Sail Like a Girl Cruise and Learn Sailing Vacations are not intended to offer formal sailing instruction with certification at the end of the holiday, but more of a hands on sailing holiday, where I will share as much of my sailing experience/knowledge as my passengers/crew wish to benefit from; where you will definitely leave the charter with more sailing experience than you started with. According to your level of experience and how much you wish to participate you will have an opportunity to steer the boat, handle ropes, help with sail deployment, recognise wind direction, learn the importance of safety at sea, witness a demonstration of turning the boat around quickly as might be necessary to pick up a 'person overboard'. You'll help the skipper to anchor and moor the boat when required. You will also see how to depower a yacht under sail which is going too fast and heeling too far over for your comfort level.
These vacations are exclusively for the enjoyment of women.
Now I feel that a little background is in order. I have listed my qualifications in my profile, but just a synopsis here - I started sailing at the age of 46 (13 years ago) in a dinghy sailing school - most of my peers were about 12 years old. I loved it and bought my own 28' sailboat shortly after. For the next couple of years, like many women I sailed with the boyfriend of that time and what I say about that is "I didn't learn from him, I learned in spite of him". So I didn't keep him.
I then went on to race my own boat and as I 'sailed like a girl' was quite frightened of very strong winds so I would always sail reefed down to reduce heel and make the boat more manageable and 'faster', thus we actually did very well, winning quite a few races.
For the next 10 years as a single woman I cruised my own boat around the Gulf Islands off the coast of Vancouver, sometimes with my children, friends and quite often just me and my dog. I crewed on many race boats and did quite a few long distance deliveries, sailing 10,000 miles in 2004 on 6 different boats around the Mediterranean and across the Atlantic Ocean. The skippers I crewed for were always men, and quite often I was the only female aboard. As most of my former years of sailing were with men I know that we girls do it differently.
My husband and I sailed our 42' ketch, Moondancer X from Vancouver, Canada to Malta leaving in September 2008 arriving in September 2009. (see link to moondancerx.blogspot.com blog to read about our trip) It was quite a journey and along that route I met many other sailing couples like us who are cruising around the world. I was amazed to meet women who had already been sailing with their husbands for many years, had sailed thousands and thousands of miles and hated it, were frightened most of the time and just couldn't wait to get home. Those women must really love their husbands. Imagine! I love sailing and have been terrified sometimes at sea, and can't conceive of how it would be for those poor women who already hate it. I think in most cases those women didn't have enough knowledge to know that they were probably always safe, and with more confidence they would have been able to help their husbands to sail the vessel and get way more enjoyment out of the journey. There's alot of water between destinations.
I believe that I have very good insight into what most women need to give them sailing confidence.
It makes me very happy to be able to help other women NOT have the same disempowering experiences I did when learning how to sail and that is what I want to share with the women who join me on these Cruise and Learn sailing vacations and day charters.
