57°38’07.3”N, 18°16’41.9”E
Port of Visby, Gotland, Sweden September 2022 

Sidse Birk Johannsen had just settled into an 18-hour journey across the Baltic Sea when her sailboat’s autopilot malfunctioned. Her sails were flapping. The waves were choppy. It was the middle of the night, and, to put it mildly, she was very cold and very alone. 

By all accounts, Johannsen’s first solo sea crossing had gone awry. With a sleepless night ahead, a pot of coffee was in order.

If you’re looking for an activity where everything sticks to the plan, stop now and cross sailing off your list. Sails tangle. Water leaks where it shouldn’t. Storms appear out of nowhere. Generators break. Engines fritz.

Things go wrong. A lot.

“Sometimes there’s a huge potential in being naive and not knowing what you’re walking into,” Johannsen says. “Because if you knew all the hassle beforehand, you would not do it.”

Five years ago, this 33-year-old Danish sailor’s life took a turn. Working in Greenland as a high school teacher, Johannsen broke up with her boyfriend of seven years. She had nowhere to live, no job. And a pandemic had shuttered the world.

“When life hurts, I run,” Johannsen says. “I go somewhere else. And that wasn’t really possible because of COVID.”

When Johannsen received an offer to work on a boat in Tahiti, she said yes. After a year of working on deck, she wanted more. Johannsen returned to Denmark, where, rather than sign a
lease on an apartment, she bought Anori, a 1976, 31-foot, Swedish-designed B31. The name in the Greenlandic language means “the spirit of the wind that will bring you home safely.”

Johannsen and the community of sailors she would discover fit within a broader story of travel and adventure in our post-pandemic world. But for women like Johannsen, many of whom are new to sailing, their launch out to sea meant joining a male-dominated community—one that frequently calls into question these women’s identities as captains. 

21°17’05.7”N, 157°57’35.4”W
Mamala Bay, Oahu, Hawaii April 2020

On the morning of April 17, 2020, Olivia Wyatt woke up anchored off the coast of Oahu. She had recently relaunched her 34-foot Ta Shing Panda, Juniper, after a series of maintenance issues required time in a shipyard. At home in the harbor once again, she was eager to explore the islands by sail. 

But that same morning, David Ige, then-governor of Hawaii, issued an emergency pandemic proclamation. It included a ban on more than two people inhabiting a single recreational boat in Hawaii waters, and a requirement that each boat remain at least 20 feet from the next. 

“Maybe I’ll just make loops around this island until I’m dizzy,” Wyatt wrote on social media.

Wyatt had arrived in Hawaii eight months earlier, having sailed Juniper 2,269 nautical miles over the course of 23 days from San Diego. Both places were a far cry from Wyatt’s landlocked hometown in Little Rock, Arkansas. Wyatt had learned to sail in her 20s, when she was working as a multimedia journalist in New York City. She received sailing lessons for her birthday from a boyfriend. It was the first time she’d stepped foot on a sailboat.

“I just fell in love with it,” Wyatt says. “It’s kind of like a game of chess. It’s unpredictable.” 

Wyatt wanted a strapping man to take care of the mechanical work while she braided sailor’s knots and danced on deck. After a string of boyfriends, Wyatt was living in Los Angeles, 34 years old and boatless. “I made a list of all the bluewater boats I liked and began searching for ones that were for sale,” she says. “I narrowed it down to a boat in Mexico, one in Hawaii, and one in San Diego. In the end, Juniper was the one I fell in love with. It was just by chance that it was the closest to me.”

She bought the boat in San Diego and sailed it up to Los Angeles. Six months later, she sailed back to San Diego for work.

“It was there that I met my friend Elana, who had already sailed solo across the Pacific,” she says. “I was considering sailing to Hawaii, and she encouraged me to do it.”

Wyatt spent a year learning her way around Juniper, sailing in Los Angeles and San Diego, and soon realized that she couldn’t fix and do everything herself. Between repairs, she’d sail out each ­morning, testing Juniper’s limits and quirks, and discovering her own.

If you’re looking for an activity where everything sticks to the plan, cross sailing off your list.

In the 23 days it took Wyatt to sail from San Diego to Hawaii, she found that ­writing kept her grounded. She ­experienced frequent auditory hallucinations, hearing questions in the air. Once, she started clapping to the beat of a funk song bouncing off the waves. 

“I try to recall the voices of my family now,” Wyatt wrote in a blog post in August 2019. “I want to hold onto those voices and take them with me, and I’m crying uncontrollably because I can’t. Because things like this can fade. Everything can fade and wilt on the vine of time. I can speak out here through satellites. When my ears are thirsty for a human voice, I call my mom, but our connection is distorted by the dance it does through space.”

8°26’18.9”N, 78°59’40.2”W
Pearl Islands, Panama March 2020

Holly Martin forgot to buy eggs. Normally, she would wait until the next grocery run, but she was starting her Pacific crossing from Panama toward Polynesia the next day. 

