Cruising is women's business

Changing Course: A Woman's Guide to Choosing the Cruising Life
by  Debra Ann Cantrell
$20.95, 192 pp.

ISBN:0071427899

This slim volume, which came recommended to me and has continued to get mention since its 2004 publication, might be one of the most important reads the husband portion of a cruising couple could purchase. The cruising women I’ve read about, like Ellen MacArthur, Beryl Smeeton and Tania Aebi, have tended toward the brusquely efficient, stiff-upper-lip types. Which is all well and good, I suppose, but that’s not most sailing husbands, is it, never mind their perhaps less-enthusiastic wives.

Now, given that’s it aimed squarely at women, that comment might seem counter-intuitive. Well, so are most male sailors, in my experience. Men like systems, fixing things, getting places. So do a lot of women, but they tend to want to discuss the ramifications first. Men, generally, can have a little trouble in this department.

That ‘little trouble’ is the subject of this interesting book, and if you like it, there's an interesting website as well. Many men of a certain age and a nautical cast of mind decide to go cruising, and many a Caribbean bar features these now-divorced skippers who didn’t quite take into account what selling up and sailing would mean to their spouses. Although Debra Cantrell’s study, and this is a study, assumes that it’s men who propose and women who dispose with the cruising life, much of this book is applicable to any pair, gay, straight or otherwise undefined shipmates, where one seeks a life-altering adventure and the other doesn’t…at least at first. In that sense, it's kin to the unfortunately obscure Two in a Boat, which I favourably reviewed below.

Despite the anecdotal approach, this is essentially a social survey of how women cope with their husband’s determination to cruise. When a woman who has spent years building a career, making a home, raising kids and forming strong local relationship hears that her beloved Skipper wants to bugger off to Margaritaville…well, it can create stresses. Cantrell charts her own course from, roughly, total opposition, fear and loathing to acceptance and finally, well-seasoned enjoyment. This course allowed for speaking with other women in the cruising life, many of whom were not (at first) remotely gung ho about the idea. and others who found it was the first step in an eventual marital breakdown. The briefest of chats with boat club bar staff will confirm this, alas. Boats and marriages founder when the crew is not in accord.

This isn’t a “downer” book at all, however. Few men are Captain Blighs of the under-40 foot class, but few seem to understand on an emotional level what it means to trade a Leaside three-bedroom for a dimly lit V-berth and the joys of ill-secured holding tanks. Such men should read this book avidly if they have any plans to sail off with the spouse. 

Among the common sense suggestions are the one to keep the house and rent it out, except for one room, as a paid-off house will provide both storage space, cruising income and a place to sack out on occasional trips back. I like this so much I've set that process in motion with tenants already in the upper two floors.

Another suggestion was that wives and husbands should maintain a “boat” account, and separate accounts for themselves, so that neither has veto power over perceived “luxuries” (or the least concessions to a civilized life, take your pick). This means in practical terms that either skipper can bail in a hurry, as there’s nothing more nasty than being trapped on a boat with no means of leaving it at the next port. As Cantrell points out, if you aren’t on the same page regarding what constitute reasonable expenditures, why go sailing? Camping is cheaper and frequently less damp and you can stretch your legs until you get to a nice pooping tree.

Women are strongly encouraged in this book to take sailing lessons, diesel repair lessons, navigation courses and the like. That’s because it’s better and safer to have two sailors aboard, but also because knowing this salty arcana means women (and non-sailing husbands of female skippers) can gain confidence and enjoyment out of doing things, and can perceive why their husbands wanted to go in the first place with "the skipper eye".. Cantrell admits that while a few women who went sailing hated it even after gaining the experience, there are a roughly equal number who overcame initial fears and concern and are now keenest on keeping cruising.

Cantrell’s writing style, while relying a little heavily on “therapeutic” language for my taste, is clear and informative, and is a good place to start when you have a spouse that doesn’t want to go, but doesn’t want to stop you, cruising. While I have in the past read the books I review for free, I haven't always gotten to keep them (it’s not that good a gig). This one, I bought. No higher recommendation exists.

