Yachting

Glayva, a

Sayer 42

cruiser-racer

CRUISING LIFE

50 http://www.yachtingmonthly.com MAY 2016

S

tories of sailing couples often seem

to feature perfect partnerships,

where little goes wrong and

no-one gets upset. I can only hope

that my husband Mark and I can

manage the years together as well as

these paragons of maritime

patience have.

As a sailing couple,

we have pretty solid

foundations: we sailed and

lived aboard a 35-footer

together for fi ve years, from

the time before we had children until we

had one baby and I was pregnant with

our second. We then came ashore and

lived with our two children under the

same roof as our current yacht, Glayva, a

42ft Jon Sayer design, while we built her

together in Australia. During the build,

we had distinct but roughly equal roles:

Mark is a boatbuilder, so he built the

boat while I worked to fund the project,

along with being Mum to our young son

Arran and daughter Namara. There was

a never-ending jobs list and, as Mark put

it, ‘opportunities to extend my skills’, for

example fairing and sanding.

On our return to sea, however, we were

Rachel

Robertson

New Zealander

Rachel, her Scottish

husband Mark and

their two children

have sailed from

Mooloolaba, Australia

through Indonesia,

Malaysia and Thailand, then back to

Aceh and Sumatra aboard Glayva, their

home-built 42ft Sayer cruiser-racer.

Rachel Robertson muses on the division of labour aboard a liveaboard family cruiser

Sailing with your spouse,

and how to make it work

back to captain and crew roles, and the

transition was hard. My loving husband

turned into Captain Bligh and I fought

him like Fletcher Christian, all the way.

There was very little holding hands and

sailing off into the sunset. Yet after fi ve

years and 13,000 miles

full-time aboard Glayva,

how is it that I fi nd myself

sitting here so happily,

anchored in remote West

Sumatra, with happy

children and husband?

The fi sh are jumping, the squid linger in

the hull’s shadow waiting to be caught for

lunch. My cockpit is full of young coconuts

waiting to be drunk and fresh bananas

hang off the transom.

Somewhere along the way, we found our

roles and I stopped fi ghting the fact that

there is a need for a captain on board, and

that the ‘First Mate’ can certainly have

her input. I accepted that Mark is better

than me at certain things. Don’t get me

wrong, I can change an impeller, the water

fi lters, and fi x the water pump, but Mark

actually seems to enjoy doing these things.

And to tell the truth, even though there is

achievement in all learning, I admit I am

just not such a practical person.

So have we conformed to the so-called

‘pink’ jobs and ‘blue’ jobs? I bake bread,

teach the children, wash the clothes and

clean the oven, but many tasks blend

into each other and we share many

things aboard: the cleaning and general

maintenance; the sailing and route

planning. It’s been a while since I had

any mutinous thoughts and the kids have

now become used to our ‘discussions’,

which do, inevitably, end up with us

holding hands at sunset. W

‘At sea we were

back to captain

and crew roles’

Some jobs

are more

easily shared

than others

ALL PHOTOS: COURTESY RACHEL ROBERTSON