By the time Martin had returned to Panama City to get the eggs, the urban center was under lockdown. Guards were outside the grocery store, forcing ­customers to enter one at a time. 

Sitting in a small boat full of fresh food just off the shore of a city with 1.5 million people, Martin felt uneasy. With her Pacific crossing now off the table due to COVID, Martin had to stay put, so she and a group of 30 or so sailors sailed instead to the Pearl Islands, about 45 ­nautical miles away. 

After two months there, Martin heard rumors that Polynesia would open its ports. That August, she set sail for the Marquesas Islands. The winds were calm when she left Panama City. On her second day of what would be 41 days alone at sea, a little gray bird landed on her bow. 

“The buildup, it’s like a buildup of a storm,” Martin says in an online video. “And then once you leave, it just breaks, and suddenly, I’m sailing.”

The only communication device Martin had was a satellite tracker capable of receiving 40 texts with 140 characters each month. So, for 41 days, the only news Martin received was weather updates from her mother. 

“When I arrived in Polynesia, anything could have happened,” she says. “It could be gone. It could be worse—half the population could be dead, there could be nuclear war.” 

She describes her Pacific passage as being like “a very long meditation.” By the second week, she and her boat, Gecko, a 27-foot Danish Grinde, had become a single, mellow entity. Things still went wrong. But when Martin found herself free-climbing her mast in the middle of the night during a squall, she just did it. 

Sailing alone, Martin says, means no one is waiting for you to unravel. And when there’s no one to hold your hand, fear dissipates. Still, Martin says that she also has the space—an entire ocean of it—to air her emotions as they come. 

“I’m more likely to cry at a beautiful sunset at sea,” she says. “I think when we don’t have to protect ourselves from the people around us, we can allow our emotions to lie wherever they want to.”

For Martin, sailing wasn’t an unknown when she started her circumnavigation in 2018. In fact, Martin sailed before she could walk. Her parents sailed the world with their three young children for nearly a decade before landing in Round Pond, Maine. When Martin graduated from college in Maine with a degree in marine biology, she took a job on a vessel in Antarctica, working as a research support technician. 

“The out-at-sea alone part,” Martin says, “it’s quite irrelevant that I’m a woman.”

After six years of working with a crew, she wanted to learn how to make mistakes on her own. Until a year ago, she avoided inviting friends and family on Gecko. “I’ve spent a lot of weeks on passage thinking about my life and myself and digging in deep,” Martin says. “I feel like I’ve dug enough by myself now that I’m ready to start inviting other people into my world.” 

Though not quite as long as her ­to-dos, Martin also has a list of things she’s learned about herself while sailing alone. For one, she’s given up small talk. Often, silence is better. Martin has also realized that the stresses and burdens that exist on land can vanish at sea. 

“The out-at-sea-alone part,” Martin says, “it’s quite irrelevant that I’m a woman.”

38°54’19.6”N, 77°04’06.7”W
Washington, D.C. March 2023

It’s 5 p.m. on Wednesday, March 15, when Wyatt calls me by video. I’m sitting in a basement in Washington, D.C., wearing a wool sweater. She is tan, in a bright-purple tank top, on a boat in Fiji at 9 a.m. 

We chat about Martin — one of the few sailors Wyatt knows who is also sailing in the South Pacific— and Johannsen. If you’re thinking, Small world, you’re right. But the world of solo female sailors is also tightknit, despite these women sailing hundreds, even thousands, of miles apart. 

Wyatt, Martin and Johannsen connect on social media and ask questions about their latest boat malfunctions. When Martin was in New Zealand preparing for a Pacific crossing and needed a sewing machine, she posted a request online. Turns out, someone at the Richmond Yacht Club in Auckland had exactly what she needed.

Wyatt and Johannsen have similar ­stories. The sailing world, Johannsen says, is about finding a balance between trying to take care of things yourself and admitting when there is something you do not know. 

Back in the spring, Johannsen walked down the dock in Egå Marina, in Aarhus, Denmark, and approached a neighboring boat where a group of men chatted. They’d spent the past 40 years sailing. 

“Having this kind of connection is a huge value for me because it means I can call them and they can tell me what it means to buy a kind of boat,” she says. But, other times, Johannsen adds, “I want to be the one with the tools in my hands.” And if she doesn’t know what she’s doing, her followers online usually have the answer. 

If Johannsen’s female sailing followers have anything in common, it’s their camaraderie about broken engines, ripped sails, delayed starts, bad weather and mansplaining. Wyatt too: “All of the women who I’ve met along the way, we’re so similar,” she says. “It’s hard because you’re making all these decisions by yourself, and something is always breaking. It’s a financial burden. It’s a mental burden. It’s a weight.”

Martin says that they feel like sisters: “It’s just this unique community of people going through it all together. We have the same struggles.”

57°24’04.6”N, 21°32’27.3”E
Ventspils, Courland, Latvia September 2022

Out in the dark water of the Baltic Sea, Johannsen really had only one option. One way or another, she had to get her boat across the remaining 87 nautical miles between her and the Latvian coast. Her autopilot was broken. She had to hand-steer. 

