July, 2010
There are two basic reasons cruisers jump over the side: because they want to or because they have to.
The want-to department consists of snorkeling and scuba diving and hunting for seafood to spear or collect, but also cooling down, swimming a lap around the boat for exercise, or taking a salt-water bath.
The have-to department, however, is mostly boat chores: cleaning the waterline and the bottom, untangling monofilament or nets from the propeller, checking an anchor’s set, and sighting or actually moving an anchor or its rode to retrieve it when fouled. Oh, yeah, and retrieving important items – like prescription sunglasses (ahem!) – when dropped overboard.
People often ask me, when they learn I’m a dive instructor and used to run my boat in charter, how best to set up themselves up for diving.
June, 2010
 It’s an inescapable fact of cruising: we live surrounded by water.
Often deep water.
A landlubber might assume that everyone who chooses the cruising lifestyle has a natural affinity for water. But this is not automatically so.
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May, 2010
A philosophy I picked up twenty years ago from a significant mentor has guided the way I’ve approached most everything since. I call it my Toolbox Theory.
At issue at the time was taking my scuba instructor’s certification. An expensive, challenging, week-long course with a major practical test at the end, it was all daunting in its own right, but additionally it represented a huge step in responsibility for others I wasn’t sure I wanted to take.
My mentor – then the skipper of a popular dive liveaboard in the BVI – said to me: “It’s like this, Gwen. If you do it, it’s a piece of paper in your toolbox. Once it’s there, you can choose to use it or not, but if you don’t, you don’t have the option.”
This advice carried me forward when I might have weaseled out, and, in the end, changed my life. Not just because it turned out I was a good scuba instructor and loved teaching, but because the Toolbox Theory has since guided many subsequent learning opportunities, filling my toolbox with lots of pieces of paper that represent skills I have picked up, including my Coast Guard Captain’s license.
Whether they have thought of it the same way or not, most of the Admirals have a toolbox of their own they are proud of.
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April, 2010
For the aspiring Admiral – that is the cruising woman who wants to be as informed and involved as possible in her cruising experience – the onboard reference shelf is an ideal resource.
Every cruising boat out there has one: at minimum a volume of general seamanship and the manual for the boat’s engine, at maximum a mini library.
The ability to reach for a relevant reference to answer a particular question at hand is helpful, but there’s no reason we can’t, at our leisure, read the whole book to expand our overall knowledge base. » Read full column
March, 2010
 Cruising literature as a genre started with Joshua Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around the World published in 1899. Many who read it were motivated to reach for their own adventure, and many of those who succeeded also wrote up their experiences. More new sailors were inspired to leave the dock and more stories were subsequently chronicled. Now, over a century later, the cruising memoir tradition is alive and flourishing, exploding onto the Internet with myriad websites and blogs.
While Sailing Alone Around the World is a classic and Slocum’s adventures the inspiration for many sailors to take off and circumnavigate, I would have been equally interested to read the experiences and viewpoints his first wife Virginia who sailed the world at his side during thirteen years he was a commercial ship’s captain. By accounts, Ginny was a perfect partner for Slocum and took to their shared life at sea despite several misadventures and despite bearing and raising all their children on board. Wouldn’t Ginny’s perspective be a wonderful one to share? She sounds like an Admiral to me!
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February, 2010
For many cruisers, reading is a major pastime, and the time to read is one of the great gifts of cruising. When Don and I did our big refit in Trinidad in ’99 we added 480 inches of teak shelving, tucked in from stem to stern. It’s the one thing boat designers totally forget about cruising, the amount of books we want to have on board.
Even with all the added shelving, I had to learn I couldn’t keep every book I read. Instead, beginning in ’01, Don and I each kept an Excel spreadsheet booklist. Since then a quick check reveals I have read 414 books and Don has read 283. (Our reading rate slows notably during time we spend back in the US!)
Those totals do not include reference books, manuals, cruising guides or Lonely Planets, and do include more mysteries, romances, and just plain junk than I would like to admit. But that’s the nature of cruisers’ reading; you read what you can swap for, and, for most entries, it was not any big deal to stamp them with our rubber “From the Library of Tackless II” stamp, scribble in the date and port, and leave them on a marina swap shelf.
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January, 2010
A land lubber might be forgiven for thinking that when we commit to the cruising life our main and overriding passion is for sailing. Very often this is true, of course, but we are not one-dimensional creatures. We all have other interests, other passions — some long-standing and others we’ve never had time for before. Some will be the reason we go cruising in the first place, while others will be new discoveries. Many will fit easily with the cruising life-style; but others may take a little adaptive thinking.
 For me, scuba diving was a long-standing passion. It is what got me into boating in the first place and led to the dive-sail charter business. When Don and I made our big decision to take off cruising, I foresaw our voyage as one long string of scuba dives right ‘round the world!
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December, 2009
 If you have family and friends, and you have a boat, and you take that boat somewhere interesting, sooner or later someone will want to visit. You may invite them, or they may invite themselves, but either way, having guests aboard requires forethought and adjustments in routine to ensure that what should be a fun time stays fun.
Having been a charter captain, I have well-considered ideas about how to make visits go smoothly. It turns out most of the Admirals have similar guidelines. It’s no surprise, because, fundamentally, it is all about being a good hostess.
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November, 2009
 One of the nice things about having your own column is that every once in a while you can indulge in a tangent that may seem to be totally off the wall. This time the subject is Julia Child. There’s a movie – Julie & Julia — that’s just opened starring Meryl Streep, based at least in part on Julia’s auto-biographical memoir, My Life in France. With luck it will still be running when this column hits print.
You may be wondering what Julia Child has to do with cruising. From my perspective, quite a lot. Julia Child was an aunt…sort of. » Read full column
October, 2009
 When we set out to cross the sea, no longer are we automatically committed to a one way ride. From almost anywhere in the world we can get back to our starting place (or anywhere else our fancy takes us) for the cost of an airplane ticket. While air travel is not an inconsiderable expense, it’s an option more cruisers are routinely planning for in their budgets …although there is nothing more surreal than undoing a month’s ocean crossing via eight hours on a jet.
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In 2006 I began writing a monthly column for Latitudes and Attitudes magazine, called The Admiral's Angle.
Its aim is to discuss questions and issues that tend to weigh on the minds of cruising women, especially of those just starting out, using input from a far-flung "club" of experienced "Admirals."
It appears here the month after it appears in the magazine. I hope you enjoy them. Gwen Hamlin
» More about the Admirals' Club
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