Under the guise of a routine checkup, I set up an appointment to see our doctor before we quit our jobs and lost our medical benefits.
I didn’t need the doctor to check me out; I wanted her to check out my list of First Aid supplies for our boat. Paul and I were going to sail around the world and I had no idea what medical emergencies we might face.
Dr. Smith smiled when I confessed the real reason for my visit. A sailor herself, she gamely reviewed my list, took some notes and then handed me a catalogue of first aid kits for Emergency Medical Technicians. She suggested that I order one of these First Aid kits as they were more complete than the average camping kit. She also asked me to return in a week, with my husband, two oranges and 2 pigs’ feet.
A week later, during her lunch hour, she taught Paul and I how to give the orange injections. Apparently injecting an orange, with its tough outer peel and soft interior, was similar to giving a person a shot. Then she made slits in the pigs’ feet and showed us how to sew basic sutures before passing the feet to us to stitch up. I was surprised at how rubbery and impenetrable the skin was, and each haphazard stitch I made marked my struggle. Paul’s stitches, on the other hand, were evenly spaced and neatly done. …Read more
Although it is a hefty paperback, The Boat Galley Cookbook by cruisers Carolyn Shearlock and Jan Irons is likely to help raise your waterline, because it consolidates in one volume many culinary resources cruising chefs have previously felt obliged to carry.
Indeed, no cruising cookbook I have ever seen has so deliberately set out to be a comprehensive examination of how to meet the challenges of cooking afloat. “We each faced a huge learning curve when we first began cruising,” say the authors, “so, we’ve tried to pass on all the things we wish we’d known!”
During our stay in Tauranga, New Zealand, the kids from two boats (Namani and Alouette) really hit it off. One activity they particularly enjoyed was learning to program computer graphics using a program called KTurtle.
Seeing their enthusiasm for this, we parents agreed to assign the kids a group project as part of their home schooling: to create a video documentary about life on a sailboat. The idea was for our children to learn new computer skills while producing an informative and interesting video, not to mention having fun. …Read more
After finishing Wendy Hinman’s Tightwads on the Loose, I placed it on my bookshelf next to Jana Cawrse Esarey’s The Motion of the Ocean and Torre DeRoche’s Swept: Love with a Chance of Drowning, because, like those two books, Tightwads on the Loose is a brightly-written sailing memoir by a young female cruiser from America’s West Coast.
All three books speak for a younger generation who choose to reach for the adventure of crossing oceans and exploring new cultures sooner rather than later, who go despite tight budgets in small, uncomplicated boats without waiting for the comforts and wallets of middle age, and who, because they are women, don’t gloss over the challenging dynamics of relationships shared and tested in the intense intimacy of cruising 24/7 in the confines of a small vessel
There are several differences, however, between Tightwads on the Loose and the other two books. …Read more
I’d like to let you know about the Cruising Women program that Pam Wall, Beth Leonard and I will be giving at Cruisers University on April 25-26 in Annapolis, Maryland.
Last April, as Pam Wall and I finished our second year as faculty at Cruisers University, (a fun weekend in Annapolis of in-depth courses to prepare people for cruising), we were approached by Paul Jacobs, the director of Cruisers University and manager of the Annapolis Sailboat and Powerboat Shows:
“I would like you two to put together an in-depth two-day program on cruising, just for women.”
TWO DAYS! Imagine what we could do in two whole days –MUCH, MUCH more than is ever possible in a one hour Women and Cruising seminar! Of course we were excited! But….
“We want BOATS – we don’t want to do this all in a classroom – we want to take women aboard several boats, and spend time aboard learning about the equipment and routines aboard. To see it, touch it, use it…” …Read more
“The world was theirs” is Mattie McAlarney’s favorite headline written about her seven-and-a-half-year trip around the world with husband Henry. The couple wrapped up a 70-country cruise aboard their 39-foot Corbin Center Cockpit 2 Extreme in 2009. “I wanted to be home for my 70th birthday,” Mattie tells me as I admire the aft-cabin curtains sewn from hand-embroidered silk fabric bought in some exotic eastern market. “I made it back a year early.”
Since then 2 Extreme has been on the market. Media outlets ranging from Pacific-based sailing magazines to Pasco County Florida’s local newspaper has interviewed this fascinating couple with so many stories to tell. …Read more
It’s a shame that more girls aren’t trained as marine mechanics because, frankly, with the tiny spaces one has to maneuver in to work on a boat, most men, with their big, cumbersome frames, just aren’t built for it.
The job we tackled on Monday, after putting off boat work to celebrate my birthday all weekend, was to figure out why our fuel gauge wasn’t working.
