We’re Built For This
…sailors are, my mentor and friend, Nancy Erley said, when we spoke the other day. Nancy is a two-time circumnavigator, and the logistics of isolating in our homes is not unlike that of crossing [...]
Put a woman and a man in a 35-foot sailboat for four months, stir it up with wind and shake it up with waves, and see what kind of cocktail you mix. Sometimes it’s sweet. Sometimes it’s bitter. It’s always interesting, with as many ups and downs as the tides. Most often it’s smooth sailing, but it will come as no surprise that the Skipper and First Mate can have vastly different takes on a situation, usually a stressful one. What’s unusual on our boat is that Venus is the Skipper and Mars the First Mate. If we back up far enough to gain perspective, the Venus-Mars dichotomy can be funny, but you can only back up so far on our boat without falling overboard.