Women sailors turning the tide

by Joe Cooper, WindCheck
In case we have all forgotten, women comprise, call it, 50% of the world’s population. But the percentage actively sailing is close to middle single digits (on a good day) in most regattas. Why?

Waaaay too big a question to address in 1,500 words. Likely 15,000 would not crack the skin of the issue. What is obvious though, at least on Long Island Sound and now in Rhode Island, is lots of push back from women, or perhaps circling of the wagons. I have written previously on initiatives by women starting to help themselves. Women on the Water (WoW) Long Island Sound, for instance, seems to have been the starting point in the Northeast. Their website currently shows eleven affiliated clubs in Connecticut and five in New York including up the Hudson, and eight unaffiliated clubs “Demonstrating support for Women Sailors” across CT and NY – a total of twenty-four clubs.

The idea of WoW, germinated by the ladies of the Sound, has taken root in Bristol Yacht Club and other Narragansett Bay clubs. The WoW NB group has not isolated “member” clubs in the same way the LIS women have. Nonetheless, reading the news page of their website, a sub-page of Bristol YC’s site, it’s easy to see there is a lot going on. – Full story