We landed awkwardly on a wave and the boat shuddered, our aluminum hull protesting loudly under the impact. Seconds later, I felt another violent thud and immediately feared the worst—orcas! Foghorn in hand, I readied myself to wake the rest of the crew, reciting our response plan in my mind. Noisemakers, full revs to shallower water, radio call, check the bilges. Run like hell and hope they lose interest!

But I hesitated in the intervening silence. After many days underway with relatively little sleep, I knew my nerves were raw, my internal radar struggling to decipher clutter from true danger. I forced myself to count to ten. Breathe, listen, wait. The usual sounds resumed. Water rushing beside us. Gulls calling hoarsely in the dark. Wind whistling against the halyards. No 8,000-pound whale body-slamming our boat. At least not yet.

It was 2 A.M., and I was on night watch 15 miles off the west coast of Portugal, feeling anything but at home on the sea. Familiar constellations offered reassurance that we hadn’t sailed off the edge of the earth, while the wildly tilting horizon suggested otherwise, making Orion dance like a jester. It was mid-November during a new moon, the sea black besides occasional phosphorescence rising in our wake.

We rode easily over the ten-foot swell that lingered from an earlier storm, but the west wind had begun to kick up an unpleasant chop with short, sharp waves whose crests looked eerily like orca fins. Alone on deck, my mind wandered to worst-case scenarios. I pictured my seven- and nine-year-old sons, Dawson and Huxley, being shaken from sleep as my husband, Pat, sprinted up on deck in his underwear to find that we had been struck by an orca.

Most unsettling of all was the unwelcome reconfiguration of my relationship to the natural world: suddenly, I was afraid of a creature I’d long regarded as friend. As a wildlife biologist in Alaska, I’ve worked in the company of orcas; as a sailor, I’ve celebrated each surprise sighting at sea; as a mother, I’ve reveled in my sons’ fascination with them.

But now, rather than being graced by the presence of whales, I was worried we’d be taken down by them.

The post Navigating Orca Alley: One Family’s Journey Among Rudder-Bashing Whales appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Welcome to Tough Love. We’re answering your questions about dating, breakups, and everything in between. Our advice giver is Blair Braverman, dogsled racer and author of and . Have a question of your own? Write to us at toughlove@outsideinc.com.

After my dad died, I heard “Southern Cross” by Crosby, Stills, and Nash on the radio, which is about making a big sailing trip after a divorce. And I thought, that’s what I should do! I feel like in times of grief, it’s natural to want a big project. And so I bought books about young and inexperienced sailors making solo trips around the world.

I thought I should sail from Portland, Oregon, where I live, to New Zealand, where my dad’s from. It would be a journey to try to understand someone who’s not around for me to try to understand anymore.

When I told my friend about my idea, she said, “I really support you, but I think you’re going to die if you do that. Please don’t die alone on the ocean on a boat.” She may have had a point—I haven’t sailed since I took a sailing class in sixth grade, and I didn’t like it.

Now it’s been two years. The trip remains an idea and I still have all those books, but I’m more focused on other parts of my life, like my work and my garden. When I drive over bridges in Portland and see ships on the river, I wish I could be on one of them. Because it’s easier to think about taking a grand journey than it is to take a sailing class. How do I honor the impulse to do something big even though, when it comes down to it, I don’t actually want to do it?

It took me a long time to get pregnant, and when I finally did, it didn’t stick. I told myself: this loss is okay, because I’ll get pregnant right away after this, right? I have to. That’s how stories work. Things get hard, and they get harder—but then there’s a crack of hope, just when the protagonist needs it most.

But it didn’t happen. The journey to parenthood felt random and unfair, with brave hopes that didn’t pan out and sorrows with no resolution. With each setback, I thought: this must be the moment that things turn around. Now, I thought. Now comes the happy ending.

But it didn’t come yet.

Wait—that means it must be coming now.

Nope.

I tried stuff. Is this a story about wilderness? OK: I’ll go alone to the woods, plunge into a river, come back cleansed and ready to bring life into the world.

Nope.

Is this a story about God? I’ll pray.

Is this a story about art? I’ll throw myself into work. I’ll write another book.

But none of those stories played out. At least, not in the ways that I planned them. And that made me feel more helpless than ever.

Eventually, I did have a happy ending, or at least a happy middle. But there was no clear, straightforward story I could tell myself that explained the difficulties along the way. By the time the good news came, I was so weary of hope that I didn’t let myself trust it for a long time.

The process showed me how much I’ve leaned on storytelling in my own life, and how much that instinct can backfire. Stories are, after all, threads of meaning in a chaotic world—and if finding them gives us comfort and control, losing them does the opposite.

I tell you this because you sound like a storyteller, too. And it sounds like you’re looking for a story to tell yourself about grief. A story in which you cross the wild sea and come out the other side healed.

