If you are following my Admiral’s Angle columns here on Women and Cruising and if you love books, you will want to catch #42 – My Bookshelf, A Mental Voyage.
This is Part One of three-part series on books aboard. Part Two will be about Cruising Sagas recommended by the Admirals, and Part Three will include our recommendations for your Reference Shelf.
What’s really great about the way these columns are/will be posted on Women and Cruising is that all the titles are linked directly to Amazon! Wow, I wish it had been that easy to find these books in the first place!
The Admirals, of course, recommended more books than I could fit into the three columns, so we will add those, too. If you have some titles you’d like to recommend, send them to us and we’ll add them to the list!
My husband and I are thinking of living aboard a sailboat in four to five years from now. His daughter is grown and just purchased her first home while my daughter is a freshmen in high school.
I suppose it is harder for me to take to the idea of living aboard because I have a really great paying job and I feel I need to help my daughter with college. I am only 39 so leaving my career is harder than I thought it would be. Any advice for me? My husband is 47 and more than ready to leave tomorrow. He is self employed and can build or fix anything so he will not have a problem finding work along the way of our adventure.
I look forward to hearing from you if you have time or advice.
– Judy and John
(Women and Cruising sent Judy’s question to several of our friends/contributors for their thoughts. You can read Beth Leonard ’s response here, and Sherry McCampbell’s here.Here is the third response we received, from Kathleen Watt.)
Kathleen Watt responds:
Dear Judy,
When I was asked if I would be interested in responding to your question, I not only wanted to, but felt compelled to do so.
You see, my story is not unlike yours.
I moved aboard and went cruising at age 38.
I had a daughter who was a sophomore in high school, a great, well paying job, and was about to complete a university degree that I had worked long and hard for, while working full-time for many years.
I was not a boater (I got pretty seasick), I was not a water person (terrified of deep water and not a strong swimmer) and I had never sailed before. …Read more
My big passion as I have cruised has been exploring language and culture. I have always loved getting to know other cultures: it is what drew me to the Peace Corps in the 1970s and part of what drew me to cruising almost 15 years later.
Cruising provides a perfect pace for getting to know cultures.
You shop in the markets and eat in your own kitchen – or on the streets. This is so much more satisfying than living in hostels and hotels and eating in restaurants – where everything you do is a commercial tourist transaction.
As cruisers, we can hang in a culture a while and get involved. To get to know a place and a culture, it always helps to have a mission, and though I usually have several “missions” (things that I am seeking out or interested in), so often my mission has been to get to know the language.
Really, if you can’t talk with local people then you miss out on so much
It’s like watching a movie with the sound turned off. …Read more
My husband and I are thinking of living aboard a sailboat in four to five years from now. His daughter is grown and just purchased her first home while my daughter is a freshmen in high school.
I suppose it is harder for me to take to the idea of living aboard because I have a really great paying job and I feel I need to help my daughter with college. I am only 39 so leaving my career is harder than I thought it would be. Any advice for me? My husband is 47 and more than ready to leave tomorrow. He is self employed and can build or fix anything so he will not have a problem finding work along the way of our adventure.
I look forward to hearing from you if you have time or advice.
– Judy and John
(Women and Cruising sent Judy’s question to several of our friends/contributors for their thoughts. Beth Leonard was the first to respond. Here is the second response we received, from Sherry McCampbell.)
Sherry McCampbell responds:
Hi Judy,
You don’t say what your job is… but I guess it doesn’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things.
To just give you my story… the first time I went cruising, I left at age 37. I gave up a job I really loved (computer programming) and went sailing.
After 9 years of cruising the Caribbean I am no longer pleading with visiting family and friends to forsake extra shoes, hats and toiletries so that they can pack and carry the most recent best sellers in their one precious piece of luggage now allowed by many airlines.
