The prejudice of the sailing world

I knew that this crossing would be a challenge for me both in terms of the sailing and length of time at sea, but also in a social setting as not many 17 year old girls do it. The remainder of our crew, Peter and Manfred joined us when my mum went home. I must admit that this was a bit of a shock to my system and I have already struggled to fight my corner a bit! I expect most ladies would support me in saying that the sailing world is one dominated by men and is extremely sexist. There are a lot of people out there who expect women to drop into the role of ‘food and fenders’; expecting meals to appear and the boat to be sparkly clean. I have been determined that I will not do this and whilst I will do my fair share of the cooking and cleaning, I will not do any more than the men. Whilst I am lucky in that the men I am sailing with are quite open minded individuals and do not expect me to assume that role, there are plenty others around that do. In the berth next to us there is a boat, which has a crew of 9 ladies, belonging to a company ‘girlsforsail’ which provide sailing in an all female boat. I think this is strong evidence of how much of an issue this is in the sailing world as clearly there is a market for all female sailing. I doubt there ever has been or ever will be the need for a ‘boysforsail’ as, put simply, they already dominate the scene.

Whilst some may argue that men’s attitudes will only change if women are more involved in sailing, I can tell you from experiencing it first hand, it is extremely unpleasant to live life being expected to do more domestic duties and it makes me feel very out of place so no wonder women are not more involved in sailing! Furthermore ,there is evidence to prove that it is harder for women to get into sailing, especially professionally as there is still the perception that men are stronger and women are not capable of pulling ropes or lifting heavy things. This repulses me that among a group of well-educated people, such as there are among ARC participants, there is still this belief when in reality there are plenty of women who are stronger than men. Sailing is not purely about strength.

It has made me realise how hard it must have been to live as a woman in the early 20th century and how life changing and positive the suffragette movement must have been for many. Whilst my struggles in the sailing world are trivial and incomparable to women living in the early 20th century, it has made me reflect on the restrictions placed on women in the past and how frustrating it must have been. Whilst this may sound a little cringe it has made me realise how strong they were to fight and how we should value the rights we have in our society as even today in countries such as Saudi Arabia this is not the case.

Anyway, despite my feelings of the sailing world there are many kind and appreciative people around and it has been fun to meet people from all over the world. I also knew that there would be a lot of ‘yachties’ talk about aerials and water makers etc but I did not know that it was humanly possible to spend an entire day talking about radios alone…it is quite a talent!! Whilst there is a lot of this kind of chat, which frankly I do find boring, and not my choice of conversation, I have learnt a lot about the sailing techniques and preparations for such a voyage.