Tale of the Scale a touch on the gusty side

 

Defining the Wind: the Beaufort Scale, and How a 19th-Century Admiral Turned ScienceInto Poetry

by Scott Huler, Crown Publishers

ISBN: 1400048842, 2004

 Even before I took up sailing, I was more than vaguely aware of the time-tested and oft refined Beaufort Scale and its handy ability to summarize the real-life effects of wind on sea and (later) land. What I didn’t know was much about Beaufort, other than he was of Napoleonic Wars vintage and was one of those polymath captains who turned to science after many years of fighting for the British Navy.

Oh, and the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic? That’s named for him, as well.

After reading Scott Huler’s somewhat obsessive 2004-penned tale of how his own poetic, rather than his scientific, interest in the Beaufort Scale drew him into a 200-year odyssey of research, sidetracking, pilgrimages and mystery solving, I know more about a lot of things, one of which is Scott Huler’s mental processes.

Huler was a copy editor when he stumbled across Beaufort’s famous scale of wind effects in the early 1980s. There it was, in a dictionary of all places, and he found the compact rhythm of “Force 5, Fresh Breeze, small trees in leaf begin to sway; crested wavelets form on inland waters” a sort of nature-focused haiku, and he determined to learn more about this Beaufort fellow and his windy prose. The result defines the wind, but perhaps not as he intended.

What he learned is that the story of man’s measurement of the natural world around him has been a fairly slow and torturous progression from “damn, it’s somewhat blowy out there, what?” to today, when satellites can track rogue waves in the middle of empty oceans, down to the closest ten centimetres, and no trip around the bay is complete with checking out Windguru. Beaufort himself (and while we learn a great deal about him, he is only one of many characters in this story) was an exceptionally good, Cook- and Vancouver-level hydrographer and surveyor, as well as a good observer of the natural world when he wasn’t being shot in the face or the groin by the enemies of His Britannic Majesty.

Beaufort either devised independently or modified an existing wind scale to sea conditions, and amended his original scale in terms an average sailor would understand: thus, ‘Force 5, bring in topsails, whitecaps form’, and so on. The scale didn’t achieve wide acceptance or the Beaufort moniker until close to the end of Beaufort’s long and detail-oriented existence; since then, it has seen derivatives such as the Petersen Sea State Scale, and various land-based methods of clocking the wind by its effects on one’s surroundings, not by its effects on those little hand-held windspeed doohickeys increasing common in the Wednesday night club races.

Huler’s own prose I found a little wide-eyed and repetitive in spots, but you can’t bring in Captain Cook, William Bligh, Charles Darwin and other big names of the 18^th and 19^th century and be considered boring. Beaufort and his scale, the way Huler tells it, tells us a great deal of not only what people thought worth measuring two hundred years ago, but what they thought worth thinking about in a world being transformed by technology and improving science. This book’s sole fault is that this former copy editing author could have used a bit of trimming: I found him a wee bit long-winded.

If sailing's a religion, here's the Book of Common Care

Nigel Calder’s Cruising Handbook,
By Nigel Calder,
International Marine/McGraw Hill,
$78.55, 588 pp.
ISBN: 0-07-135099-3


There’s been dozens of “how-to-sail/race/cruise” books over the years, although some of the best, by authors such as Slocum, Chichester and Moitessier, have been more memoir than handbook. Still, few sailors haven’t read the tales from the seasoned sailors who’ve circumnavigated.

Most of us have more modest goals centered around docking and anchoring properly, and maintaining our boats to a standard that will allow us to enjoy them safely and reliably. Many of us may never sail beyond Lake Ontario—which can be quite an efficient teacher in its own right—but that doesn’t mean we can’t benefit from the knowledge of those who sail in saltier waters. Perhaps even having that knowledge at hand will make going offshore, or South, or wherever, more plausible.

That’s where heavy-duty compendiums like Nigel Calder’s Cruising Handbook come in. The very prolific and thankfully competent Calder, besides being an accomplished cruiser around North America (although interestingly, not so muchoffshore) is well known for his cruising guides, sailing articles, and his clearly written manuals on recreational boating systems, particularly his very popular and complementary Boatowner’s Mechanical and Electrical Manual. Calder’s style is clear, concise and knowledgeable, which makes this heavily illustrated latest work a pleasure to read. Even nearing the decade mark since publication, a quick review confirms that it remains an excellent cruising guide.

