Aleria's Adventures

Yesterday, February 20th 2016, I was a speaker at the inaugural Irish Sailing Association Cruising Conference held at the Howth Yacht Club near Dublin. My topic was 'Women at the Helm', a topic I've been writing about for some time. I wrote about it first for our website Coastal Boating , from where it was picked up by various media around the world.

It's an interesting thing that there are more men than women who take up sailing. To get women to try sailing, the regional sailing authorities make a sailing outing a fund raising event for breast cancer. I don't know about you, but I have my favourite charities and somehow I just don't get how sailing mixes with cancer. Sailing fun. Cancer not fun. My sister died of peritoneal cancer. My mother died of breast cancer. When I go sailing, I don't really want to think about cancer. Nor do I want to be saddled with fundraising for a charity with which I am not familiar. If want to go sailing, then sailing is what I want to do. Period. When was the last time you heard about men being introduced to sailing by promoting and raising money for prostate cancer?  Never?  Oh right. Men go sailing for sailing's sake. I get it.