Pam Wall and I are going to do two free Women and Cruising seminars at the Strictly Sail Pacific Boat Show on April 16 and 17, 2010.
It’s going to be great fun so come join us!
Strictly Sail Pacific is a great show. It’s held at Jack London Square in Oakland, CA. There will be four days of seminars, lots of boats, lots of marine equipment, and great parties. (We always enjoy the parties at Strictly Sail Pacific…)
With our busy schedules (gotta sail…!) this will be our first Women and Cruising seminar since last October. It will be a happy reunion for us – – and for women and men who have attended the seminar in previous years and have told us they will be back again this year. I’ll be leaving the boat in the Bahamas and flying to Oakland for the show.
The Women and Cruising Seminar is different every time we give it – because it all depends on who is in the audience and what questions they are concerned with. Here are some of the questions that women have asked about during the seminar:
- seasickness
- carrying health insurance and getting medical care in other countries
- what I need to know to cruise and the best ways to learn
- fears about night passages, bad weather, and pirates
- the best ages to take my kids cruising
- handling finances and mail
- getting along aboard and dealing with conflict in small spaces, yelling
- issues women singlehanders might have
- provisioning
- do we need a watermaker-refrigeration-washing machine-generator, single sideband radio
- staying fit and healthy onboard
- choosing clothes for cruising
- provisioning
- costs of cruising
- staying in touch with families
- leaving the boat in a secure place and flying home to visit family
- how much do I need to know about diesel engines, mechanics, navigation
- is cruising safe?
- … and many more topics.
Like we said, it’s different, fresh and (most of all) FUN every time! So, we hope you can be there!
You will get a copy of our Women and Cruising handout Best Tips and Resources which we will be updating for the Strictly Sail Pacific Boat Show.
Here are the details:
Women and Cruising Seminars:
Pam Wall and Kathy Parsons
Friday April 16, 2010
12:45 – 1:45pm
Portside Seminar Room
Free, with the price of admission to the boat show, no advanced reservation required… and …
Saturday April 17, 2010
1:00 – 2:00pm
Portside Seminar Room
Free, with the price of admission to the boat show, no advanced reservation requiredSee you there!
In our next post, we’ll cover some of the other great seminars offered at the show. I will be giving seminars on Caribbean cruising and Pam Wall will be giving seminars on the outfitting, Atlantic sailing on the Sea Cloud, and a family sailing around the world. Women and Cruising contributors Amanda Swan Neal, Janna Cawrse Esarey and Kim Hess will also be giving seminars. More details in our next post!
I’ll be hanging out in the Author’s Corner selling my Spanish for Cruisers and French for Cruisers books. Janna, Kim and Amanda (I think) will also be in the Author’s Corner. Come by and let’s talk cruising!
Related posts
More info
- Download the complete Strictly Sail Pacific Show Seminars Schedule. There are 4 full days of free seminars, included with the price of admission to the boat show.
- Visit the website of the Strictly Sail Pacific 2010 show, Jack London Square, Oakland, CA, April 15-18, 2010.
Dear Cruising Women:
Just don’t forget about us women that got out of the galley (figuratively) and like it that way~
I am always curious about womens intentions in sailing and cruising. There are those that are going to sail and cruise and own their own boat to do it and then there are those whom are along for the ride. I worry about these women, as I always worried about my own mother, whom I know would not sail on her own without my father. Moving women out of the galley wench role into the skipper role and visa versa for the men I think is the “ideal” partnership on board. To be honest, I am disappointed often by so-called “womens” publications in the yachting world that focus exclusively on the galley wench role and woman from the passenger perspective.
How is this ‘group’ different at giving all cruising women representation. Honestly, womens articles lose my interest when the main topics are domestic.
(yes I’ve been a sailboat owner/restorer since I was 16,raced at the national level, lived aboard, USSA sail instructor, USCG licensed, raised a cruising family, divorced and single-hand now with my pup**best crew award) I will ALWAYS LOVE SAILING for the LOVE of SAILING!!
I have high hopes for this group!