Still, it’s a crowded field. I recently picked up a second-hand copy of Donald Street’s The Ocean Sailing Yacht, and despite the fact that it’s as old as my boat (1973), there’s a wealth of solid sailing lore in there applicable to the modern sailor. The same can be said even for the late Eric Hiscock’s cruising manuals, even though they are now about 50 years old. Lots of salty wisdom in the older guides, along with tips and tricks you won’t find elsewhere. Of course, there’s very little on radios, electric bilge pumps, autopilots and cockpit-activated windlasses. There’s a great deal on sextants, knots and the new if slightly suspicious wonder fabric, Dacron. I would have to say the only better book I've read that attempted to touch all the cruising bases was Beth A. Leonard's hulking The Voyager's Handbook, which I reviewed below some time ago.

So, Calder has currency still in his favour. He also has a good handle on the tyranny of convenience: Today’s boats, or older boats being renovated to today’s standards, paradoxically require more of the sailor technically than any recreational boat of even 20 years ago. Today’s boats have powerful diesels, computers, electric heads, pumps and windlasses, radar, radios and GPS. At night, they glow like Christmas trees with cabin, navigation and anchor lights, not all sensible low-amp LEDs.. If they get too hot from the propane ovens, they can fetch a beer from the built-in fridge and flick on the air conditioning. It’s a far reach from throwing a cooler into a Tanzer 22 and heading for Kingston in 1978, but it’s the reality for many of today’s cruisers, and Calder’s “systems” approach shows how best to design, install and service the extensive wires, cables and hoses the modern cruiser requires.

It’s this focus on the cruising crew and their needs that distinguishes Calder’s book from equally good, if more generalist, manuals such as John Rousmaniere’s now venerable Annapolis Book of Seamanship. That worthy volume, now in its third or maybe fourth edition, makes, I think, a better primer for the novice sailor than Calder’s book, which takes as one of its starting points that one has actually taken a few trips in a boat and is ready to consider a longer-term commitment to the lifestyle.

Much of Calder’s commentary, for example, consists of his observations on what makes a good coastal and offshore cruiser (hint: he doesn’t think it’s the same boat). In this respect, he’s the opposite of, say, a new yacht salesman. Calder likes simple, robust, and redundant, and he’s partial to fullish keels, skegs, and cutter rigs with hank-on staysails. From a systems point of view, he’s willing to advise on how to wire a boat for all mod cons, but he’s not a fan of wide boats with a lot of beam aft. In this sense, he’s advising for the true cruiser who needs a safe boat for passagemaking, and not the sailor looking for a boat-shaped drinks patio.

Despite its pure utility as a checklist for cruisers, therefore, I found Calder’s book a compelling argument for the attributes to seek in my next boat, the one I’d like to take offshore, South, or wherever. At nearly eighty dollars Canadian, it’s a pricey manual, but there’s enough common sense and current thinking here to make it a solid addition to those heading out, or just thinking about it.

A slightly morbid treasury for reluctant sailors

After the Storm: True Stories of Disaster and Recovery at Sea

By John Rousmaniere

McGraw-Hill Ryerson

$39.95, 338 pp.

ISBN: 0-07-1377795-6

Available through www.nauticalmind.com and selected bookstores

As a writer, John Rousmaniere will be familiar to many as the author of The Annapolis Book of Seamanship, a useful and often updated (the fourth edition is due January, 2014) sailor’s Bible that illustrates not only Rousmaniere’s extensive sailing experience, but also his easy way with a word, or even a string of them in series. Others will know of his columns at Sailnet.com or his frequent articles for the sailing magazines. I mention him below as the author of the seminal post-race analysis, Fastnet: Force 10, a book that, despite its age, still sets the bar for "what went wrong while sailing"detective work. 

As handy with a word processor as with a winch handle, Rousmaniere is a genial spinner of sea tales, and that makes the often harrowing content of his latest effort both compelling and nerve-wracking. I've also met the guy at a "Safety at Sea" seminar I attended in 2010 and he's even a decent public speaker. But I don't wish to fawn overmuch: let's look at the work.

