Sailing into your strength

December 2024

By Natasha Salvo

During the 20 years I owned boats, sailing was IT. I spent every spare moment that I wasn’t engaged in work, or otherwise occupied, on my Sabre 28. Being out on the water, getting to know my boat, and sharing the experience with friends was such a joy. Even if I couldn’t find anyone to go sailing with, simply being away from land felt like a vacation. When I retired, I chose to spend nearly two years living aboard. What a gift and an adventure!

Now in my second year of being boatless – and if you’ve ever owned a boat, you know this feels a little like being homeless – I continue to question my relationship to these things that have been such a huge part of my identity. Who am I without a boat? Without sailing? Without a wheel in my hands and the waves beneath my feet?

This summer I thought I’d experiment by sailing on Other People’s Boats. If you’ve ever owned a boat, you know that this has a certain appeal. Other people launch, maintain, haul, and store the boat. Equally important, other people pay for the launching, maintaining, hauling, and storing of said boat. You can sail whenever you’re so moved, and you can choose to go camping, hiking, or back porch sitting to augment your summer’s enjoyment without feeling like you’re squandering your investment.

Furthermore, you no longer have to be the one responsible while on the water. Ah, to sit back, relax, and just enjoy the ride. No need to be Captain of My Own Ship – what a relief!

So it came as a surprise to me more than anyone when I found myself taking a tack upwind to get my captain’s license so that I could teach women’s sailing; that is, becoming Captain of Someone Else’s Ship.

It all happened rather unexpectedly after someone read an article of mine in this very magazine and contacted me to ask if I wanted to teach sailing. “Maybe?” I wrote back. “Let’s talk.” And then I didn’t hear from him. Until one day at the squash court when I saw his name in the next slot. Turns out Alex is the Executive Director of Sailing Ships Maine, a non-profit whose mission is to provide “life-changing opportunities for teens of all abilities and income levels to discover the ocean environment and expand leadership skills.”

In the 15-minute conversation that followed, I allowed as to how I’d often thought of teaching women’s sailing. “Great,” he said. “I’ve got a boat you can use that’s available on the weekends. All you need is your captain’s license. And if you teach for us, you can take the course for free!” Again, this was something I’d been thinking about for some time, but had endless excuses for why I didn’t want to go for it: too much arcane information, too much responsibility, too much money, too militaristic, too masculine! But for some reason I only hesitated a moment, after which I shook his hand, and said, “I’m in!”

I spent the next three months studying for my captain’s exam with Chris Nolan’s outstanding self-paced online course through Practical Navigator. Not having studied for a test in decades, I was pleased to have passed the 25-ton Masters exam and sailing endorsement with flying colors. Next step was to create the program, recruit students and deckhands, and learn the boat, a 36’ Palmer-Johnson named Brightside. I called the program Sailing into Your Strength; that is, finding your own sense of empowerment with a sailboat as the vehicle.

I asked every woman I knew or met with any sailing experience whether they wanted to be a deckhand. In my post-online education/tech writer retirement, I pulled together a curriculum and documented the boat’s systems. I then asked four women I know – two with some sailing experience, and two with none – if they’d like to be part of my “practice weekend.” It was rainy and foggy, but everyone had a great time sharing the experience of sailing, along with some boat yoga. The first boat was half full, so the teacher-student ratio was high and we all learned a lot. The next two July weekends I honed the training with the support of my uber-competent deckhands, two of whom were captains themselves.

It was exhilarating, energizing, and exhausting – rowing a mile each way to collect the boat and deliver it back to the mooring, planning and preparing the food, teaching basic sailing concepts, coaching each helmsperson, sharing duties with each deckhand, introducing paper charts and electronic navigation, teaching knots, cleats, and coiling, and not the least of which, interacting with a boatload of enthusiastic women!

Why women only? I’ve come to believe that for many women, learning to sail in the company of other women is more conducive to stepping into the competence, confidence, and courage it takes to become Captain of Your Own Ship in a way that feels authentically female. In a supportive environment among other women, they feel free to ask all those “silly” questions normally kept inside rather than feeling stupid for asking them. They learn not only how to do what needs doing on a boat, but why they’re doing it. And they get to try out their hand at each skill without any yelling, belittling, or subservience.

Many women who “grew up sailing” did so with fathers or partners who dismissed their interest, overlooked their capabilities, or relegated them to the galley. To quote one student, “This program taught me more in a weekend than I have learned in my many hours on sailboats with various partners.”

For other women, it’s more complicated. While some of us had encouraging fathers or mentors, we’ve internalized their devotion to sailing to such an extent that we sometimes question our own motivations. Do I truly love sailing, or am I trying to prove something to myself or, by extension, my father? It’s a knotty coil to unravel. For me, becoming a captain and sailing instructor was motivated by a desire to claim my self-mastery in order to empower other women by example. Being a captain feels like a strange club for me to have joined, but I know my father, who passed away on his boat last November, would be proud.

As I try on this new sailing “identity,” over time, I’ve become a big supporter of this multi-faceted organization and its founder, with his seemingly never-ending stream of enthusiasm, vision, and opportunity to try new things. While I have yet to captain a boatload of teenagers for a week, I believe wholeheartedly in Sailing Ships Maine’s mission. For my part, it’s been truly inspirational to encourage women in pursuit of their own competence, confidence, and courage. And in the process, I’m discovering that being Captain of Someone Else’s Ship has its own rewards that I’m only beginning to uncover.

Natasha Salvo is a licensed captain for Sailing Ships Maine, a non-profit based in Portland, Maine. For more information about women’s sailing and other programs, visit https://sailingshipsmaine.org. If you’d like to explore becoming a licensed Captain or deckhand so you can provide life-changing opportunities on a boat for youth or adults, please reach out to info@sailingshipsmaine.org.

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