Suz,
Thanks for your comment! We wholeheartedly agree that women should not merely be passengers aboard their boats. First of all it’s completely unsafe and second, they are unlikely to make their experience their own if they feel out of control.
Look around our website and read what our 50+ contributors have shared about their experiences. Read the Admiral’s Angle columns. You will find singlehanders, couples, families, racer-cruisers, circumnavigators, and coastal sailors. You will find quite a few licensed captains and very experienced sailors and racers.
You will also find women (and men) who enjoy cooking aboard their boats. There are women who see cruising as a way to explore other cultures and other lands, exotic foods and music. And women (and men) who find that good meals and entertaining helps make their boat truly home for them.
The beauty of cruising is that you CAN make it uniquely your own – and so we present all these different women’s voices and stories. We want our readers to find women that they can identify with – that will help them find their own answers and inspiration.
We welcome you to contribute your story as well!
Again thanks!
Kathy Parsons
Suz,
I had to smile when I read your comment to the Women and Cruising Website. The smile came from hearing an echo of myself.
Some 20 years ago or so, when I bought my first sailboat – the 44-foot CSY Whisper – to go into charter as a dive sail charter yacht, I believed that my being a woman had nothing to do with my intentions to be a successful, relatively self-sufficient owner/operator, charter captain, and dive instructor. I believed, and still believe, it had to do with a can-do attitude about learning what needs to be learned to be in such a position of responsibility. Indeed the role aboard that gave me most pause was that of chef, which I had to be just as prepared to do depending on who my crew was.
Ironically, just the other evening over dinner with my good friend Diane, who was in those days also a woman charter captain in the Virgin Islands, we were reminiscing about a situation that came up back then that united us in our feelings about this. Capt. Fatty Goodlander, now a roving contributor for Cruising World but then the host of a local marine radio program, asked us independently if we would come on a show he was going to do with someone from the US who was putting together a program to support women getting into sailing. Independently, we each reacted the same way: we didn’t believe that women needed any special help to get involved if they were motivated, and we were uncomfortable making a big deal out of being women captains.
Obviously, my attitude has changed somewhat, since I have been writing my column Admiral’s Angle these past four years or so specifically to support women getting involved in cruising. I think, in large part, that’s because “cruising” is different than “sailing.” To me, sailing is the skill, practiced for sport or pleasure or challenge, but cruising is a “lifestyle” based on boats, where the simple fact that the boat is “home” is a truly fundamental part of the experience.
This does not diminish by any means my belief that women aboard should be full partners in the experience, the more competent in the skills required the better. But that belief of mine has come to recognize the importance of all the “domestic” things that must be done aboard as well, and indeed to recognize that the nature of cruising is actually a rather domestic experience. Even when I was chartering professionally, I came to recognize that I was not so divorced from the domestic when a guest asked me what was the most important attribute of my being a successful charter captain, and I realized in a stroke of clarity, that my success as a “woman” charter captain (and I was QUITE successful) came as much from the hostessing skills and instincts I had acquired from my mother as any of the more properly nautical skills I had pursued. I had BOTH; a lot of the guys didn’t!
When Kathy proposed that our second “article” for WomenandCruising.com be about galleys, I felt my old prejudices revive. I did not want the cruising woman’s role to be pigeon-holed as your “galley wench”. Already I was in my third year of writing the Admirals Angle column, and although I certainly had addressed some domestic issues, I had deliberately steered away from anything about the galley. However, as the contributions for the web article came in (including my own), I realized how foolish that reaction was. Not one of the contributing women could ever be dubbed “a galley wench,” but most every one of them understood the importance of the galley to the whole cruising experience…and took pleasure in it. Take a look at my Admiral’s Angle column #35 “The Cruising Galley” for more details on that perspective.
Our objective with womenandcruising.com and mine with Admirals’ Angle is to support all the aspects of the lifestyle that make it a wonderfully enriching experience for all the women who pursue it and to encourage the broadening of involvement and responsibility. I think we would love to have your story posted on the Blog as one more example of the possible courses women can take!
Gwen Hamlin