Women along for the ride? Maybe in Saudi Arabia, not in yacht racing

Banners in the rigging of the assembled fleet snapped in the crisp breeze as sailors gathered on a lawn under a flood of sunlight for one of the happy rituals of yacht racing: the prize-giving ceremony.

Denizens of the vast universe outside of the minuscule world of sailing must marvel that people who invest so much effort and expense and endure such discomfort in the pursuit of long-distance sailboat racing can be pleased to the point of exhibiting child-like glee by prizes consisting of colorful scraps of cloth of no intrinsic value.

Yet measured by their symbolic value those scraps of cloth that we call “brag flags” are treasures to sailors, and you could see that in the smiles on the faces of those called to receive them and hear it in the cheers that saluted their walk to the podium. Many of the flags were accepted by skippers accompanied by key crewmembers or in some cases by entire crews. When our boat’s name was called, I went forward with someone who is a key crewmember and more—the co-owner of the boat, The First Mate, my wife.

As I reached for the proffered flag, one of the white-uniformed yacht club officers in the hand-shaking line remarked to The First Mate, “So you came along for the ride.”

Along for the ride!

Calling Ellen. Calling Dawn. We have a problem here: It lives. It’s back. The real-girls-don’t-go-sailing attitude that hung like an albatross around the neck of our sport for so long is not, as previously thought, extinct.

All right, I’ll settle down. I know this was an aberration. It’s no reason to reignite the bra-burning fires. I know the comment didn’t represent the views of the event organizers or the sponsoring yacht club. And I’m sure the fellow who made it didn’t mean to dampen anyone’s enjoyment of recognition for a well sailed race; he probably just didn’t think things through before he spoke. Either that or he’d been on sabbatical for the past 20 years in Saudi Arabia, where women have to go along for the ride because they are not allowed to drive.

In which case, he wouldn’t have known that today women are not just accepted as sailors on racing yachts, but are sought for their skills at crew positions from the back of the boat to the front. Speaking of the front, a woman wearing a bowman’s (more about the terminology later) harness, once the badge of the gnarliest sailing studs, doesn’t merit a second look these days. In fact, the only thing women do differently than men aboard an offshore racing boat is to go below to use the head. They are not admitted to the boys’ aft-rail club, but as this is for purely anatomical reasons it is generally not considered a slight by sailing feminists.

Being out of touch, he wouldn’t have known about the more spectacular rides women sailors have gone on, the likes of the petite young Englishwoman Ellen MacArthur’s singlehanded circumnavigation in 71 days in a monster trimaran or American Dawn Riley’s tour de force through the world of professional sailing as around-the-world racer and America’s Cup competitor and CEO.

As for The First Mate, her “ride” in the race in question included: standing watches, trimming sails, grinding winches, steering, adding her 115 pounds to the crew weight arrayed on the rail hour after butt-numbing hour, plus preparing meals for a crew of 12.

Except for the galley duty, which some female sailors eschew as too much like traditional women’s work, this is a fairly typical regimen for women who “go along for the ride.” The First Mate has been doing it for more years than I intend to reveal here, except to say she qualifies as a pioneer. Women were so rare in the Chicago-Mackinac Race when she first sailed in it that she and one of the few other female competitors, who happened to be her mother-in-law, were deemed worthy of a television news feature.

In those days, women sailors had to work harder to counter the “along for the ride” perception. Today, except for the occasional retro moment, the last challenge to women onboard may be men who are just too sensitive—“Let me crank that winch, it’s a brutal job.” The two women who are regular members of our crew, The First Mate and our daughter, guard their territory with a look that says, “Hands off that sheet.” Or, “Don’t even think about touching that winch handle.”

Some women sailors, though, apparently still have a need to find other ways to assert equality of the sexes under sail. Several of them made a fuss recently on the Internet over the time-honored alarm call of “man overboard,” insisting the term should be neutered to “crew overboard,” and that the abbreviation should be changed from MOB to COB.

You pretty much know the gender battle is over when the issues get so silly. The COB movement reminds me of feminist complaints over “man” suffixes—crewman, bowman, helmsman, whatever. I guess we’re supposed to refer to people who work at the front of the boat as “bows,” in the manner that “chairman” has morphed to the ridiculous “chair.” (I think of some committee heads as mellow Lazy Boys and others as stiff cane-backed chairs.)

My suggestion to anyone bothered by this is to think of “man” as a derivative of “human” and be proud of whatever title it’s part of if you qualify.

As for the fellow who put his foot in his mouth with the “you came along for the ride” comment, I would recommend he wear a sturdy PFD if he goes along for the ride with some of the women sailors I know. He’s a candidate to become a MOB. Excuse me, a COB.