Women Rocking the Boat

A few months ago when famous men were getting a long-overdue ass kicking for mistreating women, women stood up and elbowed their way to the front of the room. I watched male power figures fall, and I thought, wow this is the year of the woman. Then, during the Olympic Games it seemed that only American women were winning medals, and I said it out loud, “This IS the year of the woman, and I’m diggin’ it.”

Ready for the Water!

My point was proven in a personal way this month when Madelyn and I traveled to Port Hadlock, Washington to visit a project started by a group of women to resurrect a piece of maritime history, a twenty-three foot sailboat, the Felicity Ann. 

In 1952, a hapless British widow with little sailing experience and an iron spine, bought a twenty-three foot sailboat, stocked up on food and water then sailed across the Atlantic to America. She sailed alone, teaching herself navigation and seamanship as she battled wind, tide, and current as well as self doubt and fear. She was the first woman to sail solo across the Atlantic.  In doing so, she broke one more barrier for women and became a national hero. Unfortunately, today few people know the name of Ann Davison.

Most of the hardware is original from the boat.
Lots of new wood.

Felicity Ann's graceful stern.

Our relationship with the Felicity Ann and the amazing Ann Davison started just north of Seward on the shores of Kenai Lake, where we met two woman who had owned the boat and stored it in their yard for a number of years. Realizing that the project was bigger than they were, they passed it on a man in Haines.  Left behind were the port and starboard navigation lights, which we purchased and brought home along with the story of Ann Davison and her little boat. Over the years, we read Ann Davison’s book My Ship is So Small, and kept track of the Felicity Ann through the Internet and Wooden Boat magazine. 

Madelyn poses in Ann
Davison look-alike

From all that I can gather, Felicity Ann spent over fifty years like a needy foster child, bouncing from one home to the next when she proved to be too much work. Restoring a wood boat is a time and money black hole and the longer it’s put off the bigger it is. After the home in Haines didn’t prove out for Felicity Ann, she headed south to the NorthWest School of Wooden Boat Building in Port Hadlock, Washington, where the skills, knowledge, and tools existed to make her whole again. All that was missing was energy. That momentum came in the form of a group of women at the Port Hadlock Community Boat Project. This outfit wraps their energy around boats and young people, and Felicity Ann was a natural match for them. 

Community Boat Project Shipwright,
Wayne Chimenti, and Felicity Ann's new
Skipper, Nahja, admire the navigation lights
we brought to Port Hadlock.

So now this historic relic has been brought back from the brink, and this summer her keel will be wet for the first time in decades.  Our little piece of this adventure was returning the navigation lights to their place with the boat and being rewarded with a tour of Felicity and her new home in Port Hadlock.

This summer Felicity Ann with be launched into the waters of a different ocean, but still with a woman at the helm, thanks to a group of sailors who wanted to remember that while women rise up today there were strong women in the past who ignored the bias and the boundaries put up by men and moved forward to do great things.

--- Ann Davison’s book, My Ship is so Small, is a great read and the following websites will allow you to follow Felicity Ann’s modern story:

http://www.oldsaltblog.com/2012/03/restoring-the-felicity-ann-and-the-memory-of-ann-davison/

https://www.nwswb.edu/felicityann/

http://felicityann.org/index.html

The Felicity project is also on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/FelicityAnnBoatProject/