When Johannsen docked Anori in Ventspils, a deepwater seaport, she knew that she’d have no problem falling asleep. After 18 hours of focus, she could allow herself to feel everything she had kept at bay for those long, cold hours. There is no room for fear, she says, in moments of ­discomfort or danger. But allowing ­yourself to feel those emotions after the fact, on land, is essential to staying sane. 

“You need to take those feelings seriously, because otherwise, they will build up in your body,” she says. “Your body will remember to be scared or very, very cold. It can turn your brain into oatmeal.”

And, alone on a boat only 34 feet long, extra baggage simply doesn’t fit. 

Follow these solo sailors online

Sidse Birk Johannsen: @sisi_atsea on Instagram

Olivia Wyatt: wildernessofwaves.com, ­@wildernessofwaves on Instagram

Holly Martin: @windhippiesailing on YouTube, @boatlizard on Instagram

The post A Singular Passion: Solo Sailing Female appeared first on Cruising World.

Leg 6 to Auckland, day 12 on board MAPFRE. 18 February, 2018.

There’s nothing the least bit average about Sophie Ciszek. At 32, she’s sailed more than 300,000 nautical miles on some of the planet’s hairiest, scariest yachts, and has competed in not one but two Volvo Ocean Races, the epic round-the-world contest that called in my hometown of Newport, Rhode Island, earlier this year. You could say she’s going places, but when it comes to the world of high-stakes offshore competitive sailing, there are clearly few spots she hasn’t already gone.

When I first met Sophie in Newport, during a break from her duties as a crewmember of the Spanish entry MAPFRE, it was immediately apparent that I was in the presence of a very fit, elite professional athlete. Standing eye to eye (I’m over 6 feet tall, and so is she), Sophie shook my rather prissy hand with a firm, strong, calloused mitt that reminded me I’d been mostly typing during the previous seven months that she’d performed countless sail changes across the world’s fiercest oceans. Had she asked me to say uncle, I would’ve complied.

However, what interested me more than her physical stature or impressive racing resume was her unique sailing background. As it happens, before Sophie became a world-class yachting pro, she was a cruising kid.

“Yes, I come from a cruising family,” she said, laughing, her accent a twangy mix of ­Australian and American. “I don’t know how I became this crazy racer!”

The Ciszek family story started in South Africa a little over three decades ago, when Sophie’s dad, Joel, a solo sailor from the Pacific Northwest, met her Aussie mother, Liz, on a Durban dock. “They were cruising around the world on separate yachts,” Sophie said, but apparently not for long. Because soon after, the pair met up again in Cape Town. “And that’s where my mom jumped ship,” she said.

Eventually, the couple returned to Australia, got hitched and had two kids, a boy and a girl, with Sophie being the youngest. When she was 2, the clan boarded their new Adams 40 and set sail from Oz, bound for Seattle via Japan and the vast North Pacific Ocean.

They got as far as the Solomon Islands. It was there that Sophie, her brother and dad all contracted malaria. And there was a rumor that dengue fever was about. Liz had heard enough. “That’s when my mom called it,” Sophie said. Back to Oz they went.

Through her elementary school years, the Ciszeks lived on Washington’s Bainbridge Island, but they returned to Australia when Sophie entered high school, settling near Melbourne, a mad sailing city hard by the treacherous Bass Strait. It was on that imposing piece of water that Sophie cut her teeth as a fledgling offshore racer.

An accomplished surfer as well as a sailor, Sophie had a deep and abiding respect for the sea, one that grew as she steadily gained experience, first in round-the-buoy keelboat racing, then with deliveries to Tasmania and up the coast, and on to major events like the often grueling Sydney-Hobart Race. It was after one of those Hobart races that she landed a spot on an Open 60 called Hugo Boss that was on a promotional world tour.

Later, Sophie was on a ­surfing trip to Indonesia when her dad forwarded her a story about a group forming an all-women crew for the Volvo Ocean Race. On a lark, she filled out the online application form, and soon after, ­received a plane ticket to come to Sweden for an interview. There were few gals who could match her blend of skill, size, experience and enthusiasm, all of which landed her a position aboard Team SCA for the 2014-15 edition of the Volvo.

“It was hard,” she said of the SCA campaign. But it was also rewarding. “It opened my eyes to what it took to make it at this level.” And it made her realize she wanted to come back for more, which led to her ­second swing at the Volvo.

Time will tell, but a third Volvo might still be in Sophie’s future. But she hasn’t ­forgotten her roots. Far from it.

“Oh yes, I want to go cruising. It’s definitely on my mind,” she said. It seems to still run in the family. Her brother and his family are currently living aboard in French Polynesia, and her dad dreams of a steel boat to sail to ­Patagonia. “I said I’ll go with him. We’ll see what happens.”

One way or another, the call of the sea will resound.

“I don’t want to race forever,” Sophie said. “Cruising’s in my blood for sure.”

Herb McCormick is CW’s executive editor.

