Women on the Sailboat

By Dr. Robert E. Plucker

     In 1970 I had my first chance to actually sail on a sailboat, under sail.  My friend in the History Department had a brother-in law who had just acquired a Columbia 22-footer, and I was invited to sail with them several times.  We three men enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.  In those days, before I had read anything about great women sailors, I assumed that women were not much interested in sailing, would be awkward, in the way, and would inhibit the behavior of the men aboard.  We would, at least back in 1970, probably have to watch our language. 

     I was so spooked by the thought of women aboard that I actually jumped ship two-thirds of the way through a three-day trip when it was decided that the wife/sister of the other two was to come aboard for the last day.  My excuse was that four people on a twenty-two foot boat would be more than enough.  But now I have come to my senses and have welcomed a number of women aboard in the intervening thirty-five years.  One disappointment of course, was that sailing on Puget Sound and to the north hardly allows for gorgeous young ladies in bikinis sunning themselves on the foredeck.

     Roxanne was one of three students of mine that I took out sailing one Saturday afternoon.  The boat that I had was a shallow draft vessel built to easily take grounding in mud or sand.  That was a good thing, as our moorage was a distance up the Snohomish River, reachable only at higher tides.  Inexperienced as I was, I was too late to get back before the water got too shallow and the boat came gently to a halt in the mud of the river-bottom.  There was nothing to do but wait for the tide to run out the rest of the way, and then back in, some six or seven hours later.  I didn't worry, nor did the other two fellows aboard, but Roxanne did.  There are few things as dependable as the tide, but Roxanne wasn't so sure.  She told me later, "I prayed and prayed as hard as I could for God to bring back the high tide so we could float free."

     OK, but I doubt that God needed the reminder.

     After the shallow-draft boat, and following a divorce from my first wife, I bought a wonderful new boat, a Newport 30.  I meant to live aboard the boat, sail every time I felt like it, and never look seriously at another woman.  Ha!  Margaret changed my notion of being a hermit very soon by accepting my invitations to go out sailing on Saturday afternoons.  One hot afternoon we had completely run out of wind at Elger Bay, which is always a kind of dead spot on the west shore of Camano Island.  We drifted along for some time, and my thoughts were racing.  My divorce had become final.  Margaret was so pretty and charming.  There was no wind.  Not much to occupy my mind except Margaret.  What to do?  Well, why not ask her to be my wife?  So she said yes, and thus began the second part of my life.

     Communication can be a problem.  This possibly is not true with all women, but my former wife, and now Margaret, many times does not make messages clear.  For example, you are sailing along at about six knots and suddenly you see waves breaking over what is probably a rock that you might not have noticed on the chart.  Wife #1 would yell "yerp!" and then probably "yerp yerp!”  Wife #2 would yell "Oh!" and "Oh!" and so on, getting louder with each "Oh".  Either yell is an alarm I suppose, but the skipper, me, would much rather have heard something more specific.  "Rock, rock!" would do the job nicely.

     After sixteen years of good sailing with "Echappee," the Newport 30, we decided to try living aboard the boat year 'round.  We sold our Camano Island house, and with the trade-in of the old boat, we bought "Greta," an Ericson 34.  This led to some fairly serious sailing, including three trips up the Inside Passage to Southeast Alaska, the result of which was the decision to make Haines, Alaska our home.




Bob, John and girl friend.

     Since living aboard, first in Washington and now in Alaska, Margaret and I don't have as many guests for sailing as we used to.  Years ago we had some interesting ones, like the woman who seemed to spend much of the trip going back and forth to the head (bathroom).  We couldn't figure out why she had to "go" so often.  The truth was revealed eventually, that she was an alcoholic and had her bottle of whatever she was drinking stashed away somewhere and only went to the head to drink.  It seemed like she needed a booster every half hour or so.  Margaret and I were too innocent and ignorant to recognize the signs that she was alcoholic.  We heard later that her husband (who was an Internal Revenue agent, and also rather secretive) got her straightened out, I suppose by going to AA.

     In the late 70s, there were a number of Arab students who came to study at my school, Skagit Valley Community College.  We invited one young man and his wife, plus another Arab friend of theirs to go sailing.  These people, if I remember correctly, were from Kuwait.  The wind was just right for good sailing that day, but it was chilly, as usual in Port Gardner Bay.  Our guests must have had a Caribbean notion of sailing, as they were definitely not dressed for warmth.  The young Arab lady was a beauty, and her "yachting" clothes made her a stand-out.  She had to stay below for the entire time, as it was too cold on deck.  Her husband could have kept her company, but he was so sea-sick that he spent almost all the time lying down with his head in her lap, not talking.  The other fellow survived the trip from Everett to Edmonds and back in better shape, but you could easily tell he was glad when he could get ashore again.  We could have turned around and shortened the trip a good deal, but we were hoping things would get better, and we had two other friends aboard and did not want to disappoint them.  These last two were having the time of their lives.

     One good friend of Margaret's refused our invitations to go sailing several times.  Her last refusal carried the excuse that she thought her children were going to be sick on the planned-for day.