There’s an easy answer here, which is that you should take a sailing class, or buy a ticket for a boat ride, or rent a kayak for the day. It might be fun. You might hate it, which is OK, too. That said, I don’t think the sailing class will fix you, because I don’t think you’re actually looking for a trip across the sea. I think you’re looking for a story with an ending that finds you far from where you started.

I’m hesitant, now, to use stories to predict what’s next in my life, but there’s incredible power in identifying them in retrospect. And I think that by writing your letter, you’re already a good chunk of the way there. You’re figuring out your story, even though you’re still home in Portland. You’re moving forward with it every day. So what’s the story that feels true to you, now? What’s the story that helps you live with your grief?

I’ll try writing one for you. If it feels wrong, change it. If it feels right, take it. Use it to launch your ship.

After my dad died, I became obsessed with sailing.
I dreamed of sailing to New Zealand, where he was born.
I wanted answers in the sea.
I looked at the water every time I crossed a bridge.
But instead, I found myself planting vegetables.
Seed by seed.
In my mind, I sailed. I caught the wind.
It rained.
The seeds sprouted.
I think, in a way, I’m already on the journey.
Not to find home, but to make it.
Not to seek answers, but to grow them.

The post Why an Outdoor șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű May Not Be the Best Way to Grieve appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

When the SOS message beeped on Kirsten NeuschĂ€fer’s satellite device, she was piloting her 36-foot sailboat, Minnehaha, alone through the remote vastness of the Southern Ocean. She was two and a half months into the Golden Globe, an old-school, solo, nonstop sailing race around the world—run without use of most forms of modern technology, a challenge that many in the maritime community consider the greatest in sailing—and she had the lead. Fellow competitor Tapio Lehtinen’s boat had suddenly sunk, leaving the Finnish sailor adrift in a tiny raft far off the tip of the African continent. NeuschĂ€fer changed course, sailed some hundred miles through the night, found the little raft in the huge and heaving ocean, and shared a glass of rum with Lehtinen before safely transferring him to a giant bulk carrier that had detoured from Singapore to help with the search. Then she turned the Minnehaha to the wind and kept racing.

Even after rescuing Lehtinen, NeuschĂ€fer retained the lead in the perilous contest, which ultimately forced 13 of 16 entrants to drop out. When she crossed the finish line in Les Sables d’Olonne, France, on April 27, 2023—after 30,000 miles and 235 days without stepping off her boat—NeuschĂ€fer became the first woman to win a circumnavigation race, crewed or solo, that involves navigating past the three great capes at the bottom of the world.

NeuschĂ€fer, 40, doesn’t like the focus on her gender. She’s prouder that the win made her the first South African to win a round-the-world sailing event. “I think it’s quite a pity that the attention is due to the fact that I’m a woman rather than a sailor,” she told șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű. “I like to be on the playing ground as an equal.”

But the playing ground itself isn’t equal. Historically, women were barred from working on ships, and in our time they remain wildly underrepresented in sail racing, chartering, and sail training, and on superyacht crews. Discrimination still exists; in February, French sailor Clarisse Cremer, who holds the current record for fastest woman to sail solo around the world, was dropped by her sponsor in advance of the 2024 VendĂ©e Globe after she took a break from sailing to give birth to her first child. Race organizers changed the qualifying process, increasing the number of sailing hours competitors needed to complete in the year prior to the event. (She has since found a new sponsor and is working toward qualifying for the race.)

In fact, NeuschĂ€fer doesn’t like the spotlight, full stop. Competitors were required to send daily text message updates for race media, and hers often read merely: text. But she does acknowledge that there are positive aspects to the staggering amount of press coverage she received. “If there are women out there who’ve had a tough time getting into the sailing industry—or any industry that’s male dominated—and they feel, ‘She could do it, maybe I can also pursue my dream,’ then that’s a good thing,” she says.

The coverage has also helped draw attention to the Golden Globe. While other major circumnavigation races—like the VendĂ©e Globe and the BOC Challenge—involve expensive, high-tech boats that race at high speeds, the Golden Globe hearkens back to a simpler era. The inaugural, legendarily disastrous Golden Globe was run in 1968, when nine men vied to be the first to sail solo, nonstop, around the world. Only one man finished the race. The rest sank, abandoned the journey, or, in one harrowing case, slipped into the sea in an apparent suicide. The Golden Globe was revived in 2018 and is run every four years. The course follows the same perilous route as the original: from Europe down the coast of Africa, around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, Australia’s Cape Leeuwin, and South America’s Cape Horn, returning north along the east coast of South America, and crossing the Atlantic back to Europe. Competitors, who are barred any outside assistance, sail with much the same technology used in 1968, in small boats, navigating with paper charts and sextant, catching rain for water, and communicating by radio.