The post An Interview with Sailor Sophie Ciszek appeared first on Cruising World.

Sheila McCurdy of Middletown, Rhode Island, was awarded the BoatUS/National Women’s Sailing Association (NWSA) 2018 Leadership in Women’s Sailing Award at the NWSA Women’s Sailing Conference held Saturday in Marblehead, Massachusetts. The award, which recognizes an individual with a record of achievement in inspiring, educating, and enriching the lives of women through sailing, was presented by NWSA President Linda Newland.

“Sheila McCurdy exemplifies a leader in the sailing world by serving as a mentor, teacher and role model for women entering the sport and also for those expanding their sailing skills.” said Newland.

McCurdy grew up in a sailing family in Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island and from a young age, sailing became part of her life. “It’s just what I do,” said McCurdy. She has sailed big boats and small boats with family, friends, strangers and professionals, and skippers her own boat, Selkie, a 38-foot sloop designed by her father, Jim McCurdy.

She has sailed more than 100,000 miles offshore including a passage from the Galapagos to the Marquesas in 2014, the 2015 Transatlantic Race and 17 Newport Bermuda races—skippering to second place in class and fourth overall in 2016. In 2017, McCurdy cruised the west coast of Sweden and then sailed from Spain to the Azores. All of that experience gave her an understanding of how women approach sailing, and that information has helped shape programs with the female sailor in mind.

McCurdy is a trustee of Mystic Seaport Museum, serves on the board of Ida Lewis Yacht Club, and was the first female commodore of the Cruising Club of America, and served as a director of US Sailing Association where she ran the national faculty for 13 years. She was an advisor to the US Naval Academy Sailing for 20 years. She maintains a position on the Advisory Council of the National Women’s Sailing Association, writes and lectures on education and training, runs safety training courses and certifies instructors for the U.S. Sailing Association. McCurdy also holds a U.S. Coast Guard 100-ton master’s license and a masters degree in Marine Affairs from the University of Rhode Island. She has received several awards, including Rhode Island Boater of the Year 2011. She is married to David Brown.

BoatUS is a strong partner of NWSA, a program of the Women’s Sailing Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization dedicated to enhancing the lives of women and girls through education and access to the sport of sailing.

The post Sheila McCurdy Honored with BoatUS/NWSA 2018 Leadership in Women’s Sailing Award appeared first on Cruising World.

Very few of us are brave enough to jump into the deep end of our wildest dreams, throw off our self-doubt and muster the courage to just do it. Nike Steiger is one of the few. Toiling away at her day job in Hamburg, Germany, Nike (pronounced nee-kay) had a dream of conquering one of her personal goals by sailing off into the sunset. The problem wasn’t her inexperience as a sailor or that she knew very little about the cruising lifestyle, it was simply that she didn’t have her own boat. That she would be untying the lines alone never entered into the equation. She searched for several years before finding Karl in Colón, Panama. The seller had informed her that the vessel had been left unattended for five years, but Nike was still surprised by the “forest of mold” covering the cabin that was so toxic she had to don a hazmat mask just to go below deck. She hadn’t signed the bill of sale yet, but at the agreed price of 8,000 euros, even a little toxic mold wasn’t going to deter her. With the help of a local mechanic, she got the engine to turn over, and her dream of sailing the world was once again revved up.

It would be almost a year, and another 25,000 euros, before she left the dock, but Nike says, “I will never forget that moment, when I took out Karl for the very first spin inside the breakwaters of Colón, being the captain of my own sailing vessel.”

More than three years later, not only has Nike figured out the cruising lifestyle but she’s a successful video blogger, or “vlogger.” The third season of her ­video-blog series Untie the Lines is now on YouTube. She describes it as “the story about the ups and downs of buying, refitting and living on a boat, and of course sailing singlehanded. All of that on a rather small budget and with not a lot of previous knowledge, but with heaps of enthusiasm and quite a bit of endurance.”

Since we are sailing on opposite sides of the world, I caught up with Nike online, where we talked ­vlogging and swapped sailing stories. I found her enthusiasm contagious, and her insights on sailing and maintaining a boat singlehanded inspiring.

Heather Francis: Did you have much sailing experience before you decided to embark on your sailing adventure?

Nike Steiger: Not a lot, around 2,000 nautical miles. Those miles were coastal sailing, with some overnights but no multiday passages nor big ocean crossings. I had never singlehanded a boat before in my life — well, except an Optimist; does that count? But I did go sailing twice with the stepfather of one of my best friends, and he let me pretend I was singlehanding his boat while he was on board. That was on a pretty Hallberg-Rassy 35.

**HF: Can you tell me a little about your boat and why you decided to name it Karl?

NS: Karl is a Reinke Super 10, built in 1992 from aluminum. He is a tough boy, sturdy as a tank, and I love him with all my heart. He surely has not been built for racing, but with his twin keels and therefore little draft, we can enter into many shallow bays and rivers.

