Captainess

Sorry 8121, but I'm confused - try your post again in language this male can understand.

Noticed during the video of the Sub leaving Port Everglades today, that someone with long blonde hair ventured from the Sub to the Pilot boat.

Could she be a not-prior mentioned Captain?

P.S.- Don't think it was Ivana.

Hmm, Yacht Captains are not normally competent?

Translation perhaps..

What's your point?

Thanks for directing me to this thread, Judy. Saw some great posts in it and some real bs as well. Why someone points out a grounding with a woman. Should I list all those with men? Are we going to count them up? And as to the deck hands and muscle bit. Oh what chauvinism we see. First, smart deck hands don't try to muscle through the job. In fact, there is no job on a boat that should require some magnificent strength. There is always a better way and the deckhand, male or female, who tries to muscle their way instead of using good sense and methods ends up with an injured back or something else. Yeah, they can try to prove how many provisions they can carry. Or they can use a cart sensibly and handle reasonable loads. There are lots of jobs on boats I might not want to do or be qualified to do, like rebuilding an engine or something, but there is no job that lack of superman muscles will prevent me from doing. Want to point out the jobs I can't do because my ***** get in the way, like Ben Wright who said we couldn't swing a golf club because of them? lol. We've had them most of our lives and learned to deal. Honestly, one reason seen for lack of women is that a lot of male captains seem to start thinking with the wrong organ. Wonder what a million watt volt zap flashlight would do there or a stun gun or taser. Sorry, I know I just put a lot of you guys in pain. Don't worry, it was just a thought.

Now, I'm going to try to be diplomatically serious for a moment. It is a male dominated business. The reasons are probably two fold and both are perception. Some men, not all and I don't think even the majority, don't picture women in those roles so the opportunities are less. But also a lot of women don't perceive that it's possible. It's all possible if they can see themselves doing it and will work hard enough to get there. They also can then overcome the misperceptions of their potential others might have.

Honestly, I'm not a crusader in this area or any. I deal with situations only when they arise. I mean the guy who sold me my Porsche started addressing his comments to my hubby instead of me. I straightened him out quickly and we went on. He was right assuming I don't know diddly about engines, but any assumption my hubby does was so far off target.....sorry love....lol

Say what you will but I've had more than one female deck hand tell me they work on increasing their upper body strength to make their job easier. And these are very intelligent ladies who know how to work smart as well as work hard. Fact is handling and stowing the lines and fenders for a 120'+ or dealing with a large tender that the boat tows can be hard work and require a bit of muscle no matter what your gender or how smart you are.


As to your comment about some captains using the casting couch in their job, I think there is less and less of that going on. And none of the women I know in this industry who want to get or have gotten their tickets would tolerated that crap for a second. They'd just tell the guy to F off and move on. And let it get in their way of moving up the ranks.

Deckhanding, especially on larger boat does require strength. Lugging a set of lines and fenders across the boat in a hurry when the docking plan changes is a lot like work. Things like Sea Steps are heavy to lug around. Hauling yourself up the side of a boat after the Sea Step has been taken in takes strength. I've had to manually haul in anchors which is no easy task. But it's nothing a woman can't do if she's in shape. I've had several men deckhanding that I would have traded in a hot second for a determined woman. I'll never forget one girl I had dockhanding for me at a marina I ran. I've never met a harder worker or tougher person. She once crushed her ankle between two boats and I nearly had to knock her out to get her to stop work and go to the doctor. Yes, give me a worker. If she's easy on the eyes I won't complain, but that's a way distant 2nd in my list of priorities. Unfortunately too many "Oh I broke a nail" females give them a bad rep,but they're not the average, at least not of the ones I deal with.

I should think quite a few men also work on increasing their upper body strength. I'm also sure many stews find a need to get in better physical conditioning. I'm sure on many starting out in any position on a large boat, they find out the physical effort required is greater than they've done in their previous line of work and greater than they expected. Now for those on a sailboat you can multiply that many times. Still there is no job on a boat and should be none that a person of either sex in good physical condition can't perform. Now I'm also sure there are many who jump into the profession thinking they're about to get a nice paid vacation on the water and find out it's actually a lot of hard work.