NeuschĂ€fer likes the Golden Globe because it’s old-school, which makes it more affordable than other sailing races. “It’s accessible to anyone who’s interested in adventure,” says NeuschĂ€fer, a veteran thrill seeker. She cycled the full length of Africa at age 22, riding more than 9,300 miles through jungles and across the Sahara Desert, and sailed National Geographic and BBC film crews to wildly remote locations in the Southern Ocean. When she’s alone in the calm waters of the tropics, she sometimes drops sail and jumps into the ocean, swimming away from the boat “to get that feeling of vastness, that sense of eternity.”

If the buzz around NeuschĂ€fer’s Golden Globe win “inspires people to follow their dreams to whatever degree,” she says, “then it has its worth in that.”

The post Round-the-World Sailor Kirsten NeuschĂ€fer Made History. Now She Dodges the Spotlight. appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

In late May 2017, McKayla Bower was ski-touring alone on the Pacific Crest Trail when she started to feel a little spooked. She paused to assess the stability of the Sierra snowpack, which was at a record high, and didn’t like what she saw—dense, heavy snow sitting atop a layer of powdery facets.

As Bower turned to retreat, the ground fell out from under her. The avalanche ran several hundred feet down a slope toward a 20-foot drop, carrying Bower with it. The next thing she knew, she was lying dazed on the ground. The impact had snapped her ski pole, but miraculously she had no serious injuries.

“I had this feeling of, I did everything right and this still happens?” Bower says. “You never know when the thing that is going to wipe you out might happen.”

The brush with mortality made Bower think harder about her long-postponed decision to come out as transgender, which she did shortly after returning from the trek. “The thing that felt like the real risk was coming out and losing all my friends,” she says. “But I don’t think I lost a single one.”

Bower, now 31, says that going public with her identity—and then starting hormone therapy—was the best decision of her life, empowering her to undertake even bigger adventures. This fall she’ll embark on her most ambitious journey yet, an east-to-west solo sailboat circumnavigation of the globe beginning in Panama City. The number of successful solo trips around the world is thought to be in the low hundreds, fewer than the number of people who have gone to space, though there’s no comprehensive record. If Bower succeeds, she’ll be the first known LGBTQ+ person to have completed the voyage alone.

“My biggest hope is that tons of people will learn about this and feel more confident,” Bower says. “I want people to see what happens when they are authentic and real.”

Bower is setting sail at a time when trans issues continue to be hotly debated across the United States. The American Civil Liberties Union has identified 491 anti-LGBTQ+ bills at various levels of government, and Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently signed a bill banning trans people from using school bathrooms that don’t match the gender shown on their birth certificates.

“The right has turned transgender people into a villain, a bogeyman,” says trans sailor and activist Sabreena Lachlainn, who called off her own planned solo circumnavigation in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. For her part, Bower says that most of what she’s heard has been supportive, but that some of the usual hate has already come her way. “One comment I got on Reddit said my energy would be better spent killing myself,” she says. Lachlainn, who knows the politics of all this as well as anybody, says, “I want to hug McKayla at the finish line, because her journey is so important for our community.”

Meanwhile, the realm of sports and adventure has also become contested terrain for trans athletes. Last year, swimming’s international governing body from competing in women’s events. In February, after the World Surf League announced that trans women surfers could compete if they maintained sufficiently low testosterone levels, surfing star said that she’d refuse to participate in WSL events if it upheld the policy. In March, World Athletics, which governs track and field, on trans athletes competing in elite women’s races.

To reach Panama from her home in Washington’s San Juan Islands, Bower will have to sail her 30-foot-long 1977 San Juan Class custom cutter rig, Swirl, for roughly 5,000 miles. To prepare, she spent $35,000 retrofitting the ł§·ÉŸ±°ù±ô’s interior, doing the carpentry and fiberglass work herself. She plans to sail on a meager budget, funding the trip with earnings from various jobs, including a stint at a bookstore, along with a few sponsorships from private businesses, personal donations, and the $400 a month she receives from her Patreon account.

From Panama City, which is nine degrees north of the equator, she’ll set a westerly course toward French Polynesia. “The easiest circumnavigation you can do is around ten degrees north or south of the equator, because that’s where the trade winds are,” Bower says. From there she’ll head for Indonesia, cross the South Indian Ocean to Mauritius, sail to South Africa, traverse the Atlantic to the Caribbean, and, finally, head back to Panama. She estimates that the total length of her voyage—including the trips from the Pacific Northwest to Panama and back—will be somewhere between 35,000 and 40,000 miles. She expects the circumnavigation to take 15 to 17 months.

A lot can go wrong during such a long journey. Climate change has intensified storms and made them harder to predict, and Bower will be racing to beat hurricane season when she reaches the Caribbean. Solo sailing is rife with tragedy: Guo Chan, an accomplished Chinese sailor, vanished in 2016 while trying to set a new speed record for a solo crossing of the Pacific. Susie Goodall made international headlines in 2018 when she was rescued after a storm in the Southern Ocean severely damaged her boat during the nonstop Golden Globe race around the world. While attempting a solo journey from California to Hawaii in 2020, Paralympic rower Angela Madsen died in the central Pacific while performing routine maintenance on her boat.

