Women

Afloat

Though old salts still contend that “a woman’s place is in the home”, more and more wives and families these days are taking to the water.

For many in the Islands nowadays, a boat is the equivalent to a week ender.

In bygone days a woman aboard a yacht was content to be decorative.

Not any more. But there still is a surviving feeling that a woman on a boat cannot cope with more than the purely domestic chores —that her place, in fact, is in the galley.

Joyce Sleightholme, wife of the editor of Yachting Monthly (UK), in a new book The Sea Wife’s Hand book (Angus and Robertson Ltd., Sydney, $4.75), sets out to remedy that singularly male opinion.

In a small family cruiser where father elects to handle the boat singlehanded most of the time, a woman who knows how to throw a heaving line, take a compass bearing, stow a sail, secure a mooring line, and such, makes all the difference between the small yacht being dangerously undermanned and adequately crewed. In a sudden predicament, a woman who can really sail a boat could mean the difference between life and death.

Mrs. Sleightholme takes the novice, girlfriend or wife, gradually but thoroughly along the seaway with such chapters as: Coming to Terms with Yachting; Wives and Boat Buying; Basic Crewing (and on to the advanced stages); Victualling the Galley; and Coping with Emergencies.

There is good advice on Children Afloat, Sea-and-Shoregoing Clothes, and First Aid and Sanitation.

The 200-page book is copiously illustrated with excellent photographs and simple, clear diagrams.

Altogether, a handy addition to the family skipper’s bookshelf. —SH.