Kids lots of times, and I still claim to be a kid, don't grasp what is ahead. Friends of ours had a son this year take a job as a dock hand at a marina. After the first couple of days you should have heard him whining. "Why they had me running from this boat to this and pulling them to the dock and they were big and heavy, then back over there, then helping carry stuff." Poor boy thought he was just going to be standing and watching bikini babes I think.

In our effort to learn how to do it all on our boat, I can tell you that after the captain put me through the paces of line handling and fender stowing, after wrestling the tender off and on a charter boat we had trying to learn, and hauling provisions I was sore at the end of the day. So was my hubby. We both required long massages from the other. I'll stop the story at that point.

Since this thread was titled "Captainess" I will reiterate that there is nothing about that job that a female can't do. As to why there aren't more doing it, well there are tons of reasons for that. I'd say the greater reason is females not seeing themselves in the role and doing the work necessary to get there. Secondary to that is probably some perception and even prejudice on the part of some few in the industry and some few owners.

We all have perceptions. In my hubby's former business world he said hot young females, especially blondes who were built, were often discriminated against unintentionally as hiring men were hesitant what people, including spouses, would say when they hired them. On the other hand, pharmaceutical companies actively recruit college cheerleaders. Look at pharmaceutical salespersons in doctor's offices. Not many guys. And sure not many people who aren't "pretty". And the cheerleader thing isn't a perception. It's a fact of where some of them do recruit. I'm not even a cheerleader and they tried to recruit me and several of my friends but only the hottest females. Should be totally irrelevant to that job and I find it sort of disgusting. Somehow I should think the qualifications to sell pharmaceuticals should be quite different from the qualifications to be hired as a stripper for instance. So, I'm not at all saying that the bias in hiring doesn't go both ways.

Now that sounds like the beginning of a story that should be saved for a rum night in big seas or a big night out with the boys!

Women

Going rather to fast into a haul-out slip the travel lift operator shouted up to our female Captain, "all stop". She did, she shut the engines off. A rather hard landing to say the least.

The plastic boat suffered only a minor ding up front.

A week later a male Captain backed out of the same haul-out slip, across the small basin, across the canal and destroyed both props, bent shafts, rudders and trim tabs when he hit the opposite bank.

The next day in the very same basin had yet another male Captain panic when trying to turn his boat around and hit three other boats.

The moral of those stories, I should stay away from that haul-out yard. Lol.

40 years ago us young single guys on a ship received word from the head office that a female deck cadet would be joining and that we had to behave and treat her with respect. Poor girl was harassed on a daily basis by every married guy on that ship and liked nothing better than to hang out with us single guys.

Obviously there is only a very small percentage of female Captains out there but every one that I have come across have been very good and I would prefer to work with them than some of the males that call themselves Captains.

I am on the water every day down here in South Florida and over the years have seen male captains hit the old 17th Street bridge, the Davie Blvd. bridge seems to be a favorite to hit, been aground many times (yesterday was the latest) and had to dock the boat at the end of the day because our wonderful male Captain couldn't.

I think females are more than capable of doing the job however it is very difficult for her to get to that position, be married and have a family whereas a male Captain can go away for weeks at a time knowing his wife is at home looking after the kids. Sexist but true.

What does surprise me is the lack of female yacht brokers in the business. There are a lot of female insurance agents and finance girls in our business and over the years I have only come across one female mechanic, two female electronic technicians, two female hull surveyors and no class surveyors.

Personally I would like to see many more women in our business in all capacities

Bob

I believe she has been Barbara for many years, excellent Captain, "great upper body strength" and no casting couch in site. LOL.

Yacht brokers doesn't surprise me too much. Look at car salespersons, especially luxury and exotic. Cars and boats are considered "mechanical" by some and, immediately then they think of men as more knowledgeable.

On the other hand, residential real estate, a huge percentage of the top salespersons and brokers are women. Somehow we associate women more with the home.

