As Pax gets her sails, her engine and her wiring completed the next few months, Kaci is planning a series of small group seminars using the boat and facilities in Point Hudson marina. Topics will include: Your winches, your engines, your friends; Wind & Tides; Words on the Wind: a day of boating and writing; Women Aweigh: on captains and confidence; and suggestios are welcome!

The public "launching" of the International Women Sailing Network was a great success. More than 100 women joined the network. 41 are boat owners. Thanks to Captain Sue Hoover (Quantum Leap) and Captain Kim Bushnell (Puna) for staffing the booth all weekend while I ducked in and out managing the event. In the coming weeks, I'll email everyone who signed in. This network thrives by the connections made, by the generosity of women who want to teach matched with the determination and daring of the women who want to learn. My hope is that it will be fun, inspiring, empowering and that it helps those of you who own boats, those who want to be on the ocean and those who have businesses that serve women boaters grow. Sailing around the world with women wasn't my dream, initially. It was the one passage, then the next passage, and a daily routine that evolved to a circumnavigation. Now, as owner of a boat, I am starting another voyage, one step at a time. I look forward to working with women shipwrights, riggers, sailmakers, engineers, mechanics and educators. I'll share the stories with you and invite your stories and membership with your boats and your sailing dreams. Our emails will be confidential. Enjoy September!

It's one thing to be a Captain. It's another to be a Captain/Owner.  I've poured hours and years into boats since 1992 and I've even loved a few.  But there's nothing like buying a boat, feeling the transfer of responsibility from the previous owner to you.  It's a commitment I'd never made before, not fully.  When I wrote the check for Pax, I felt the stirring of something new, something primal.  It was like the first draft of a breeze, when the sun comes up.  A new day is ahead. Night is ending. Warmth, weather, color and all the energy of the waking world starts its crescendo. As I drove the former owner, a young man who'd spent 8 years with Pax and was now off on a voyage in art, an MFA, to the Port Angeles to Victoria ferry, we talked as if we'd known each other for decades.  There's a history in boats and a solemnity between owners connected through the heart.  I now own a boat and her name is Pax.  A 1936 Danish Spidsgatter.  Latin for Peace. 

The immediate effects of ownership have been responsibility, freedom & peace. Check the gallery for the latest news on Pax. 

I first met Ginny Gerlach in 1997.  A native Australian, she had cruised the Pacific, done thousands of miles and had settled as much as sailors can.  She was managing Keppel Bay Marina and dreamed of building a business teaching women sailing.  Nancy and I invited her aboard Tethys for some serious discussion and a great sail from Rosslyn Bay north to Cairns. 

This past winter, I visited Ginny again.  A decade had passed and both our dreams had become reality. I'd completed a circumnavigation, started a book and she'd bought a new boat and built her business.  Her brand new Catalina 34 MKII arrived May 2007.  She'd also gained excellent credentials:   
    •     Yachting  Australia Yachtmaster Offshore     
    •     Yachting  Australia Yachtmaster Instructor (Sail) 
    •     International  Sail and Power Association Instructor
    •     Marine  Board of Queensland Master Class V – Sail and Coxswain

A new boat; an excellent teacher with tons of shorthanded, charter and cruising experience and a spectacular location at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef (Tropic of Capricorn)... a great combination.   Check out her website, Cruisability and definitely write.  She's booking classes now and they're sure to fill up.  Couples who want to charter and women who want to skipper their own, smaller boat are her specialty. 

Have you met your governor, your senators, your representatives?  May 18 and 19, I was fortunate to talk with Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire and State Representative Lynn Kessler.  They were in town for a tour of the Northwest Maritime Center & Wooden Boat Foundation facilities and programs.  While here, I talked with them about how for three decades, the Wooden Boat Festival has influenced good things in our community, good relationships between us and seaport towns worldwide.   The list is long and women have played a part at every step along the way,

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