To prepare, Bower has sailed approximately 5,000 miles over the past three years, much of it in the mercurial waters of the San Juans, where hazards can include large trees known as deadheads that lurk below the surface. “McKayla’s been doing her homework,” says Karl KrĂŒger, an adventurer who lives at anchor in the San Juans, leads boat charters, and traveled 420 miles of the Northwest Passage on a solo stand-up paddleboard journey in 2022. “She’s been working at it, and she’s been spending time alone on that boat, sailing around these waters that can certainly dish it up.”

There isn’t much prep work Bower can do for her biggest concern: the way she’ll be welcomed—or not—in countries openly hostile to LGBTQ+ people. While some governments have adopted more progressive laws in recent years, the Human Dignity Trust, a London-based charity that provides legal assistance to LGBTQ+ activists, maintains an online map of countries with restrictive policies. It reports nearly 70 governments around the world that “criminalise [LGBTQ+ people,] fuelling stigma, legitimising prejudice and encouraging violence.” During her circumnavigation, Bower will stop to resupply for food and water, forcing her to deal with customs and immigration. “Jakarta scares me, as a visibly queer person,” Bower says. In 2022, Indonesia passed a new criminal code that includes an adultery ban, which according to Human Rights Watch could be used as an excuse to step up harassment of LGBTQ+ people in a place where gay marriage is illegal.

Bower says that her route leaves her no choice but to stop in Indonesia. “My other option would be Malaysia, which is worse,” she says. As of late April, she was still trying to figure out the best place for reprovisioning in the Caribbean. “Most Caribbean countries don’t have very friendly queer legislation,” she says.

Her parents share her concerns. “I am at least as nervous about how she will be accepted as she does this journey and interacts with people around the world as I am about the physical risk,” says her father, Jay Bower, who works as an environmental engineer in Washington. “I don’t know which is more harrowing.”

But Bower says she plans to “fly under the radar” as much as feasible during the global voyage. “While I am very publicly out in the U.S., I am not showing up in other countries flying my rainbow flag,” she says. And she refuses to dwell on potential hassles and dangers. “An unfortunate part of being in this queer and trans community is that we almost have to accept that there are places in the world that kind of hate us,” she says. “And I refuse to let that be something that stops me from going on a trip like this. We can’t let our fears control us, right?”

Daniel White () is the author of , a memoir about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.

The post As a Trans Woman Sailing Around the World, Storms Are the Least of Her Worries appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

To infuse more adventure into your life, it helps to start with a loaded travel fund to launch an unforgettable experience. With a bigger budget, overseas travel and outfitted assistance enter the equation: maybe an island-hopping sailing adventure in the Caribbean; a hot-springing ski tour of Japan, or that bucket-list rafting trip down the Middle Fork of Idaho’s Salmon River.

Enter below to win a $10,000 prize and hatch your plan. Awarded as a check, the sweepstakes winner will be announced in September (no purchase necessary, open to U.S. residents). Until then, you can find out more ways to pull off memorable trips that mix the most interesting elements of land and sea, plus how to upgrade your outings with tips and cocktail recipes to complement these added adventures.

After you’ve entered, live the spirit of adventure with advice on how to make every day count. Plus, join this summer’s U.S. Cutty Sark Tour and learn the storied history of Cutty Sark Blended Scotch Whisky.

As an original and inimitable whisky launched at the heart of the Prohibition era, was deliberately created to defy conventions. With its smooth, mellow taste profile and its unique maritime and historical heritage, Cutty Sark will make you go on an adventure.

The post Win the șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű x Cutty Sark Summer Giveaway appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Among the world’s harrowing marine survival stories, the strangest might be a crew’s escape from one of the earliest submarines. It was 1851, and the 26-foot-long sub, designed and captained by a Prussian carpenter, was powered by a couple sailors spinning treadwheels. When the vessel floundered during a trial run and began sinking to the bottom of a German harbor, there was only one very frightening way to get out alive—which is why the crew got into what was almost certainly the first-ever underwater fistfight.

Please tell us what you think about the show and how we can make it better. Fill out a brief survey at outsideonline.com/podsurvey.

The post Inside a Sinking Submarine appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

On the evening of April 27, as the sky darkened over the Atlantic coast of France, a 36-foot sailboat drifted slowly on a windless sea. South African sailor Kirsten NeuschĂ€fer, 40, stood alone at the helm of Minnehaha, whose once-white hull had gone dingy with algae. An entourage of rubber Zodiacs, motorized crafts, and other sailboats surrounded her as a welcome into the Les Sable d’Olonne harbor. Their occupants were the first people she’d seen in months. She hadn’t stepped off her sailboat in 235 days.