It's also partly who we picture as the buyer, the decision maker. We picture men buying the cars and boats and the wife making the decision on the home. And in many cases that's accurate. But assuming a salesperson can't relate to the opposite sex is sort of dumb.

When I bought my Porsche, I had to straighten the salesperson out because he was just addressing everything to Brett and right around me. Brett wasn't answering though and I was. Brett was buying his own car. This was 100% me. We have his, mine and our cars. He sort of thinks mine is an overhyped German car and I think his is an overhyped Italian car.

Now to women boat brokers, that comes back to what level the women are involved on the boats themselves. I am totally involved and we make the choices jointly. I don't like one and it's out. But then many times the woman isn't involved. Still as to brokers, salespersons, of cars, boats and homes, it's stupid to think one sex relates better to one sex than the other can. Heck, I know a woman has a much better chance of selling my hubby on something. lol.

The majority of what we're talking about isn't so conscious as it just is ingrained and traditional. I saw it in Maritime school, talking to some of the girls about their ambitions. They wanted to make working on yachts their careers but they didn't think of themselves as Captains very quickly. And these were girls who had been working on boats all their lives. One had a father who was owned a fishing charter and she worked with him from the time she was a kid. She did it all, from navigating to the hot spots to weather checks, to lines and anchoring, to diving to check props, to cleaning fish. But yet she hadn't thought being a yacht captain was possible for a female. So got her talking to the right people and now that is her goal. I can picture her a lot better doing that than seeing her one day as head stew on five star service.

Car

Belle, I would not describe your car as an over-hyped German car, just thought my 911 turbo was a good up grade from my nanny's Beetle. LoL.

Besides Judy I only have regular contact with two other female brokers here in the USA but do meet and work with a few more in Europe.

I do meet a lot of ladies, probably like yourself, that go boating with their husbands and families who have gone ahead and attended the various courses and obtained their Captains licenses and who are very good but more in the role of extra captain (or Admiral) on their own boats as opposed to getting a job as a captain.

Now for that over-hyped Italian car......I'll guess it is red !

That's sort of like us. We will take our 44' out alone, and occasionally our 63' but when we charter a larger yacht or when we get ours, we'll always be like assistant captains. But we're serious about learning and make our Captains be tough on us. We want to be capable but we'll never attempt to be the primary captains on a larger boat. Even on the 63' we'll never overnight or cruise longer without one. On it we feel fine except for problems with engines or electronics or something like that.

No, actually his over hyped Italian car is blue and it's not the "F" word. And I actually like it. I don't imagine either of us will average more than 4,000 miles a year on them. Sort of waste but they were our dream cars. We have an SUV for passengers and hauling and anything. We like time on the water a lot more than on land.

So that's what... 4 dealership service appointments per year?

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Tis ok. At least not as bad as the F word. Plus we don't abuse them. Don't know. Only service so far has been routine. But we do err on the side of over-service on them. So even routine really by time and not mileage. Both have been serviced twice so far. 1,000 miles and then six months which was about 3,000. We've been really lucky so far on our cars with no lemons yet. We even still have the G37 but normally others drive it and not us. Sold my Miata in NC. It was a dad buying for his daughter's birthday present and he even let us join in the party. It was so cool and so was she.

Yachtjockey, you've illustrated very well what I've said about female skippers being better at close-quarters maneuvering. We do need more females to get involved in all aspects of the business. Yes, a lot of the hesitancy stems from prejudice, but more than that I think today it's just that historically only a very small percentage of even the male population has chosen a life on the sea and zero females. What's needed is people (females) like Belle and Judy spreading the word. I think we've had two guys comment so far here that their wives are very good at every job on the boat, but don't want to get involved in the forum. There be the rub. They need to get involved. Consider yacht brokerage as a career, become a mechanic, give lessons, organize classes for women boaters. One of the best dockmasters I know is female. There used to be a course (DK if it still exists) called "Shemanship". I think they operated out of St. Pete's. Why aren't they everywhers?

P.S. Belle: "So was my hubby. We both required long massages from the other. I'll stop the story at that point." What a tease. Yeah, I guess YF might get confused with Craigslist if you continued.