     Women, but by no means only women, need strong warnings about the excessive use of toilet paper aboard a boat.  Marine toilets tend to jam rather easily when wads of paper are used.  This too often requires the exalted skipper/owner of the vessel to change hats to that of the lowly plumber of the vessel.

     After a lot of red tape and passing of Coast Guard exams, I received my Coast Guard license to take passengers for hire.  Two summers were spent taking as many customers as I could attract, on two or three hour day- sails.  It was fun, and I met some wonderful people at that time.  The Newport 30 was tied to a floating buoy in Utsalady Bay, and the passengers had to be ferried out to the boat in a dinghy.  I was dumbfounded one day when my people came to the beach, got out of their car and proceeded to help a wheel-chair bound woman out to the waiting dinghy.  I must have looked dismayed, but before I could say anything about the impossibility of getting this woman out of the dinghy and up into the cockpit of "Echappee," she told me rather forcefully not to worry about her transfer from the tiny dinghy to the 30-foot boat.

     The only good thing was that the dinghy was one of the super-stable double-hulled Livingston boats that are virtually impossible to upset.  This lady got her companion to boost her just far enough so she could reach the stern rail of "Echappee."  She grabbed it and somehow pulled herself up and over in a second or so.  Just like that, she was seated like a queen on the starboard cockpit seat.  This was one strong, gutsy woman!  Good trip!

     Daughter Holly has given me wonderful memories of those earlier sailing years.  Her territory was the forward V-berth where she held court over her thirty or forty stuffed animals.  Son John was still several years in the future.  Coming back from a week of sailing, some adult asked her if she had ever been sea-sick.  "Yes" was the answer.  Where was she at the time she was sea-sick?  "At Grandma's house."

Holly, Bob and Margaret with Holly's three boys.

     Holly also had an extensive entourage of imaginary employees to run her imaginary restaurant.  I was to be the customer most of the time and always pretended to be dreadfully finicky.  I would send back the imaginary food on all sorts of pretexts and once got her and Margaret to laughing because I sent the water back to the kitchen.  Not wet enough.

     One fine summer day Marilyn and Julia were out in Skagit Bay with Margaret and me.  They had been out with us before and had learned a bit about sail trim and how to make the boat go in different directions.  So Margaret, Julia and Marilyn were to be skippers and crew, but no one was designated to be skipper of final resort.  I stayed below and played galley slave, washing dishes after a fairly elaborate lunch.

     Probably they could have figured things out separately, but they were all too polite, constantly deferring to one another.

     "Do you think we should tighten this rope?"

     "Steering with that long stick is certainly confusing; you have to move it to the left to turn right."

     "I can't seem to fix this sail so it won't flap like that."

     "Maybe we need to come about."

     "What does 'come about' mean?"

     It was a nice day, everyone had fun including the lone male aboard – me.  But I would not want to sail in a strong wind with the skippering done by this committee.  Even if they all wore bikinis.

     And lastly, my dear wife Margaret who took charge crossing the Strait of Georgia in heavy seas.  I had fallen part way down the companionway into the cabin, crashing into the restraining bar that guards the cooking stove.  She was steering.  I had gone below to check our position on the chart and was thrown onto the steel bar by a much steeper than usual wave.  So I had a broken rib and was in great pain, not being able to speak from all the groaning.

     Margaret was horribly frightened over all this, but did not dare leave her job at the tiller.  Our son John was on board, asleep, but at eight years of age, could not be expected to handle the wheel in seas like these.  But Margaret screamed at him to wake him up to find out what was wrong with me, as I had disappeared from her line of sight.  All he could tell her was that I was on the floor and moaning.  Being assured that I was alive helped her some, and she decided to head for Porlier Pass to get to the usually calm waters in the Canadian Gulf Islands.  After a few minutes I was able to pull myself together enough to get back to the cockpit where I was not of much use but to lend moral support.

     Porlier Pass was close, but we had never before been through this narrow rock-strewn pass with its strong currents.  I might have tried to continue on to Active Pass which was much safer and familiar to us, but much further away.  But Margaret was now the skipper and she made the decisions.  So under power and the mainsail, we headed for this twisty, narrow channel, strong current against us, but with some wind behind us. 

     As we entered the narrow part of the channel, Margaret was getting all the speed out of the twenty-eight horsepower Volvo that she could, and the following wind was some help, but there were times when it seemed that Greta was at a standstill, and maybe even going backward with the current.  Frankly, I had given up on ever making it through the pass and was worrying about what would happen if we crashed backward into a rock.  But Margaret's courage and determination carried the day, perhaps aided by a puff of wind at just the right time.

     We finally got free of the strong current and once through the pass, the water was sheltered and calm.  Later, after the crisis was over, we found that we had gone through the pass at maximum current, about eight knots.  Greta's top speed is seven knots.  Margaret's courage is the only way I can account for the extra knot and a quarter that we needed to overcome the contrary current.

Photos by Matt Davis and Jean E. Straatmeyer