For some reason, I wanted my boat to be a male companion. I was looking for a short and easy name, and Karl was always a name I have liked. Karl is derived from the old German word karal, which means “husband” but also “the free one” — the perfect partner for me to sail the world.

HF: Eight months after you bought your boat, you found several holes in Karl’s aluminum hull. You had to weigh your options: sell up, as people were encouraging you to do, or invest more money and sail on. Why did you decide to continue?

NS: At the point when I found the holes in my hull it was actually the time when I was finally supposed to set sail and become a cruiser, not just a boat fixer. That is why I think that moment of finding the holes was an even bigger shock than if it had happened in the beginning.

One night, I sat next to Karl, and I looked at the moon and asked myself if I should give in, admit that I had taken too big of a bite and that I was just not able to pull this whole journey off. And the answer that I found inside myself was so clear: I wanted to go sailing. I wanted to see what was out there, test myself and finally start what I had been fighting for during the past half year.

I made a decision that the boat there next to me was the right one, and I believed in Karl and his general strength. And I believed that if I just truly wanted this journey to happen that I would find a way and the energy to get out of this situation, come what may. Seems I was right after all.

HF: After transiting the Panama Canal in 2016, you ran into major problems again, forcing you to delay sailing to the South Pacific.

NS: Yes, engine troubles. The timing belt that moves the camshaft slipped, and the pistons smashed into the valves and cracked the cylinder head where the valves sit. One could open the engine up and rebuild it. But this would cost quite a bit of money, and time too. Since I am still dreaming of sailing a bit farther away from the mainland with all its supplies, I decided to invest in a new engine. I was able to work with Beta Marine and recently installed a new Beta 43. There were many things that were new for me in this re-power project. It was super interesting, but also at times tiring and scary. But the moment of firing Big Red up for the first time blew away all the stress and worry and gave way to pure excitement and happiness.

HF: When sailing alone, you really get to know your true self, your strengths and weaknesses. What have you learned about yourself?

NS: On the one hand, I have learned that I carry way more fears inside myself than I had thought. When I went sailing before I owned my own boat, I never felt seasick — OK, once, but not really badly — and I was never really afraid. I cannot recall thinking, Oh my god, we are going to capsize, or Hmm, I wonder if maybe we might sink, or Will I be fast enough to do this task if something happens all of a sudden. The nights I spent at anchor with my family on vacation, I just slept peacefully; now that never happens since buying Karl. So, yes, I had to admit to myself that I was not as fearless as I had assumed I was.

But on the other hand, I have also been assured that I can trust my physical and emotional strength when times get rough. Even if I have anxieties before departure or during a passage, when something does happen, I have always found a way out without seriously hurting myself or my boat.

HF: What difficulties or obstacles have you faced as a female singlehander?

NS: I get annoyed when I am not strong enough to loosen something or to carry something. But I have learned some little tricks and life hacks to make up for my lack of strength.

I was nervous at first to ask someone to lend me a hand, because I didn’t want to seem like the typical stereotype of a woman needing help from a man because she isn’t strong enough. I have to say, though, that the men I have asked for help have not been disrespectful in those situations, but usually rather impressed that I was trying to go for it anyway.

In addition to the typical surprise — “Oh, you are alone on your boat?” — comes the astonishment that I also do most of my work by myself. This is then usually followed by the “Don’t you feel lonely/scared/vulnerable all by yourself?”

And yes, sometimes I do feel ­vulnerable. I try not to let it overtake me too much because I think the more you think and worry about it, the more likely it is something might happen to you.

HF: I admire you and other women who sail singlehanded, who are willing to get dirty and work on their boat. You make the Untie the Lines videos as a way to inspire others to chase their dreams and to conquer their self-doubts. Who are some of your inspirations?

NS: Wow, there are many great books, blogs and videos out there — it’s hard to keep the list short. One of the first books that inspired me was Dove by Robin Lee Graham, and I also enjoyed Tania Aebi’s book Maiden Voyage a lot.

It’s a big dream of mine to head to Alaska one day, which is why I enjoy the great videos of Yacht Teleport and S/Y Zero. One of my new favorites is that French sailor Guirec Soudée, who just did the Northwest Passage on his wicked aluminum sloop with his chicken, Monique.

Someone who always inspires me to learn new skills and dare to trust more in myself is my friend Maria LaPointe. She is an awesome sailor and great mechanic, welder and rigger, and she is the one who kept me going when I had doubts that I was not strong or good enough to be out here by myself.

HF: Making a video blog is more work than people think. You work with a professional videographer, Patrice Lange, on Untie the Lines, sending hard drives of footage back to Germany every few months for editing. Did you know each other before you started the project?

NS: I didn’t know anything about filming or editing when I started my journey. Patrice was convinced that we should give it a try, and we did not really have anything to lose. I worked with Patrice when I was still working back in Hamburg. I was running the marketing department of a medium-size company, and we had contracted him for some product shots and videos.

During the second season of Untie the Lines, I filmed so much more that it was too much work for Patrice by himself to browse through the material. That is why Daniel Dohlus joined our team and does the pre-editing before Patrice gives the episodes the final touch.

