by Diana Temple
Women who succeed in the masculine world of skippering racing yachts and ocean liners or single-handed ocean sailing are great role models for women who are exploring careers and leisure activities using male-stereotyped skills and technologies. Some achievements of a few such enterprising Australian women are outlined here; there are of course numerous other women doing equally adventurous things.
A chat with Ruth Boydell, a WISENET member who lectures in Marine Navigation at Newcastle TAFE, led to this study of some women sailors.
Ruth says she 'ran away to sea at 17'. She worked on a charter boat out of Cairns and later she twice sailed across the Pacific Ocean to the West Indies, partly single-handed. More recently she edited a magazine for women sailors called Sistership.
Kay Cottee won fame as the first woman to sail alone around the world non-stop in 1987-88. She is currently Chair of the Australian National Maritime Museum and a sought-after speaker.
WISENET thanks Kay Cottee and Showboat Productions for information used in the following brief history of her career.
If any women had the credentials to master the challenge of sailing single-handed around the world, it was Kay Cottee. She'd been sailing for all of her 33 years, had proven herself at sea in the most testing conditions and as an accomplished boat builder.
Kay was aboard her father's yacht when she was two weeks old.
The four McClaren girls, of whom Kay was the youngest, were described
as a handful aboard the yacht Varema, despite being attached to
safety lines and the presence of their mother Joy. Kay's father
built an 11 metre racing sloop in their San Souci (southern Sydney)
back yard, helped by his four daughters.
By the age of 11 Kay was ocean racing in this yacht, Joy Too,
and became a regular crew member for Cruising Yacht Club races.
At 11 she also had a VJ class dinghy and regularly sailed on Kogarah
Bay, enjoying it most in 30 knot winds.
When Kay left high school she tried to be a 'normal' girl and became a stenographer, but within a year she was heading for a working life on the waterfront. She established a yacht charter business on Pittwater, north of Sydney. She bought bare fibreglass hull and deck mouldings and completed the building of boats for her charter fleet herself, with help from friends. This culminated in her building the yacht 'First Lady' from a set of bare fibreglass mouldings.
Kay was inspired to become a long-distance ocean racer by New Zealander Naomi James whose solo circumnavigation was interrupted by an enforced stop. Kay sailed to Lord Howe Island and returned single-handed; she was hooked. She raised money for her non-stop lone circumnavigation by selling her charter business and obtaining sponsorship, particularly from the vitamin company Blackmores. She also drew on the skills of many experts in areas such as rigging, sail-making, electronics, nutrition, weather forecasting and navigation. She sailed with the object of raising money for a children's charity, and chose Ted Noffs' Life Education Centres.
Since her 22,000 nautical mile triumph in June 1988, Kay has presented more than 2000 motivational speeches in many countries, including a national Schools Tour which reached 40,000 Australian children. She has written a very successful book, Kay Cottee - First Lady. She has raised more than $1 million for Life Education Centres and has been awarded an AO.
Kay Cottee's yacht 'First Lady' is anchored at the bottom of her garden on Pittwater, where she lives a busy life with her second husband and young family.
Sydney harbour is famous for its yacht races each weekend, and the most exciting display is provided by the 18-foot skiffs, a class of boat legendary in Australia. For five seasons in the late 1980s to early 90s, Adrienne Cahalan skippered one of these boats, and became famous among the yachting fraternity for her racing successes.
Some of the following information was derived from a profile of
Adrienne Cahalan by Stephen Hurworth in Sailing Australia,
September 1995, and some from information supplied by Adrienne.
Adrienne has four sisters, all achievers, with a supportive and
encouraging mother. Her sailing career began when she was at high
school; she started sailing single-handed a small Laser and bought
her own boat. She progressed to sailing 12-foot skiffs with the
Lane Cove Club, and while studying Arts/Law at university mixed
with sailors of 12-footers. She became proficient at project management
and obtaining sponsorship for her racing career. While practising
in marine law, she progressed to racing 18-foot skiffs, and chalked
up many winning performances. The build of her two hefty crewmen
made a great contrast with that of the small wiry skipper.
Recently Adrienne has extended her sailing skills to long distance ocean racing, usually working as navigator. She has sailed in six Sydney-Hobart races, once, in 1992, skippering an all- women crew. She was one of the all-women crew of 'Heineken' in the 1993-4 Whitbread round-the-world race, the world's toughest ocean race, 'playing Russian roulette among icebergs', she says, in the Southern Ocean. Adrienne says she prefers sailing 'with blokes as well as against them' and believes in mixed fleets. After racing in Europe during the 1995 season, her goal is to be selected for the Olympic women's team. Most recently she has won sponsorship to skipper the first Australian boat to compete in a Whitbread round-the-world race. This will be the 1997 Whitbread race, again with an all-woman crew, including Elle Macpherson for part of the way. Adrienne is currently in England training on Heineken. She says such races are becoming more than ever like scientific and technological wars, with computer fast-tracking development in producing a race-winning formula.
Adrienne's expertise as a sailor lies in her skills in navigation, computer analysis of data and as a helmsman, while she counts her relative lack of physical strength as a handicap. Her successes are described by Stephen Hurworth as to do with her natural athleticism and keen mind.....subordinated to a very determined and resourceful spirit. She is the first Australian and one of the first women in the world to compete on an equal basis at an intenational level in events such as the Whitbread Race, the Admiral's Cup and the 18-footer class races.
