International Women's Day: A lot has happened in sailing - and yet not enough

To mark International Women's Day, we looked for voices that describe what it feels like to want to be taken seriously as a woman in sailing. We could have asked many current female sailors. We could have interviewed club members, regatta sailors or coaches. Instead, we came across this text: clearer, more pointed and more courageous than most of the texts we read today.

The author is a club member. She is a boat owner. She has won regattas. And she still fights to make her voice count in the yacht club, to have her entry accepted in races, to be recognised as a fully-fledged sailor - and not as a decorative accessory on board.

Read her text! And keep the question in mind: When could this have been written?

by Lisa Holzlechner

Preliminary remark

I would like to make one thing clear - I certainly do not intend the following to be aggressive towards my male sports colleagues, as I have no desire to be seen as a women's rights activist, and on the other hand I have generally always felt quite at ease among my mates and hope to do so even more as a future sailor's wife.

Welcome - but not taken seriously

No, no reproaches, just a gentle request. Mulier taceat in ecclesia - or in the yacht club. Often enough I heard this beautiful wisdom literally and sub rosa from my club mates when I dared to have a say in sailing matters.

And yet I am a member of the DSV, had sailed around on all possible and impossible waters for years, had many a small and large sailing stupidity behind me, had been the happy owner of two boats - it all didn't help. "A lady has no place in real, genuine sailing" - that's the general opinion. And why? I would like to know.

In all areas of sport, the modern woman has conquered the field, she conquers the boldest peaks, she jumps and races against her male comrades on her skis, she obtains her pilot's licence and steers her plane safely and calmly through the ocean, she gets her car driving licence without a second thought - only in sailing she is never taken seriously.

The woman on board

It's true, we are invited onto the yacht and are delighted when the young girl on board plays the role of the well-known southern German 'ski bunny' and looks around helplessly with wide eyes, laughs at his incorrect technical terms and sometimes enjoys flirting with him in the doldrums.

Every now and then we are allowed to clean the brass and scrub the deck, and we are quite happy to do the washing up and, somewhat suspiciously, the cooking. If 'she' is really nippy and dashing and wants to actively use her young strength with honest enthusiasm, then she is kindly given a fore sheet or even allowed to become a 'backstay girl'.

But that is already a lot, and the anxiety-ridden helmsman gets worry lines on his forehead and can already hear the mast cracking in his mind, because 'she' will of course forget to put in the new windward capstan when tacking.

The argument of physical strength

If you ask the male companions why they think so little of us, they shrug their shoulders with pity and irony, and if they want to be polite, they say regretfully: "Oh no, it's too strenuous for a lady, she's no good at sailing because she lacks the physical strength."

My dear sporting friends, that is not true. When it comes to strength, women's average performance is usually on a par with that of men, provided the demands are not too great.

When I was arguing with a group of old sailors this year, they said: "If you're sailing an 8 metre R yacht alone in a 6 metre breeze, we'll consider you to be on a par." I have every respect for such record-breaking feats, but every one of my acquaintances made a dubious face - none of them tried.

On the other hand, I have experienced on a 7-slip boat that in a stormy regatta the mainsheet man, exhausted and pale from the constant hauling and fiddling hard upwind, suddenly abandoned his mainsheet and, breathing a sigh of relief, placed it in the hands of the backstay girl, who did her duty until the end.

Nervousness and presence of mind

We are often accused of being very nervous and lacking presence of mind in difficult situations. I've seen many a yacht owner ranting and raving on deck with his unhappy crew about little things; if you told them they were nervous, their eyes would widen. "I'm nervous - never, that's just ladies sailing."

And presence of mind? That's individual, of course. It's true, I've had female guests on my boat who begged for help in mortal fear at every gust and would certainly only have been ready for proper consideration after half an hour in the event of an accident. But they're not all like that.

The real, skilled and trained sports girl will keep her five senses in check even in dangerous situations and take her orders calmly and cold-bloodedly in the face of danger.

Maths and technical knowledge

Another objection is that a lady lacks the necessary basic mathematical rules, that she doesn't have a clue about technology, boat building and nautical science, etc. This is not quite true. Modern women have usually learnt more of the dreaded maths than they need to in their school days, even if they can't open the cutlery in two minutes or solve the trickiest nautical calculations in their heads.

This is not necessary for simple touring and regatta sailing, and - hand on heart, gentlemen - I believe that among otherwise capable gentlemen sailors, by far the majority would be quite meek in nautical tasks and the few others would immediately call for logarithm tables.

Shipbuilding and shipbuilding technology? Well, there are so many wonderful works in the specialised literature that are written in an easily comprehensible way - I only have to think of 'Yachtbau und Yachtsegeln' - that this gap in a woman's sailing education is quickly filled. And the modern woman who has mastered the complicated mechanics of aeroplanes and cars will also be able to cope with the simpler handling of a yacht.

Regatta sailing: The last bastion

Now comes another sore point: regatta sailing - the high school of sailing. The evil intolerance of our male comrades has created a veritable Chinese wall - woe betide the lady who dares to enter the inner sanctum! As a rule, her entry is not recognised - she is simply not allowed to start. Why? She's not a man, that's enough.

It's true, regatta sailing is not that easy, I experienced it myself years ago when I proudly sat at the helm in my first regatta as a very young green sailor and had no idea about regatta laws, avoidance rules, etc. I was cheered on and a careless special class was mishandled on the outer hull. The buoy was rounded incorrectly to great cheers and a careless special class, which didn't drop far enough straight away, was maltreated on the outer skin. "Yes, when ladies want to race...!!!"

But the rules of evasion and similar nice things are memorised over time, and the most secret regatta tricks are learnt from the competition bit by bit, and a lady, I firmly maintain, can, if she has talent, practice, a good boat and a properly trimmed crew, have just as much success in races as her male sporting companion.

But she's not allowed to, she's condemned from the outset to be able to do nothing, radically nothing, and our dear comrades, however nice and amiable they may be otherwise, in the regatta they turn into true examples of male intolerance. All competitive jealousy is forgotten, they are happy to give the laughing third party the lead if they can just get 'her' out through an endless luffing match, they watch with their eyes and binoculars to see if she doesn't touch a buoy, or think about how else they can annoy the intruder a little - while all this is going on, one of the crew is already sitting solemnly on the shrouds, clutching an ominous national in his hand - perhaps 'she' will give rise to a proper protest after all....

And if you don't succeed, there are long faces. When I happily did one stupid thing after another in my first regatta years ago, my mates nodded - when I brought home two prizes in my last regatta this year, they shook their heads in disbelief: "Such a doddle - unheard of!" But they didn't realise that success means honest effort and real work.

Appeal to the comrades

I turn to my comrades and speak to them on behalf of many sailing sisters: "Let things be different, make sure that the unjust regulations that exclude us as ordinary members in most clubs are abolished and that paragraphs that prohibit us from sailing a yacht on open regattas disappear from the laws of the D.S.V..

Our beautiful sport is otherwise so progressive, bringing so many new things year after year - why are we so reactionary? We certainly don't want to act as suffragettes of sailing and interfere in everything possible and impossible - no, we only want the right of honest cooperation and only on the basis of previously proven ability in a guide or helmsman examination; we don't want to be more competition for our male sports comrades, but to maintain good comradeship in order to contribute to the elevation and promotion of our beautiful German sailing sport in joint competition."

This text first appeared in YACHT - in 1914! So it is 111 years old. But aren't some of its passages still relevant today?