HF: Untie the Lines is into its third season. What is in store for us next?

We released a full-length documentary in January titled Untie the Lines: A Journey of Salt, Sweat and Determination. It’s about the first part of my journey, the circumnavigation of the western Caribbean, and the previous/ongoing refit, of course.

It is a mix of footage that was already published, and interviews and material that were not released yet. The movie is another step up in terms of professionalism — for example, extra color grading and such. We wanted it to have a slightly more cinematic touch to it.

Money-wise, we decided to go for ­private investors that will provide the money for the production and be paid back, step by step, once the movie starts selling.

HF: Video blogging has gained popularity in the past few years. Do you have any advice for new vloggers?

NS: In my opinion, it helps if you start vlogging because you really want to put something out there for some other reason than purely for making money with it. Start with putting some videos out there, see how people react, ask for feedback, watch your numbers for a while and see how you deal with the extra workload while you travel and if you feel OK with it. Give yourself some time to get in your groove, to improve yourself and to build an audience.

Now, once you have done that for a while, if you decide to keep going and have a feeling that your fan base might like to support your work, give them the opportunity to do so.

For me, it is important that people understand that they are paying for something that I produce. I make videos, people consume them and pay for them, even if it is voluntarily. Crowdfunding is a sensitive topic — lots of people call it e-begging — which is why it is important to me that my documentary is seen as a business, not that I am collecting donations just so I can live my dream. If I come to a point where I cannot afford to live the way I do with the work I do, I need to come up with something different to get some extra cash or to improve my business model.

HF: When you set out to untie the lines, you estimated you would be sailing for three years. Now that you’ve surpassed your three-year projected timeline, what are your future plans?

NS: I untied the lines to sail the world, not to circumnavigate. In my dreams, I will sail to French Polynesia, and from there, I would love to head north to Hawaii and then Alaska. If I ever get there, I will be the happiest person ever. Untie the Lines will continue. It has been such a comfort to have all these great people traveling along with me; I don’t think I would want to miss that.

You can follow Nike’s adventure on her YouTube channel WhiteSpotPirates, at whitespotpirates.com, on Facebook and on Instagram @whitespotpirates.

The post Sailor Profile: Nike Steiger appeared first on Cruising World.

A new exhibition at Mystic Seaport launching at the start of Women’s History Month chronicles both the luxurious and the hardworking life of women in the 20th century as seen through the lenses of the Rosenfeld family of photographers.

Entitled “On Land and Sea: A Century of Women in the Rosenfeld Collection,” these 70 photographs tell the story of lives of privilege and leisure and also lives of working-class women from the turn of the last century through the 1950s. Photos that depict impeccably attired ladies onboard sleek schooners tell one story, while images of young women training to be telephone operators in New York City tell another.

The exhibition is based on the book of the same title by Margaret L. Andersen Rosenfeld, a professor of Sociology at the University of Delaware and the daughter-in-law of Stanley Rosenfeld. The book was published by Mystic Seaport in 2007.

“The Rosenfelds are best known for their stunning images of large racing yachts under sail, but they also captured images of people and everyday events as part of their commercial photography work,” said Elysa Engelman, Director of Exhibits at Mystic Seaport. “The issues represented in these photographs still resonate to the contemporary viewer and they are depicted with the Rosenfelds’ usual attention to detail and striking composition.”

The exhibition is organized around seven themes that show the different dimensions of women’s lives in the 20th century:

• Learning the Ropes
• The Daily Grind: Women and Work
• Lifelines: Women as Care Workers
• Spirit, Sports, and Spectators
• Displaying Womanhood
• In the Yard
• Women at the Wheel

Among the photographs in the exhibition, there are aviators and athletes, suffragettes on the march, baby nurses and mothers caring for their children. Each photo provides a fascinating glimpse into the social history of women as depicted in commercial photography, from young girls having fun messing about on small boats to fashion models and society matrons. Many of these photographs are on display for the first time.

The Rosenfeld Collection, acquired by Mystic Seaport in 1984, is one of the largest archives of maritime photographs in the United States. This Collection of nearly one million pieces documents the period from 1881 to 1992. The Collection is built on the inventory of the Morris Rosenfeld & Sons photographic business, which was located in New York City from 1910 until the late 1970s. The firm grew as sons David, Stanley, and William joined their father’s business. Although they became famous as yachting photographers–most notably their coverage of the America’s Cup starting in 1920–the early work of the Rosenfelds included assignments for such firms as the New York-based entities of the Bell System from the 1910s through the 1940s. This exhibition compiles selected images of women throughout the entire collection, some nautical, and some not, to tell the social history of women through the eyes of the Rosenfelds.

As part of the opening of the exhibition, Margaret Andersen Rosenfeld will be present at a book signing on Saturday, March 4, from 10 to 11 a.m. in the Thompson Exhibition Building.

The post Mystic Seaport Opens New Women’s Exhibit appeared first on Cruising World.

