDY CROWE: Yes. You know that...

24


KAREN CROWE: I mean, brand new.

ANDY CROWE: You know that first-hand.

KAREN CROWE: Right, so it was big.

Communication

BILL YATES: I think of some of the communication challenges that

you guys have because of where you’re going to be located. And I

think of some of the guests that we’ve had in this room before,

and how they talked about, whether it was Dr. Chuck Casto – Andy,

you remember him describing when he was in Japan, and some of the

issues they had as this nuclear disaster had just occurred, this

event. And, okay, what kind of communication can we depend on or

not? And just the urgency that we have sometimes. And I know

that, you know, that’s some risk planning that you guys have in

terms of looking at what communication will you have available to

you.

ANDY CROWE: I will give that some thought as I’m pretending I’m

Jimmy Buffett surfing, fishing. You know, we are going to be

near shore most of the time. We expect to have cell phone

communications. We expect to have data. We expect to have

Internet in limited quantities, although the goal is not to go

stay on Facebook for two years.

BILL YATES: Right.

25


NICK WALKER: Are you going to be crossing any major bodies of

water? Any oceans?

KAREN CROWE: Not right away.

ANDY CROWE: If I have my way, eventually. We’ll see. We’ll get

there.

NICK WALKER: Okay.

KAREN CROWE: We’re not saying no. But I know that a lot of the

people that we’ve talked to who have major objections...

ANDY CROWE: Which most people don’t, but a few do.

KAREN CROWE: Most people don’t, but there are a few, and they’re

pretty vocal. I think that’s what they’re worried about.

They’re worried that we’re going to go out and try and cross the

Atlantic in the first month. That’s not our goal. Our goal is

to get more competent as sailors and then see where it takes us.

NICK WALKER: So you’re not ruling it out.

KAREN CROWE: Not ruling it out, but...

ANDY CROWE: Far from it, Nick.

26


KAREN CROWE: But no, no, it’s a long-term goal. We’ll put it

that way. Because you don’t know how things are going to go.

You’ve got to, in your planning, you’ve got to have room for life

to happen.

WBS and Project Conclusion

NICK WALKER: So what else has to happen now, between now and the

time you actually hit the water?

ANDY CROWE: That’s funny. So we started off, one of the first

things we did is we have a room in our home that kind of became

the sailing room. And we spread out a big piece of butcher paper

and started putting sticky notes on it and created a WBS for

everything that has to happen. And there were categories of

things that have to happen with work; things that have to happen

with home, with our house; things that we need to do relationally

with our children to get them launched and so forth; things that

we need to do to find a boat; then things we need to do to

provision that boat in whatever state we find it. So there was

quite a bit. So there was an awful lot. And those were not all

of the categories.

I spent hours watching videos of people repair boats and trying

to figure out what tools I was going to need because there is a

lot of maintenance on a sailboat in the ocean. Now, at this

point, we’ve staged half of our life in a storage locker near the

boat. And soon we’re going to move all of that stuff, in less

27


than two weeks, onto the boat and actually move on. And that’s

when things get a lot more interesting.

But right now, I think, for us, or at least from my perspective,

the things that have to happen, we just have to get everything

situated. We’re almost to the point now we’ve made so many lists

and put so many things down there. We’ve had friends help drive

things down to Florida. The boat’s in Fort Lauderdale today.

And they’ve been driving down there and dropping stuff off that

we can store. We’ve had things shipped down. We’ve carried

multiple suitcases down over several trips. Now we almost just

want to get it on the boat and look around and see what’s

missing, which is not the most project management way to go about

it, but it’s probably about the best, most practical way.

KAREN CROWE: We probably have a little bit more navigation

planning to do. I know that the first eight days we will have a

captain with us, and he’s made this route that he’s taking us on

many times. So we can trust him. But, you know, part of the

purpose of bringing him onboard is to help us get better at route

planning. I would say that that doesn’t have to happen before we

leave, but it’s got to happen pretty quickly upon our departure

because, once he’s gone, it’ll be up to us to figure out our

routes.

ANDY CROWE: There’s all kinds of navigational tools you use.

And so that’s an area where we’re both looking forward to

sharpening our skills.

28


NICK WALKER: It occurs to me that you have to be a project

manager to do something like this, whether you have ever been one

or not. You become one, I guess, in this process.