I’d gotten on the Catalina 34 site and Cruiser’s Forum to ask how I could figure out whether the problem was with the fuel gauge on the instrument panel or the sender float in the fuel tank. I got a lot of advice on how to figure this out, along with the guess that we had a bad sender float, and if that was the case, it was more trouble than it was worth to replace it. …Read more
“You baked that? On your boat?? In a solar oven???”
Whenever I present a double-layer homemade carrot cake like this one I’m sure to be met with incredulous guests. Most cruisers do little baking anyway, so I had them on “from scratch”. Trusting their culinary fortunes to the sun is a real stretch – no way was this delectable dessert baked on the foredeck!
Truth is, the Sea Lady’s galley oven serves mostly as storage for pots & pans. Baking happens on deck, fueled by the toasty Caribbean sun. …Read more
You hear the rattle of chain and you run for the binoculars – everyone knows that anchoring is a spectator sport. You wonder, “Are they coming our way?” You sneak a quick peek at their anchor. You think, “Oh good, it’s not a CQR.” The guy is at the helm. The tiny woman is at the bow, and they don’t have a windlass. Then you settle down to watch the show just as all hell breaks loose. He starts yelling and she throws everything overboard in a big pile. Oh joy!
Have you ever noticed how a normally loving relationship can quickly turn into a battle of the anchorage? When things don’t go as planned, people get excited. Voices are raised, get louder and louder, the words harsher, the emotions higher with every exchange.
Well it need not be such a trying ordeal. In fact, anchoring should be a lovely dance in the harbour, a celebration of a successful passage. That final step that signifies you’ve made it safely, and now with just a few more simple steps, it will be cocktail time, your favourite time of day. …Read more
I don’t mean the t-shirts. I know absolutely nothing about the quality of the manufacturer whose website I found them on. Nor can I blame their product design; they’re simply reacting to the market and public perception.
What offends me to the bottom of my unabashedly feminist soul is the automatic assumption of gender roles — that in any boating couple, the man is the captain and the woman is in the subordinate position. That’s the way the shirts are designed and there’s no other option. The professional one with the collar and the “Captain” designation is cut for a man’s body, and the cute pink one that is cut for the female is designated “First Mate.”
A rather dread metaphor for squeezing children into roles defined at birth by gender, whether they fit or not, now that I think about it.
It’s OFFICIAL! Transfer of ownership of SPARROW, a classic Marshall 22′ catboat for picnic charters on the Swansboro waterfront 2013.
In 1997, 15 years ago I began a journey with a vessel along the Carolina coast with my two children. We intended to give other sailing kids a sense of their seafaring heritage. That journey turned into flotillas, camp workshops, teacher staff development, national conference speaker invitations and cross country presentations about the maritime arts.
But all that came to a halt this past year when my Mom’s condition worsened and my Father was holding on~
After the worst emotional storm of my life, my Mom passed on June 15th…..
She had been lost for some time suffering from alzheimers. It took me a couple months to mourn her passing and not sailing before her spirit awakened in me a new vision.
Upon one of our last conversations, I asked her, “if you could go anywhere and do anything right now, what would you do?” and she said, “go sailing“. …Read more
We have just tallied through the contributions we posted on Women and Cruising in 2012. Looking back on these 12 articles, I enjoy seeing this community of women continue to grow. Women and Cruising is not a planned top-down website. Instead it grows through the 100 plus women who contribute to it. …Who write something and want to share it with other women. And these articles cause other women to reflect on their own experiences and then contribute something new.
On a personal level, I have made many friends through Women and Cruising. Some women I feel I know because I have read their words here and seen their photos, and then one day we meet… at a boat show or in an anchorage. And so the cruising community grows for all of us! May you make friends through the Women and Cruising connection this year!
Thanks to these 12 women and all the rest of you who have written (and will soon write!) for Women and Cruising. Keep writing for us, keep reflecting on and sharing your experiences!
Here is to a 2013 full of laughter and love, adventure and health, and of course lots of wonderful time on the water!
Here are the 12 blog posts and features articles that interested you most (published on WomenAndCruising.com between Dec 15, 2011 and December 15, 2012.)
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Although it is a hefty paperback, 
After finishing Wendy Hinman’s Tightwads on the Loose, I placed it on my bookshelf next to Jana Cawrse Esarey’s The Motion of the Ocean and Torre DeRoche’s Swept: Love with a Chance of Drowning, because, like those two books, Tightwads on the Loose is a brightly-written sailing memoir by a young female cruiser from America’s West Coast.
You hear the rattle of chain and you run for the binoculars – everyone knows that anchoring is a spectator sport. You wonder, “Are they coming our way?” You sneak a quick peek at their anchor. You think, “Oh good, it’s not a CQR.” The guy is at the helm. The tiny woman is at the bow, and they don’t have a windlass. Then you settle down to watch the show just as all hell breaks loose. He starts yelling and she throws everything overboard in a big pile. Oh joy!
