[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by windsaloft

Let me preface this by also saying that there is a lot to be said for good situational awareness, good common sense, smart choices, and also believing that most folks out there in this big world are great, beautiful wonderful people who are our allies as women. I'm not paranoid and I generally don't think people are out to get me by any means. By the same token, I and my partner have each done extensive international travel, and despite those things, have had a couple of truly frightening events that make us more attuned to the reality of risks of women traveling and achoring alone or in pairs aboard a slow sailboat.

Hello Terri,

Good question and as you already stated, you don’t want to live in fear yet still be proactive in managing the particular attention, 3 women cruising on a boat might attract in remote places.

I think you already gave yourself the best advice in the quote above but perhaps a few cruising thoughts that you may not have considered:

In certain remote pacific Atolls, there is no word for “Rape”, so women alone are at high risk. Do your homework on cultural taboos for example in some societies being bare breasted is normal but if you arrive on a beach in short…shorts, the young men will riot.

Disinformation is a useful tool..... on top of the proactive suggestions Louis Riel came up with to protect yourself, so come up with inventive scenarios tailored for particular situations to dissuade any weird neighbour from acting out fantasies or thinking you are an easy target.

Trust your instincts and if something does not feel right about a place, just leave! (That applies to everyone).

Create Male crew, whom you talk to down below when at a night anchorage. Even tape some loud burly replies if your senses tell you that you should be on high alert.

Local fish canoes like to fish off your lights, so turn them off early to keep them at bay and play a tape of a growling dog if they still get too close. (A red strobe at deck level….like an active security warning light, also unsettles them).

Like anything else in life, we all have to take the bad with the good, but in my cruising life the good has always outweighed the bad by a large margin.

Fair Winds!