Helena Cole is the first woman in the BHP fleet to hold a Master's certificate and is the most senior of five women deck officers in BHP's fleet. As First Mate on the Iron Sturt, she was named by the National Centre for Women in 1995 as 'The most outstanding woman of the year in the workforce in a non-traditional area'. The following information is a shortened version of an article from the BHP house journal Ironships, June 1995, and is used with permission.
In 1985, Helena Cole became the first woman to join BHP as a sea-going officer trainee.
Helena grew up in country New South Wales, and never expected to end up at sea. Leaving school in Bathurst, she knew she wanted to train for a specific career. Her first choice was air traffic control, and she applied to the Air Force for a traineeship. She also applied to a couple of companies, including BHP, for seagoing traineeships, despite knowing very little about sea-going careers. At the same time as she was accepted into the Air Force, BHP offered potential cadets the opportunity to sail on a Christmas voyage for a few weeks, to see whether they liked it. Helena explains: 'The Iron Sturt was the first ship I had ever been on. I just fitted in-it just seemed to be me.'
Helena joined as a cadet in 1985. 'We moved down to Launceston to college for six months, then we went away to sea for a full 12 months.... out of the four years I got 21 months sea time'.
Helena's first ship as Third Mate, after graduating at the end of 1988, was the Iron Carpentaria: 'I've been on the Sturt now for eighteen months.' Helena outlined her current responsibilities as Mate on the Iron Sturt. 'I still do my two four-hour watches a day when we're at sea, so I navigate for those eight hours. Also I look after the crew, and the maintenance on deck, so I give the crew their jobs for the day. I'm also in charge of loading and discharging the ship, so I have to make out those programs, talk to shore foremen and supervisors and make sure that's all organised.'
The training at the Australian Maritime College ensured that Helena and the other cadets had passed all their written examinations for promotion, right up to their Master's certificate. At sea, officers need to get their sea time and pass oral examinations to move through the ranks. 'For all your other orals, whenever you're in doubt, you say you'd call the Captain. For the Master's orals, you're the person who has to make all the decisions. So it's basically running the ship, making all the important decisions, making sure you cover safety, the business side of things, charter parties and so on.'
The ten years that Helena has been in the fleet have seen a lot of changes. The biggest change, she says, has been in crewing. 'The Iron Sturt had a crew of about 32 and we've come down to 18. Because there's fewer of us on board, we have to get along. We never used to socialise, you even had segregation of decks. Now, we eat together and we socialise together'. The presence of women on board has been another change Helena has been close to. 'I come across them a lot more than I did before.' In fact, the Second Mate on this voyage on the Iron Sturt was Josephine Clark.
Helena didn't know when she applied to become a sea-going trainee just how 'non-traditional' a role this was. She was told during her interview with BHP that she would be the first female sea-going officer trainee. Her Christmas trip, to find out whether she was suited to it, allayed any concerns she had about being a pioneer. 'The blokes who were on here at the time of my Christmas trip went out of their way to really make me feel like I should be there. I was very lucky-if I'd come up then against some people I've met since, I probably never would have come away to sea.'
Coming to terms with, and winning over, people who try to make her feel that she 'shouldn't be there', is what Helena sees as her biggest challenge. She doesn't believe it's just about being a woman at sea. 'There's a variety of reasons, I think. Being young, and female, and college-trained are all reasons. A lot of the blokes I sail with have been away at sea 20, 30, 40 years, and suddenly they're being told what to do by someone who's a female. and young, and a Mate on top of that. The vast experience of those crew members can't be underestimated, so the challenge, and the satisfaction, is to pull everyone together as a team.'
Helena has become a de facto role model. Since her cadetship days, she has been very visible in recruitment publicity, to encourage young people, especially young women, to think about a sea-going career. Helena is also a mentor for women now in the fleet or training. (There are four other women now in the fleet, as well as nine deck and two engineer officer trainees.) She doesn't see that as a heavy responsibility. 'It's more a friendship thing. We stick together.' Helena is very keen to sail as Master. Later there are some shore jobs that interest her.
Helena's husband David is also with the BHP fleet, and is currently First Mate on the Iron Flinders. So far, managing a dual career has not posed problems for them, beyond multiplying the inevitable difficulties of a sea-going career. 'We accept that we won't be sailing together, but we like to get leave at the same time'.
So what skills or qualities do young people need to be successful in a sea-going career? 'You need to have the skills to pass all the courses, but I think it is more a personality thing. You're living in a closed environment. When you're away at sea, we have our own hierarchy, our own rules.' Helena doesn't believe women need extra or different qualities to succeed at sea. 'I'd say you have to be strong and not timid. You need to be heard and not let yourself be over-run. Especially as you go up the ranks, you need to be able to listen to what other people are saying, but you've still got to be the person who makes the decisions. I'm always learning.'
Women now comprise 15% of the RAN, nearly 13% of sailors and 22% of officers being female. At sea, up to 10% of crew on naval vessels are women. Despite press accounts of earlier deplorable sexual harassment cases, a good working relationship is reported now to prevail.
The most senior woman serving in the Navy is Captain Carolyn Brand, a mine warfare specialist.