Ladies Have Their Say in Great Loop Tell-All (Free Download)
By PETER SWANSON Loopers have always amused me in an endearing way. First-time Loopers fuss as if it were a journey to darkest Africa back in Victorian times. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to lose your way on the 5,000-mile circle route; in an emergency you’re rarely too far to swim ashore, and no matter where you land, you are in the United States of America (or, at worst, Canada). Okay, okay…I admit it. I was wrong to be so dismissive. Years of managing seminars at TrawlerFest proved to me that even if the worries were overblown, they were no less real. And, dare I say it, this was particularly true among many of the wives. Now comes Susan Costa aboard Lucky Me, who has organized an anthology of stories from 35 Loop women. The name of the book is Ladies on the Loop. Costa, a fellow Bay Stater, is an energetic person who has also published Cruising the Bahamas with Lucky Me with husband and co-author Greg Costa. She was helped in her current endeavor by Kim Russo, executive director of the American Great Loop Cruisers Association. Costa describes her book’s 35 co-authors thus: “We are Captains, First Mates, Admirals, Wives, Partners, Cooks and at times even hired Crew. On the Loop, it doesn’t matter if you are young or old, rich or on a budget, newly boating or an expert – we are all in this together and equal. And these women often had the most interesting stories; how they started the Loop, overcoming sickness and fears, concerns about leaving family behind, finding incredible joy along the journey, personal growth, and of course, the friendships they made.” I finagled an advance copy of Ladies and was able to read it as Hurricane Isaias was bearing down on Florida. I was prepared to pan it. Not to you, dear audience (I do have some sense of diplomacy), but to the cynic that lives inside my own head. To my surprise, though, the book was good, and it is good because it is valuable. Ladies has answers to so many questions that uninitiated would-be cruisers will have about the Loop, the ICW and cruising in general. Its stories provide the warmth and comfort of a well worn sweater. Many if not most Loopers are empty nesters with perhaps a dog displacing those grown children, but what about the family that made the journey with their older disabled son…on a 27-foot sailboat no less? Of couse, it wasn’t easy, but these three found great joy among the “community of compassion” of fellow boaters. There was inspiration aplenty, but also down-and-dirty practical advice about all manner of things: How to cope with the holidays, how to displace the primal urge to shop (you know who you are), how to get your old mutt to pee on the foredeck, how to this, how to that, how to the other thing. One of the authors was listed only as “Anonymous” and she had a lot to say about how relationships can go very wrong underway. Susan Costa has graciously given us permission to distribute Ladies of the Loop, having apparently forgiven my tongue-in-cheek dynosaurian suggestion that she follow up with publication of a calendar. Download Ladies of the Loop as a PDF |