Where do women sailors go to learn? The Southern California Yachting Association (SCYA) will hold its 28th Annual Women’s Sailing Convention on Saturday, February 4, 2017 at the Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club in Corona del Mar, California. The daylong, ladies-only series of shore-and-boat-based workshops offer beginners to experts a welcoming environment to learn more about all topics sailing. Boat Owners Association of The United States (BoatUS) has been the event’s primary sponsor since its inception.

Attendees select a combination workshops in areas that best fits their interest and ability, and top women sailors from all over Southern California, many of whom are USCG Licensed Captains, present 30 topics. Workshops include: Welcome Aboard (for beginners), Diesels, Going Up the Mast, Introduction to Power Boating, Race Tactics, Docking, Suddenly Singlehanded, Weather, Sail Trim, Basic Navigation, Electronic Nav (new), Maintenance Mania, DIY Canvas Projects, How to Heave a Line, Nighttime Sailing & Navigation, Winch Workshop, Spinnaker Rigging, Offshore Cruising, and Introduction to Sailing, and In-harbor Races in Harbor20s.

To top off the event in the evening, our 2017 speaker will be Capt. Alison Oskinski, USCG 100-ton Licensed Captain, Alison has taught boat handling skills, safety, navigation, coastal piloting & charting at this Convention for many years. She does boat deliveries, takes groups on day sails, sunset, fishing, whale watching and Channel Islands cruises. She is involved in aquatics, swimming pool/waterpark design, aquatic risk management, and provides litigation support.

According to the event’s director Gail Hine, “The Convention gives women an opportunity to meet other women sailors, discuss options for more racing, cruising and day sailing, find out about existing women’s sailing organizations in their area as well as instructional programs available. We have something meaningful for everyone. Attendees have reported that the convention was one of their most rewarding boating experiences and best-organized event they have ever attended.”

The convention fee of $215.00 includes workshops, breakfast, lunch, dinner, souvenirs and handouts. Prepaid-registrations are required as space is limited to approximately 220. To obtain a reservation form, email Gail@scya.org or call 951-677-8121. Bookings can be made online at www.womenssailingconvention.com.

The post Women’s Sailing Convention in California appeared first on Cruising World.

It’s the most prestigious individual award a sailor can receive – a symbol of recognition for their outstanding achievements in this sport.

That’s right: the ISAF World Sailor of the Year Award. And despite the Volvo Ocean Race being a massive team effort, it’s only right that some of the race’s outstanding leaders have been shortlisted for the prize.

In the female category, Sam Davies has been nominated for her campaign as skipper of Team SCA.

The first all-female crew to enter the race in over a decade, Sam and her teammates set out to inspire a new generation of women – and they certainly managed that, making history with a win of the pen-ultimate leg into Lorient in June.

But despite the presence the women brought to the race and the nomination of Sam Davies for Sailor of the Year, the opportunities for female sailors are still too few and far between.

After nine months in the spotlight and some 40,000 miles of hard-won offshore experience on the clock, you’d have thought that the phones of the Team SCA crew would be ringing off the hook with job offers since the 2014-15 race finished last June.

Well, so far it just isn’t happening. The Volvo Ocean Race crew caught up with Sara Hastreiter, a straight-talking 31-year-old who didn’t let the fact that she hailed from land-locked Wyoming stop her from pursuing a sailing career and eventually contesting offshore sailing’s toughest team race.

Sure, Team SCA performed better than most had anticipated for the first all female team to compete in the Race for 12 years, Sara concedes, but there’s still plenty to learn for Sam Davies’ brigade who were, and still are, determined to blaze a new trail for round-the-world female sailors.

She’s convinced that their chief handicap against Ian Walker, Charles Caudrelier, Bouwe Bekking and the rest of the guys in the 12th edition in 2014-15 was simply a lack of experience competing at that level, and they won’t begin to make that up unless they are given more chances to take on the men.

So far, the silence has been almost deafening for the majority of the team.

As Sara succinctly put it during last week’s Genoa Boat Show:

“We’re shocked that we’re still sitting on our thumbs waiting for the phone to ring after three years of seriously competitive training and racing, preparing for and contesting the race under the tough stewardship of Team SCA chief coach, Brad Jackson.”

She continues: “Since the end of the Volvo Ocean Race, several of us have been trying find rides for the Sydney-Hobart Race, but it’s a brick wall. It’s like ‘oh yeah, this (project) isn’t happening after all, or this boat doesn’t feel comfortable bringing in women.”

Sara went on to explain that they went on to offer themselves up in pairs or as smaller teams in an attempt to bring on a crew of experiences sailors rather than one individual.

“We thought maybe some people would feel more comfortable with having two of us instead of just one female in a team of men, but none of us have found a ride. One would think that we had proved ourselves, but I don’t know. Maybe there’s some kind of unspoken fear that by bringing a female on board it will change the dynamic or something. I don’t really think there’s a reasonable explanation for it.”

So far since the Volvo Ocean Race finished in Gothenburg, on June 27, Sara has contested a Transat against the top maxi programs: Comanche and Rambler, taken on Team Vestas Wind in Genoa, and in now racing in the Rolex Middle Sea Race taking place this week. And that’s it.

