Through a sequence of connections it would take a page to recount, I’ve come back in touch with a cruiser I first met in a group of West Coast sailors getting ready to leave for the South Pacific from Puerto Vallarta back in 2003.
A series of maintenance problems cropped up and kept Nick and his wife from departing with the rest of us.
The fallout from those problems and the disappointment at the interruption ended up unraveling their cruising plan to the point that they sold the boat and got out.
That was almost six years ago.
What went wrong for them….and how did they fix it?
Nick has since spent a lot of time thinking this all through and realized most if all of it came back on him. With the clarity of hindsight, Nick picked through the debris of his dream and identified a whole series of mistakes that he made that he has since discovered are made rather blithely by many men whose dreams are still tied to the dock.
Out of this excavation, Nick has shaped a whole new strategy for men who want to take off cruising and have their wives come willingly with them. It’s based on the revolutionary idea that it’s the men who have to do some self-examination and adaptive thinking, even projection into their wives’ point on view….in a word change!
The book that resulted from this effort – GET HER ON BOARD – is an amazingly holistic approach to bringing the cruising dream to fruition. Written in a style that should communicate well to men, Nick is surprised that sales demographics suggest that many of his book’s buyers are women!
I read GET HER ON BOARD and thought aHah! “How do I get Don to read this!” This is not just for men trying to figure out how to get their partners to buy into their dream, it should be read by every man who wants a fuller richer life with the women they’ve pledged their lives to. And if they end up getting the dream off the dock and pointed toward a distant horizon, all the better.
| Next week on the Women and Cruising blog: 6 Mistakes men make in sharing their sailing passion (Lessons I learned the hard way), a guest post by Nick O’Kelly.We invited Nick to compose a post for Women and Cruising not only because we suspect we have plenty of male readers trying to figure out what their women need to make the cruising dream work, but because we suspect there are plenty of women readers who’d like to help their guys find a way to make it work better for both of them. |
See also on this website
- Relationships & Roles Aboard: 6 Mistakes men make in sharing their sailing passion (Lessons I learned the hard way), by Nick O’Kelly
More info (external links)
- “GET HER ON BOARD – Secrets to Sharing The Cruising Dream” is available at www.getheronboard.com, Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.
- Visit the “Get Her On Board” blog
I was the one with the cruising dream and knew both of our boats backwards and forwards. My husband did not share that dream and retrospectively, it’s probably a good thing that we did not loose the lines and leave the dock. He was more experienced in the actual knowledge of sailing in extreme weather and I don’t think ever trusted that I could manage the boat in tight or dire circumstances. Consequently that translated to my being uptight when sailing with him, etc. I still dream of going at times, but now it is only a dream. The years to have gone, are passed and I am too old and not able to manage the physical rigors of heavy water sailing.
Me thinks this has more to do with relationships than it does sailing. Sharing a passion is ‘best’, otherwise one person is compromising in the name of love. Most of the women I know whom sail either are competent themselves or trust their husbands’ competency. I have heard quite a few women say they will not sail because they do not have either and their fear is bigger.
Recently read a quote, “it’s easier to find a sailing companion than to teach a companion to love sailing”
I had no idea when we bought that first boat if I would like to sail or not. I knew my partner had a dream and that we should make it happen. So I learned to sail on that boat.
I was comfortable with his competence, and learned how to do things myself.
One very IMPORTANT thing, when I was uncertain, confused or frightened my partner never got excited, or yelled. He always remained calm with me and with whatever situation came up. That solid quiet patience kept me on the boat when things got a little too hairy for me.