The leisurely pace of the fleet belied the magnitude of the feat NeuschÀfer had just accomplished. When she finally crossed the finish in the full dark of night, she became the first South African to win a round-the-world sailing event, and the first woman to win a circumnavigation race via the three great capes, crewed or solo.

And the Golden Globe is no average sailing race.

Where modern circumnavigation races like the Vendee Globe, BOC Challenge, and Whitbread Round-the World involve expensive, high-tech boats that race at high speeds and can evoke an elitist image of sail racing, the Golden Globe has only been held three times, and hearkens back to a simpler era. Competitors sail small boats, navigate with paper charts and sextant, catch rain for water, hand-write their logs, communicate by radio, and cannot accept outside assistance. The original race was run in 1968 when nine men vied to be the first to sail solo, without stopping, around the world. No one even knew if a boat could survive 30,000 miles straight at sea, or what might happen to the mind of a sailor alone for so long.

Only one man finished. Twenty-nine-year-old Robin Knox-Johnston sailed back into Falmouth Harbor, in southern England, nearly a year after he’d left it. Along the journey, his water tanks polluted, the sails tore, and the self-steering broke. The radio malfunctioned a month and a half in, and his only contact was sightings from other ships to confirm he was still racing. The other eight competitors sank or abandoned the journey, most in spectacular fashion. Bernard Moitessier, the favored winner, slingshot a message onto the deck of a passing ship that he was abandoning the Western world for Tahiti. Donald Crowhurst sailed in circles while transmitting fake radio reports to fool the world into believing he was winning, then slipped into the ocean in an apparent suicide. The Golden Globe was deemed a voyage for madmen and it was not repeated.

It was only revived in 2018, and it’s a retro race in every way. The course follows the same dangerous route as the original race: from Europe down the coast of Africa, under the three great capes where the infamously violent Southern Ocean roils unobstructed by land, before returning northward along South America. Racers stop at a series of three gates along the way–Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, Cape Town in South Africa, Storm Bay in Tasmania–to drop film. But they don’t leave their boats, making the race nonstop over the course of several months. Many in the marine community call it the greatest challenge in sailing. The 2018 race delivered its share of adventure: daring rescues of fellow competitors dismasted in a cyclone, a massive rogue wave that somersaulted one boat and left it slowly sinking three days’ voyage from the nearest help.

NeuschÀfer finished sixth place to the first race gate in Lanzarote, The Canary Islands. But she soon cruised into the leading fleet to arrive second to the Cape Town, South Africa, gate. By day 164 of the race, 12 of the 16 entrants had dropped out or been forced to quit due to equipment failures, and NeuschÀfer was first to make it around Cape Horn. She outran a storm and was barely able to speak through frozen lips on her weekly check-in call with race headquarters. Even after she sailed 100 miles through the night to rescue fellow racer Tapio Lenin, from Finland, who radioed for help after his boat suddenly sank in the Southern Ocean, NeuschÀfer retained the lead. Over the last days of the race, Indian Abhilash Tomy tailed NeuschÀfer in a tossup for first, until it became apparent on April 26 that Tomy would be unable to close the gap.

Throughout the race, NeuschĂ€fer appeared uninterested in spotlighting her performance. Her communications were terse; competitors were required to send daily text messages for race media, and NeuschĂ€fer’s often read only: Text. When race founder Don McIntyre asked her how she felt at having become the first woman to win a nonstop circumnavigation race, she said, “I entered as a sailor, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m a woman so… great,” and trailed off, appearing at a loss for more to say about it.

Jean-Luc Van den Heede, the 76-year-old French sailor who won the 2018 Golden Globe, says that such a challenge doesn’t discriminate on gender. The fact that a woman had yet to win it is largely due to the fact that women in sail racing are still rare; consider that throughout the vast majority of history, women were barred from working on sea ships at all. Van den Heede was on hand to welcome NeuschĂ€fer to Les Sable d’Olonne. “In this kind of race,” he told me, “there’s no difference to me between a man and woman.”

NeuschĂ€fer is no newcomer to improbable solo pursuits. When she was 22 years old, she cycled the full length of Africa: over 9,000 miles through jungles and the Sahara Desert. She’s an experienced Southern Ocean sailor who’s taken National Geographic and BBC film crews to wildly remote South Georgia Island—the lonely landmass that Ernest Shackleton sailed to, then famously crossed on foot to secure aid  for his stranded men after his ship Endurance was crushed in sea ice. She says that, while solo sailing in the calm water of the tropics, she’ll sometimes drop sail and jump into the ocean, swimming away from the boat “to get that feeling of vastness, that sense of eternity.” Golden Globe race organizers have called her a “real loner, reminiscent of Bernard Moitessier”, the sailor from the first Golden Globe who abandoned the race for the tropics

NeuschĂ€fer’s not the first groundbreaking female in solo sailing or racing. In 1988, Australian Kay Cottee was the first to circumnavigate solo, nonstop, and unassisted via the Southern Ocean. The following year, Tracy Edwards assembled the first all-female crew in the Whitbread Round the World Race also via the capes. In 2005, Brit Ellen MacArthur became the fastest person to sail solo nonstop around the world, and in 2012 at 16 years old, Laura Dekker was the youngest person to circumnavigate alone.