I no longer search the book exchanges for a book by any author, in English, that I have yet to read. …Read more
Everyone has heard what has happened in Haiti, now a number of cruising sailors are organizing themselves into flotillas of private yachts to attempt to supplement aid being delivered by governments and NGO’s.
OceansWatch is helping to coordinate a fleet of sailing vessels to take food, medical aid, relief supplies and support to Haiti. A growing number of sailboats in Florida and Jamaica are preparing to depart in February for Haiti. They will take as many supplies as they can carry and get to them before they depart. Others will follow when the situation and security stabilizes somewhat and others are making plans for longer term sustainable aid delivered by yachts. …Read more
My husband and I are thinking of living aboard a sailboat in four to five years from now. His daughter is grown and just purchased her first home while my daughter is a freshmen in high school.
I suppose it is harder for me to take to the idea of living aboard because I have a really great paying job and I feel I need to help my daughter with college. I am only 39 so leaving my career is harder than I thought it would be. Any advice for me? My husband is 47 and more than ready to leave tomorrow. He is self employed and can build or fix anything so he will not have a problem finding work along the way of our adventure.
I look forward to hearing from you if you have time or advice.
– Judy and John
(Women and Cruising sent Judy’s question to several of our friends/contributors for their thoughts. Here is the first of several responses we received.)
Beth Leonard responds:
I can really relate to what you are saying – when my husband suggested we sail off into the sunset, we were both working as international management consultants, based out of Sweden.
We were in the partnership window, my job paid extremely well and I loved it – except that it took everything I had and left me no time or energy for other things that were important to me.
Gwen Hamlin and I both read Motion and thoroughly enjoyed it. Janna has a great sense of humor, and she certainly captures the dynamics of cruising, especially that of a couple learning to live together on a small boat. I highly recommend it!
Janna will be giving seminars on Sunday and Monday. Monday is Women’s Day at the Boat Show!
Pam Wall will once again be a presenter at the Sail America Strictly Sail Boat Show at Navy Pier in Chicago. The Boat Show dates are January 28 through January 31. Pam will be speaking on her Family Sailing Around the World, Cruising the Bahamas, Outfitting for Blue Water Cruising. This year Pam presents a new lecture on sailing across the Atlantic on the lovely four masted bark, Sea Cloud!
Details of Pam’s Seminars:
Sea Cloud
Come and join the Trans Atlantic Passage of the lovely and historical yacht SEA CLOUD. This beautiful 367 foot private yacht was built for Marjorie Merryweather Post and is now a charter yacht that works the Caribbean in the winter and the Mediterranean in the summer.
Pam Wall just recently sailed from the Canary Islands to Antigua and wants to share this wonderful 16 day passage aboard the bark SEA CLOUD. Come and see what it is like to cross the Atlantic with the trade winds and enjoy the life aboard a square rigged sailing ship. …Read more
In case you have been wondering, Women and Cruising has no corporate office. Our webmaster Sylvie works on the website and blog from her boat in the Caribbean.
Our contributors usually send in their posts and articles from their boats, using wifi, a satellite phone, or a local internet cafe.
I correspond with our contributors by email or Skype. Gwen and I often discuss and edit her Admiral’s Angle column while chatting via Skype. …Read more
We’ve just posted Admiral’s Angle column #41 to the Women and Cruising site, Taking Passions Cruising:
“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.
If you’re not an animal lover, you may as well skip this particular log entry. Just go ahead and exit the site, or move on to the next post, because what I’m about to talk about will only deeply affect those who have large hearts for God’s creatures.
Here’s a story for you
Back in the fall of 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue and
happened upon Cuba, which he claimed for Spain.
Among the many things he brought ashore were his Spanish horses, beautiful creatures bred for their hardiness, endurance and courageous spirit, and with them, Columbus established two horse farms on the island.
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If you are following my Admiral’s Angle columns here on Women and Cruising and if you love books, you will want to catch #42 – My Bookshelf, A Mental Voyage.
My world has changed!