“We still realise that when we finish one Volvo Ocean Race, we understand that the market is being flooded by the men that we’ve just competed with,” says Hastreiter, “at the end of the day, they’re still more experienced than we are. But the reason that experience gap continues to grow and continues to stay there, is because we don’t have the opportunities in between what’s specifically created for us. I would put almost the whole difference between us and the men’s teams during the race down to experience. A very small percentage of it, I would say, is physicality. You’re talking like 99-1, 99% experience against 1% (physicality).”

The galling point for Sara and her crewmates is that all the experience they earned in blood, sweat, and (the occasional) tears, in 2014-15, is in danger of being wasted with the end of SCA’s backing.

“We have always known from the finish that we all want to continue in this sport and we want to continue at this level,” she says, “does it necessarily mean that we have to to do the next Volvo Ocean Race? It might mean that, but our biggest concern is that we want to keep women in grand prix racing. We want to see women doing these prestigious offshore races and we want to see women in important roles on boats and in the future. It can mean an America’s Cup team or another Volvo Ocean Race, but in between those things, we have to get better and we have to keep pushing those boundaries.”

Sara vows that she and her tight-knit group of friends forged on the round-the-world campaign have no intention of quitting in their dreams and will continue to work together to win new opportunities in offshore sailing.

“We’re hoping that if by sticking together it becomes more marketable for us. It’s not that we’re exclusive to any other women but it’s more that we’re trying to leave a legacy. So we’re picking ourselves up by the bootstraps again and realising that if we’re going to find opportunities we’re going to have to make them ourselves.”

A Sailor of the Year win for Sam Davies could provide a much needed boost for the crew of SCA and help create new opportunities to get the women back on the water.

The awards for will be presented on November 10 in Sanya, China, a city familiar to Davies as the location of Volvo Ocean Race stopover.

The post SCA Skipper up for Sailor of the Year appeared first on Cruising World.

I really enjoy Latitude 38 magazine. It’s a West Coast institution. It’s available free along the Pacific waterfronts of the U.S. At far-flung anchorages around the world, cruisers with West Coast hailing ports still pass on copies to one another. Publisher Richard Spindler has a strong, charismatic editorial voice that is hard to find elsewhere.

When we moved to Washington, D.C. and lived for a decade without a boat, I maintained an annual subscription just to stay in the loop. Since we’ve been cruising, I mostly keep up via their online site, ‘Lectronic Latitude. And that’s where I recently read a story that rubbed me the wrong way.

The story in question is simple. Magazine publisher walks along the waterfront, spots a woman at the top of a mast, and his “interest is sparked.” He interviews her.

“How long were you up there for?”
“Had you been up a mast before?”
“Did you drop anything?”
“Do you have a fear of heights?”
“We’re impressed, do you know other women who have gone up the mast?”

Then Spindler offers a bit of sexual innuendo before soliciting responses from any women in his readership who might have gone up a mast in their lives. He says he wants to recognize them.

C’mon! Spindler’s been on the water for longer than I may ever be. He personally knows many sailing women who go up the mast. He knows this is not a news story. Yet he writes this piece like it is, like he witnessed a remarkable event. The interview reads like a parody—seriously, it’s hilarious when read from that perspective. And I hoped that it was written from that perspective, but it wasn’t.

So what’s the harm?

At the start of the his story, Spindler writes, “While it may not fit the progressive narrative about equality of the sexes, it appears there is something of a natural division of labor on sailboats. In the overwhelming number of cases, men do most of the sailing and the mechanical chores, while women do the cooking and cleaning. Blue jobs and pink jobs.”

I agree with these sentences to the extent that in an overwhelming number of cases, aboard a boat it’s usually a man in the engine room and a woman in the galley. But unlike Spindler, I don’t think it’s this observation that’s contrary to the “progressive narrative.” I think posting a story on his magazine’s newsfeed, in which the entire point and focus is to announce that a woman allowed herself to be hauled to the top of her own mast to fix a broken windex, is both patronizing and contrary to the progressive narrative.

I’m raising two girls into women. It’s a big responsibility. In part it means forging a way for them in the world until they can do so for themselves. In the almost five years we’ve owned Del Viento, Eleanor has been up the mast a few times (Windy more). She’s light and easy to haul up (probably the reason a lot of female crew are pulled up the stick). She’s also my partner in crime when it’s time to change the engine oil or transmission fluid. I’m proud of her, but would never be comfortable seeing her recognized someday in a magazine or online newsfeed just for being a woman who ascends a mast or changes the engine oil. Because that kind of an article would serve only to keep the progressive narrative, from progressing.

In our twenties, we traded our boat for a house and our freedom for careers. In our thirties, we lived the American dream. In our forties, we woke and traded our house for a boat and our careers for freedom. And here we are. Click here to read more from the Log of Del Viento.

The post A Woman Went up a Mast appeared first on Cruising World.