And in 2018, at 29, Brit Susie Goodall became the first woman to race the Golden Globe. Goodall’s well-publicized status as the only woman, particularly when the circumstances of her rescue after her boat was pitchpoled in the Southern Ocean abruptly flipped the public narrative around her from lone heroine to damsel in distress. The situation also highlighted the few roles women have traditionally been allowed to occupy in cultural narratives.

Of Neuschafer’s win, Goodall says, “She’s made history. And that’s amazing. But what she’s done also speaks for itself. The sea doesn’t care if you’re a man or a woman. Anyone finishing a race like that is amazing.”

Some would argue that we’re past the point of needing to label female accomplishments and firsts; that rather than leveling the existing playing field, such emphasis only serves to create a separate one. And as women’s accomplishments stack up, it can seem as though barriers to entry and skewed participation levels for women in the outdoors have been all but eliminated.

But just in February, French sailor Clarisse Cremer, who holds the current record for fastest woman to sail solo around the world, was dropped by her sponsor in her 2024 bid for the Vendee Globe circumnavigation race after she gave birth to her first child, and “after race organizers introduced a rule change that penalized her for taking maternity leave,” .

Katie Gaut, a sailor out of Bellingham, Washington who’s had her captain’s license for twenty years and teaches women to sail, watched the progress of the Golden Globe in 2018 particularly to follow Goodall and did the same with NeuschĂ€fer. “I’ve been in the marine and sailing industry practically my whole adult life,” Gaut said. “It’s so male-dominated and there are very few women in boating, much less sailing. I know how hard it is just to get a sailing job locally. So watching those women do what they do at that level… I can’t imagine how many obstacles they had to surpass to get where they’re at.”

Gaut watched the live feed of NeuschĂ€fer crossing the finish line. It brought her to tears. “It’s empowering for myself, for every little girl, for everyone out there that of course women are capable, and they can beat the guys. We’ve just never gotten the chance because there are too many hurdles to even get to the start line.”

The post Kirsten NeuschĂ€fer Wins the Golden Globe Sailing Race, Dubbed a Voyage for Mad Men appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Diamond Head and Pearl Harbor are must-see attractions for most visitors to Oahu. Iolani Palace and sunset luaus are also popular. But John John Florence has other ideas of how to spend your time on Hawaii’s most touristed island.

The 30-year-old North Shore native, two-time world surfing champion, and member of the inaugural U.S. Olympic surf team was born and raised here. When he’s not dropping into a set wave or sailing, he enjoys meditative land-based pursuits: gardening, beekeeping, and mountain biking are three favorites.

Florence doesn’t often spend time in town, as locals call Honolulu, but he does have a set of places he frequents that don’t necessarily make it into his posts. (You have to keep some secrets from 1.5 million followers.) From the nicest beaches to the healthiest cafĂ©s to surfing, sailing, and hiking, here are his suggestions on the best ways to round out a trip to Oahu.

OUTSIDE: Oahu welcomed more than three million visitors in 2021. That’s a lot of people! Where would you send friends who want to see stunning beaches as well as get a sense of the wild side of the island but avoid the crowds?
FLORENCE: Oahu as a whole is a really beautiful place, and I enjoy every side of the island, but I’ll share a few stops from some different areas. Starting with the North Shore, pretty much anywhere you decide to pull over the car is going to be a really nice beach. Waimea Bay is a special place and perfect for a beach day. On the south shore, I like spending time in the Ala Moana area of Honolulu—the waves are fun, there are plenty of great restaurants, and the sailing scene and Friday-night races are rad. Lastly, I’d recommend checking out some of the nature reserves: the bird sanctuary at Kaena Point [the island’s westernmost tip], Sharks Cove on the North Shore, and Hanauma Bay [in the southeast], to name a few.

What are your recommendations for visiting the North Shore: What’s the best month, and where do you go if you’re up there to see pro surfers on big waves? And do you have any tips for amateurs surfing that stretch of coast?
I might be biased, but I think visiting the North Shore is fun any time of the year. Summer and winter have different faces, but both offer great things. I could give a big list, but instead I’ll shoot you an ideal day: During a contest day, head down to Pipeline and watch a few heats. It’s a fun environment and really cool seeing waves that big up close. Head over to Pupukea Grill for some food before heading into Haleiwa town to check out the local shops. If you’re looking to learn to surf, head over to at Puaena Point for an afternoon lesson and sunset. That’s a pretty good day on the North Shore.

