After much antic­i­pa­tion and email plan­ning, we’re head­ing to Des­o­la­tion Sound for a week of sail­ing with friends. One is an expe­ri­enced cap­tain, so we’ve bravely signed up for a bare boat char­ter. (He’s also a for­mer crab fish­er­man!)

Non-mark­ing deck shoes

Com­pil­ing our shop­ping and “must bring” lists has been an adven­ture in its own right.

We’re food­ies, so the generic pro­vi­sions stocked by the char­ter com­pany don’t appeal to us. Instead every­one will bring food and spe­cial ingre­di­ents from home, sup­ple­ment­ing them with fresh meats and veg­eta­bles pur­chased locally. Or crabs we catch while sail­ing off­shore.

Some of us don’t sail on a reg­u­lar basis, so we’ve had to shop for non-mark­ing boat shoes. In the process we’ve learned that the boat­ing apparel indus­try focuses pri­mar­ily on men, with few real choices for women. What’s pro­moted for women as boat shoes, more often than not, are moc­casins designed for fash­ion rather than func­tion. Find­ing and then buy­ing grippy boat shoes (rather than fash­ion moc­casins) on short notice has been a chal­lenge.

We face a 30-degree tem­per­a­ture range in British Colum­bia, from highs around 80° to lows in the 40’s or 50’s. With weather that spans late sum­mer to fall, from sun­shine to rain pro­tec­tion, pack­ing lightly is almost impos­si­ble.

We’re techies, so our elec­tron­ics list is daunt­ing. Beside DSLR cam­eras, binoc­u­lars and marine spe­cialty items, we’re bring­ing:

• Solar bat­tery charg­ers
• Sine wave invert­ers (for DC to AC con­ver­sion)
• Smart­phones and e‑readers
• Charg­ers for mul­ti­ple devices
• Blue­tooth key­boards
• Garmin GPS nav­i­ga­tion devices to get us to the marina in time for our map brief­ing

For leisure activ­i­ties we’re also bring­ing:

• Yoga mats
• Snor­kel­ing gear
• Kayak­ing gear
• Bird­watch­ing resources

And foul weather gear, just in case.

Wish us luck!

Sadly, my new deck shoes are fuch­sia. Not my pref­er­ence, but the only grippy boat shoes avail­able online in my size. Why is it that male-ori­ented brands default to offer­ing wom­en’s ver­sions in pink? When will brand man­agers wise up to the fact that women are more nuanced and sophis­ti­cated than lit­tle girls?