Not many Lake Ontario recreational boaters bother to leave the dock on the rare summer’s day when a good blow is building, but for those who do, the experience can be thrilling, and can test the skills and the canvas of even a veteran sailor, particularly when a squall hits. Exponentially more challenging is the open ocean, where long fetches, giant and wobbly storm systems and inadequate or insufficient talent at the helm or vessel strength can make the merely nasty into the truly destructive.

Rousmaniere has been this way before: in his excellent Fastnet, Force 10, he charts the fate of his fellow competitors in the 1979 Fastnet Race south of Ireland, one of the most deadly sporting events in history. Rousmaniere’s habitually has been in the sort of storms he describes, and has lived to tell the tale, presumably with keyboard fingers intact. Were he not a good writer, this first-hand experience alone would recommend him as a compiler of the memorable series of disasters-at-sea that comprise After the Storm.

Rousmaniere also holds post-grad degrees in history and divinity, both of which serve him well here. The divinity degree expresses itself in subtle ways. Rousmaniere relates how in the case of many survivors of shipwrecks and/or storms, sometimes dramatic religious impulses were born. This is effectively the case with the Biblical figure of Jonah, for whom a deity-delivered storm (delivered somewhat spitefully, as is often the case in the Old Testament) leads to spiritual reform. Rousmaniere also cites the story of the Apostle Paul, for whom a Mediterranean tempest proves to be a opportunity for converting the pagan sailors who are reportedly mightily impressed by Paul’s calm mien and sturdy faith as the seas build.

More contemporary, and perhaps most impressive in its way, is the story of John Newton, a long-time ne’er-do-well brutalized (and made brutal in turn) as a functionary on a slave ship of the 18^th century. Against all odds, Newton helms a crippled, half-flooded ship through a vicious Atlantic gale and back to dry land. This experience has a transformative effect on Newton. He renounces his former life, becomes a popular preacher, and eventually pens Amazing Grace, perhaps the most popular hymn ever written. Few people know that tune as being the work of a one-time slaver, and fewer know of its origins in a protracted storm.

God isn’t behind every tale of salty woe, however: Rousmaniere’s too much the seaman to ascribe every shipwreck to celestial judgment. Sometimes poor human judgment, or perhaps hubris, will suffice. The case of Percy Bysshe Shelley kicks off the book, and it’s a cautionary tale for performance racers and poets alike. Shelley, a bit of a rock star of his day in the versifying line, was like most young men have always been: when he wasn’t attending to the ladies, he enjoyed the best toys he could afford. Prime among them was Ariel, an overcanvassed, narrow, insufficiently decked racing yacht that Shelley enjoyed but evidently couldn’t be bothered to learn how to sail. Rousmaniere lays the inevitable tragedy at the poet’s door: God may send the tempest, but there is no excuse for unseamanlike behaviour. Even though this book doesn't feature stories in which the latest gear like SPOT Messangers or PLBs plays a role, there is still a lot of excellent and specific safety knowledge for those considering more trying passages.

Rousmaniere tells other tales familiar (the abandoned Mary Celeste and another, less well-known “ghost ship”) and new-to-me (the appalling demise of proto-feminist Margaret Fuller in the wreck of the Elizabeth) all of which make this an appealing treasury not only of heartbreak, but of survival and reassessment after grim episodes. Prophetically (and perhaps not unexpectedly in a religiously attuned writer such as Rousmaniere), he closes the book with a chapter on the latest generation of world ocean racers, most of whom have felt close to death in storms, despite all the latest in gear and knowledge, and some of whom, like their seafaring ancestors, have vanished beneath the waves, and not been seen again.

So if you've ever wondered why sailors are a fatalistic lot, this occasionally morbid if engaging treasury will suggest some pretty persuasive reasons why that state of mind prevails.

Lessons from the sea for a voyaging family

The Voyage of the Northern Magic: A Family Odyssey

By Diane Stuemer,

McClelland & Stewart Ltd.,

$37.99, 369 pp.