After surfing and sailing, what are your favorite outdoor activities on the island?
Recently I’ve gotten into biking, both road biking and mountain biking. They’ve been a lot of fun to learn about and use as another method of training. Also, I’m part of a solid crew of people who go downwind foiling. Foil boards are essentially surfboards on top of a large foil. We move with the wind—downwind—and basically see how far we can go without dropping back into the water. It’s a lot like snowboarding in powder, but in the ocean. I do that a lot.

If you only had time for one hike on Oahu, what should it be and why?
That’s a tough one, but I’d say Koko Head. It’s fairly well-known but not too long and offers great views on the southeastern side of the island.

I know you grow a lot of produce yourself, but when you’re out and about, where do you go to eat healthy, and what kind of local farmers’ markets or local farms would you encourage folks to seek out while they’re visiting?
There are definitely great farmers’ markets around the island. I also use an awesome resource called Farm Link; it groups together offerings from all the organic farms into one marketplace for purchase. They’re great. Kokua Hawaii Foundation’s Learning Farm—Kim and Jack Johnson’s nonprofit—is a fairly new farm and retail space in Haleiwa. It’s a really cool place to visit, learn about farming, and volunteer. As for healthy cafĂ©s, I like the Country Eatery and Raised by the Waves, both in Kahuku.

What do you do on a rainy day in Oahu?
I guess it depends how rainy it is. If it’s a flooding type of rain, there isn’t much you can do but we get a lot of light rain, too. That usually doesn’t stop my normal activities—surfing, mountain biking, or foiling. I suggest doing the same things you’d do on a sunny day. Rain passes quick!

Most mainlanders know that Hawaii is famous for poke and shave ice. Where do you go to get these? What other places with traditional food do you frequent, and do you have any favorite orders there?
Ha, we are kind of famous for those. I don’t have a shave ice place, but if I’m getting poke, I’ll stop by Kahuku Superette. The best, though, is when a friend catches fish and makes fresh poke at a BBQ or something. Some other food places I really like are Kahuku Farms and, in Haleiwa, Haleiwa Joe’s, Haleiwa Bowls for acai, and Pupukea Grill—everything at the grill is amazing!

As a sailor, do you have any recommendations for seeing the island that way, either with a company or with your own boat? Any off-the-radar  coves or areas with notably more sea life or a fantastic swim or snorkel?
Yeah, definitely. There are a ton of great tours you can take. On the North Shore, Island View Hawaii has a really cool pelagic tour where you get to swim with the sharks outside of Haleiwa. That’s a great experience. In town, there’s a tour called Hawaii Glass Bottom Boats that will take you out around the Waikiki area to see all of the sights. Both are great ways to see different parts of the island.

What local shops have a good selection of unique homemade items from Oahu?
There are a lot of great local shops on the North Shore. The Cove Collection sells household gifts, jewelry, and art. That’s right at Sharks Cove. In Haleiwa, there are a bunch of cool art galleries and surf shops. I like Surf N Sea and North Shore Surf Shop. You don’t need to go far to find what you’re looking for in the way of gifts.

Do you follow any local musicians?
If you have the opportunity to see Hawaiian artists like Paula Fuga, Kimie Miner, Jack Johnson, or Ron Artis, I’d highly recommend it. My friend Martin Saito is another amazing musician on the rise.

Have you ever considered moving to another Hawaiian Island?
I enjoy visiting all the islands—they’re all amazing in their own way—but I haven’t thought much about moving to another. Oahu is home!

The post Pro Surfer John John Florence’s Guide to Oahu appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

John John Florence has remarkable physical talents, but his greatest asset as an athlete might be his enduring positive attitude. The 29-year-old is often his happiest when things go sideways and he’s forced to adapt. This explains why, after suffering a major knee injury earlier this year during a competition, the two-time world champion surfer decided to spend his rehab sailing from his home in Hawaii to Fiji, a 3,000-mile open-ocean crossing that was loaded with unpredictable weather, high stress, and some truly scary moments. We connected with Florence at the end of his voyage to find out how he’s always able to handle whatever comes his way.

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We are a few hours into the inaugural sail of the 2022 season aboard the Schooner Ladona, which traces the rocky coast of Maine for twenty-odd weekends a year, seeking adventure in the mist, fog, and harbors of Vacationland. On land, it may be a fine June morning, but at sea, we’ve encountered the truest of Maine awakenings: some wind (good for the sails), quite a bit of rain; the kind of weather that Mainers describe as “typical.”

My shipmates and I huddle in the galley as chef Anna Miller unearths from storage a trio of different birds, spatchcocked. Laying them out on the galley’s simple island, she seasons each bird and layers them on top of each other—turkey first: 18 pounds, followed by a layer of stuffing, followed by a four-pound duck, more stuffing, then a chicken roaster—ties them together into a round bundle, slicks the bundle with oil, and presents it for us to see, her masterpiece, the butt of a Thanksgiving joke come to life: the famous Schooner Ladona Turducken (find the recipe here).