ANDY CROWE: Yeah. You get dunked in very quickly, steeped in

all of the things. And either that, you know, I guess the

advantage is we’re kind of getting philosophical about it now and

saying, look, whatever we forgot, there’s probably a Costco down

there. And so...

KAREN CROWE: And a Target.

ANDY CROWE: Yeah, we’ll just figure it out. But yeah, you

really do. You’ve got to think through a lot of areas of your

life. And some areas are really easy, and some of them are a

little trickier. You know, if you take medication, well, how am

I going to get medication in the Caribbean? And where am I going

to get it? And do they have the same – there are so many

different things to consider. And so we do, we’ve got a lot of –

we’ve put a lot of planning into this trip.

NICK WALKER: And I suppose, too, there are folks listening who

would say, you know, I didn’t realize, but I’ve been a project

manager all my life.

ANDY CROWE: Yeah.

29


KAREN CROWE: Yes, yes, yes. I think any time you are

organizing, thinking ahead, categorizing, you’re managing a

project. This is definitely – I would say this qualifies.

ANDY CROWE: Well, and both of us, we had these moments where we

were feeling overwhelmed. And starting to document some of these

things and just talking through the concerns with each other,

because I guess we’re the two primary stakeholders in this, and

just talking through the things that stressed, well, it was

interesting because at one point – I think Karen is just better

at doing certain kinds of paperwork than I am. It makes me

insane to go through some of this stuff. And she just plows

through it and methodically gets it done. But at one point I was

getting overwhelmed with paperwork. And she said, “Well, let

me.” Well, it was nice; you know? And then I was having to

negotiate for something else, and that’s something I didn’t mind

doing. And so we found a good tradeoff and were able to

complement each other’s skill sets.

Follow the Journey

NICK WALKER: So obviously we will be following your journey.

Can others do the same?

ANDY CROWE: Yeah, absolutely. We have a blog called

SailingWithGratitude.com, and that’s probably one good way.

We’re setting up an Instagram, I think it is @sv – for sailing

30

http://www.sailingwithgratitude.com/


vessel – @svgratitude. And we’ll definitely try and keep some

content out there as this journey gets started.

NICK WALKER: Do you feel prepared? Are you ready?

KAREN CROWE: I think we’re as ready as you can be for someone

who’s never done this before.

ANDY CROWE: It’s funny. It’s like asking first-time parents,

you know, are you ready? Well, yeah, I guess, you know, I’m

ready for this baby to show up.

KAREN CROWE: Someone who’s never been married before. Are you

ready? Well, I mean, you don’t know what you don’t know.

ANDY CROWE: Yeah, I think we are. We’ve gone through a decent

amount of training. We’ve done a ton of research. We have read,

read, read. And obviously we’ve lived onboard a catamaran for a

little while and spent some time and learned various techniques

and methods. So, yeah, I think we’re ready for the next step.

NICK WALKER: So obviously you have all your supplies ready to

go, but there are two things here that we need to add to the

supplies, and that is two Manage This coffee mugs.

ANDY CROWE: Oh, yeah, we couldn’t live without that.

KAREN CROWE: I can’t wait to use them.

31


BILL YATES: Every morning it’ll be your first memory. You’ll

wake up and go, awww.

KAREN CROWE: First thing that I see.

NICK WALKER: Well, we can’t wait to hear from you from time to

time. Thank you so much, Karen, for being here.

KAREN CROWE: It was a pleasure.

NICK WALKER: I just – I wish you the best. This is going to be

some adventure, for sure.

A special word to our listeners now. It’s a reminder that you’ve

just earned free PDUs, Professional Development Units, toward

your recertification, just for listening to this podcast. To

claim them, go to Velociteach.com and choose Manage This Podcast

from the top of the page. Click the button that says Claim PDUs,

and click through the steps.

That’s it for us here on Manage This. We hope you’ll tune back

in on February 19th for our next podcast. In the meantime, we’d

love to have you visit us at Velociteach.com/managethis to

subscribe to this podcast, to see a transcript of the show, or to

contact us. And tweet us at @manage_this if you have any

questions about our podcasts or about project

management certifications.

32

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edigitaltranscription.com • 01/20/2019 • edigitaltranscription.mobi


Well, that’s all for this episode. Thanks for joining us. Until

next time, keep calm and Manage This.

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Manage This Podcast · Web viewA special word to our listeners now. It’s a reminder that you’ve just earned free PDUs, Professional Development Units, toward your recertification,