My Week with Womanship, A "For Women Only" Sailing Course

I have a boat and I have Galveston Bay--why would I want to go off and take a sailing course on someone else's boat? Because something always happens and we never make it offshore, the term "spousal instruction" is an oxymoron, I wanted to sail someplace I had never been, I wanted to practice anchoring, learn how to perform Bahamian and Med mooring, I had never been out in our dinghy, all the above.

So, I signed up for a 7-day offshore Womanship course in Florida. Womanship is the oldest "for women only" sailing program and I liked their motto, "No Yelling". Not that Mike yells at me much these days. But he has been known to ask, "Where the **** are you GOING?" when I am at the helm. When I have explained quietly that unless he has either a legitimate instruction or a construction criticism he keep such questions to himself, he has suggested that maybe I spend time practicing, preferably on someone else's boat. So I looked for a warm place with similar waters/anchoring conditions to our here in Galveston Bay. I decided Fort Myers was a good place to start. That is one of Womanship's Florida bases. They also do courses out of Key West to Miami, but I preferred the idea of the Gulf side of Florida.

I got almost everything I wanted out of it--just lousy weather kept us from sailing about 50% of the time. We had 6 students (ages 43-60) and 2 instructors. The captain, Lynne Fraker, was a jewel--really knew her stuff and how to impart it well. When she is not instructing Womanship courses, she is either working as assistant Harbormaster at Martha's Vineyard or is out single-handing her 36-foot Alden, a wooden boat classic. The mate, Linda Martin, was getting in some extra practice before taking her 26-foot sloop to the Bahamas, single-handed. Most of the students had some experience and owned boats or had chartered several times. Like me, they just wanted to bone up on navigation skills, anchoring, docking (someone else's boat!), and engine maintenance. We sailed a 43 Hunter (with 2 heads, thankfully!). Left Ft. Myers Beach, Florida, and headed north, anchoring nights at Glover Bight, Pelican Bay, Punto Blanco, Boca Grande (in the bayou at Gasparilla Island), and off of Sanibel Island. We docked at a slip one night at Cabbage Key (where Jimmy Buffett was reputed to have been inspired to write the song "Cheeseburger in Paradise"). Temperature ranged from 82 to 50, winds from zip to 25 knots+, weather from hot blazing sun to squalls and thunderstorms. Fortunately, we were in Charlotte Harbor the day we got the biggest winds (Force 6, which seemed to be plenty for most on board!). We each got to spend a useful amount of time practicing reefing and sail trim. Because I was the only one who had written "would like some heavy weather experience" on the expectation sheet, I was elected to go out on deck wearing the harness and pull down the mainsail in the nastiest weather. I only got whacked in the face once by a knot on the end of a loose jib sheet, but suffered no facial rearrangement (thank heaven I was wearing my glasses!) and managed to get everything tied down and covered.

Another useful skill we all acquired was dealing with speed demons in power boats and motoryachts in the Intercoastal Waterway (there were a FEW nice people in power boats, but they were greatly outnumbered by those who left us rocking and rolling in their wakes). We also learned to pay careful and close attention to charts and "local knowledge" provided by the captain to avoid shoals outside of and IN the channels. Thanks to the diligence of whoever was the navigator of the day, we managed to avoid going aground, although we had been told to expect it more than once. Almost every day we passed 2-5 boats aground, some much smaller and with less draft than "New One".

In crowded anchorages, such as Boca Grande, it was interesting to note how many men would pop up out of their boats and yell instructions (not advice) on how to proceed when they saw a cluster of women on deck. The captain would kindly thank them and then ignore them. We students thought we should put up a "Student Boater" sign to really scare the hell out of 'em, but the captain wouldn't let us. It was nerve-wracking to practice docking stern first between narrow pilings with a strong current and an audience, but we all did beautifully and I learned some very useful hints on using spring lines. I was ready to head home and practice singlehanding my 36-footer! We ended with a cross-Gulf motor sail (the NOAA report said 10-15 knots--the real weather said 1-2 knots). We practiced taking running fixes, using the GPS, using visuals, and doing MOB drills under motor with a lifesling.

All that plus occasionally being the only boat in an anchorage with pelicans, seagulls, loons, bald eagles, and dolphins all around (didn't see any manatees), made this offshore course worth the time and $$. I not only learned a lot of new skills, I reinforced those I already knew and increased my self confidence. Which is a good thing, because Mike and I have decided to take a "minicruise" of 5 weeks to see if we really do want to cruise forever in the future. We want to try it out before we "sell up and sail" and discover 2 weeks later we hate the water, the boat, and each other!