Miller only serves the turducken on the first and last trips of the ’s season. “It’s kind of like word-of-mouth,” she says. “There are guests that call up and they’re like, ‘We want to come on the first or the last trip.’” The glorious, labor-intensive birds-in-bird, cooked in the kerosene-heated oven, is possible thanks to the planning and design of captain and co-owner J.R. Braugh who, in 2014, alongside a team including captain Noah Barnes, Jane Barrett Barnes, Simon Larsen, Sean Boyd, and Miller, helped spearhead the 100-year-old ship’s redesign, which included a complete gut of the galley.

“Features in the galley like the lighting, fixtures, appliances, layout, soffit design, and range-hood were contributions I made,” Braugh says. “The settees, tables, and counter storage considerations were done as a team. A plurality of existing passenger schooners inspired the design and ergonomics we hoped to achieve in Ladona’s galley, keeping our signature chef, Anna, in mind the whole time.”

The Schooner Ladona, which was originally commissioned by American industrialist Homer Loring in 1922, holds 17 guests—fewer than some of her neighboring vessels, which can accommodate up to 40—packed in like happy sardines. Originally built as a sailing yacht, the Ladona was named as a tribute to Loring’s grandfather, who had a ship with the same name.

Over the course of a century, the Ladona went through multiple incarnations—and names. In the late 1960s, someone identified the Ladona, which, by then, had been converted into a fishing boat, as a former sailboat. She was later restored and her name was changed to the Joseph W. Hawkins. Later, the ship was renamed again to the Nathaniel Bowditch, a tribute to the famous American mathematician and military ocean navigator.

By 2014, the boat had fallen on hard times. Tied up in Rockland, Maine, the Ladona was deemed unfit to sail with a revoked certificate of inspection from the Coast Guard before Noah Barnes had the idea to rescue her. Braugh was, he himself says, “a willing co-conspirator, once Noah’s idea and financial strategy were conceived.” Braugh summoned his experiences at sea as he began thinking about a redesign and, importantly, about what kind of galley would be ideal for clientele.

The result is a 196-square-foot galley that is both large enough to cook a massive turducken and seat the boat’s guests for the breakfast Miller cooks to order between seven and nine. A banquette is situated against the back walls with benches facing a built-in table, so guests can eat as Miller cooks, chats, and preps later meals, all in a space that does not impede the flow. The benches also hide dry storage, so it’s not unusual to be asked, mid-meal, to stand up for a moment so that someone can grab this or that.

Braugh and Miller worked together prior to the Ladona on a series of boats that were useful testing grounds—the Mercantile, Grace Bailey, Stephen Taber, and Roseway, often referred to as the green boats because they have green hulls. “They may not have a ton of creature comforts, in the way we aspire to,” Braugh says, “but the galleys had a nice layout.” This included a counter separating the chef’s workspace from the passengers’ space. “It gave them a little defensive barrier, and it portioned off a place that they could kind of call their own.” That idea, Braugh says, was translated to the Ladona.

Other details include built-in wall shelving that holds Ball canning jars full of spices and other assorted mise-en-place; a freestanding slop sink that is the sole onboard “dishwasher” but does its duty well; and a kerosene stove tucked to the left as you enter the galley, behind captain Braugh’s makeshift barrier. Next to the stove, a refrigerator—large for a ship, but not quite full-sized—stores perishables. Written on the outside in dry-erase marker are the chef’s notes regarding the plans for the day or remaining charter. Miller points out wine storage for 70 bottles above the downstairs dining table, added on by Rockland cabinet-maker Sean Boyd a few years after the restoration.

Miller, who enrolls in two full-share CSAs every season for the boat, has the ability with the curated space to be relatively fearless. (When I ask her if there is anything that she would never attempt on this swaying kitchen of the sea, she stops to think a minute: “I’ll try just about anything, but I definitely know that I couldn’t pull off a soufflĂ© for 17 people.”)

This fearlessness delivers delicious delights. On our final day, for lunch, seated at the long table in June’s brilliant Maine sunshine, we enjoy homemade Reuben sandwiches, still hot and joyously drippy, accompanied by crinkled-topped brownies. On our final night at sea, the smell of smoke erupts at the rear of the boat: charred steaks emerge, along with corn-on-the-cob, a warm bowl of seasoned potatoes, and, for dessert, tart and creamy slices of key lime pie.

But before those meals, there is this one, the burnished turducken, a feat both of culinary rigor and circumstance. Here, on our first cool evening, perfectly cooked, small space notwithstanding, Miller produces, from the depths, a cured duck pastrami, made in-house, alongside truffled deviled eggs, garnished with chive blossoms from her CSA, and local French breakfast radishes, smeared thick with butter and dipped in lardons. And then the bird, served with potatoes and the conviviality that one might expect at, well, Thanksgiving.

It’s hard to imagine, as twilight settles in, lights dance overhead, and the occasional seal noses up from the calm of Bucks, where we’ve anchored for the evening, that this bounty could have been created in a room smaller than my freshman dorm room.

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