ISBN: 0-7710-8260-6

Available through www.nauticalmind.com and selected bookstores

If family-oriented sailing stories strike you as good Christmas reading, the late Ottawa circumnavigator Diane Stuemer’s tale of a four-year voyage around the planet in a 40-year-old steel ketch makes for solid Yuletide fare. I recently re-read a bit of this book, which I had bought when it first came out, and it's still a hell of a tale.

Herbert and Diane Stuemer, self-described as a typical suburban family with three sub-teen boys, found that the onset of middle age and Diane's brush with cancer were all the motivation they needed to uproot themselves and to follow a windborne dream.

Essentially an impulse buy for the Stuemer family, their aged 42-foot Dutch ketch , which would be renamed Northern Magic, would prove to be a sturdy, if not luxurious, home for the five-member family on their west-about passage. Before leaving, Diane Stuemer cleverly contracted with an Ottawa daily paper to provide updates on the voyage; not only did this spur enormous local interest in—and assistance for—their voyage, but it provided Stuemer with a basis for her book, the slick web site dedicated to their trip at www.northernmagic.com, and what appeared to be a burgeoning career for herself as a motivational speaker.

That career was unfortunately cut short in 2003 when Stuemer's melanoma flared up again into cancer. I saw her speak a few weeks before she died, and she was a very positive person. Her story was inspiring, but also a cautionary tale: my wife and I have, unlike herself, striven to prepare ourselves to equal and complementary skill sets and to gather diverse yacht-handling experiences. A handyman skipper like Herbert Stuemer, no matter how high his own level of skill, with kids aboard and an initially new-to-sailing wife yielded no foundation in safety for running their boat: there are hair-raising early trials that underlined this for my wife and I in big, red-ink strokes.

Diane Stuemer possessed a degree in journalism and, before becoming 'first mate' on Northern Magic, a career in advertising. Both skill sets facilitate her telling of a tale of adventure that fairly crackles off the page. Stuemer and her husband decided to world cruise essentially on impulse, and both had to muster up a great deal of enthusiasm and positive thinking to overcome some of the hurdles the seas, the vessel and the inhabitants of various ports threw at them. My heart went out in particular to Herbert Stuemer, the father and 'captain' of Northern Magic. As as a former renovator and technical teacher and all-around Mr. Fixit, he by default performed the seemingly constant repairs and adjustments needed on the old boat. I lost count of the number of times he seemed to be installing yet another rebuilt alternator upside down in the bilge during a nausea-making gale. Commendably, Stuemer isn’t shy about saying what equipment worked like a charm…and which failed miserably. As for the boat itself, old steel Dutch ketches seem a bullet-proof choice for the inexperienced sailor. As can be seen on this blog's boat rebuilding sister, The World Encompassed, I took some of those ideas of "pilothouse" and "steel" to heart when we bought Alchemy, our steel pilothhouse cutter, in 2006. All credit to Northern Magic on that score.

Speaking of equipment issues, it’s interesting to compare the Stuemers’ story with a similar one from 15 years further in the past: the voyage of Paul Howard and Fiona McCall’s Lorcha. As told in two popular books from the ‘80s, the circumnavigation of Lorcha seemed by contrast to the Stuemers to be more relaxed, possibly because of the greater experience of the sailing couple, and probably because the earlier boat’s most complex gear was a SatNav. Northern Magic, due to Diane Stuemer’s journalistic needs and the requirements to keep the kids occupied with electrons, featured laptops and e-mail, radar and GPS and a lot of gear not available to or generally desired by the smaller boat and crew of Lorcha a mere 15 years earlier.

Another difference between the '80s and our new century is that it’s a nastier world for cruisers these days and wasn't that different at the turn of the millennium. Stuemer relates problems with bureaucracy-mad officials, pirates in the Red Sea, and even an unwanted, ring-side seat to Al Qaeda terrorism. On the plus side, however, Stuemer found her family becoming gradually involved in the often impoverished lives of the folk they met. This has led to the long-term support of orangutan habitat preservation in Borneo, and paying for the education of some young people in Kenya. This is the best part of Stuemer’s narrative, in my opinion: how cruising eventually took her away from her own concerns and gave her a broader view of the world, one in which even a limited effort could make a great difference. That alone takes this tale well beyond tourism.