For me, looking back, it seems inevitable that I would have sailed one day. But it took a very long time to get there. The daughter and granddaughter of ship captains, I grew up in Napa California, only a few miles from the Bay and from Cal Maritime (dad's alma mater), but I had no interest in going to sea. It was not encouraged; it never even crossed my mind. Not until I graduated college and returned to my home town did I realize that it was the only thing I wanted to do.
My first job out of school was a gig as a ship agent. Few people realize that this sector of the industry exists (I sure didn't) but agents are crucial to the shipping industry; they are the wheels in the machine every time a ship makes a port call. The agents coordinate the vessel's notice of arrival to the coast guard, they make sure the ship has a dock to go to so it can load or unload its cargo, they see to it that the ship will have a pilot and assist tugs on arrival, they arrange customs entry and clearance of the ship's cargo, crew members, and the vessel itself, and they take care of what we call ship husbandry: food delivery, linen service, crew changes, bunkers, the list goes on.
This amazing job plunged me into the San Francisco waterfront, and I came to know dozens upon dozens of people - I had to, in order to do my job well. And it was around this time that I really began to seriously think about working on boats or ships. After a year of agent work, I had grown addicted to everything about working near the water: the cool, metallic smell of the marshes in the middle of the night as I waited for tankers to tie up alongside the wharves in Martinez and Benicia and Richmond; boat rides out to ships on the hook in Anchorage 9 on bright autumn days; access to high-security terminals from Redwood City all the way to Stockton and Sacramento, a glimpse into the history upon which the region was built: the sugar refinery in Crockett, the steel terminal in Pittsburg, forgotten docks at Selby, Port Costa, Point San Pedro, Point Molate, Point Potrero, where everything from oil to sand to automobiles to molasses was imported and exported. The waterways and sloughs, the sprawling, haunted yards, the train tracks and warehouses. Alameda, Oakland, San Rafael, Petaluma: the scene set by Jack London and his oyster pirates a hundred years ago. I had grown up within an hour of all of it and yet I had never contemplated the existence of any of it.
The pay was not enough to live on and the hours threatened to ruin me, but I had never been so sure of anything: I was never leaving this industry. I had to make it mine. What could I do? The answer was plain as day: go to sea. It took more than a year of thinking, dreaming, of fear, hope, of drowning uncertainty. My dear father tried again and again to talk me out of it. There were a very few people who wanted to hold me back, but those voices were drowned out by the innumerable voices that pushed me on, and the loudest voice of all - the one in my own head - swelled to a tenor I could no longer suppress. Suddenly, I jumped. I got my merchant mariner credential and within weeks I had quit my job and was on my way from Seattle to Alaska on a tugboat as an ordinary seaman in the middle of January. I learned how to splice, lashed containers on deck barges, manhandled 3-inch stud link chain, smoked cigars, puked my guts out, dipped Copenhagen, puked some more. I feasted my eyes on the stupefying beauty of Alaska: the snow, the cruel sea, the rocky shores, the whales. The Gulf!
I had days of panic when I wondered what I'd done. I dug into my soul to find my strength, my grit. I wept and laughed and tore myself open to survive. That was seven years ago, and now I'm here: a licensed master of towing, with a street address on solid ground. For the first five years I didn't have a home of my own; when I started I was a cadet with the PMI workboat mate program and lived with family and friends when I wasn't living and working on a boat. When I got my license I traded Alaska for the Caribbean to tow barges from Jacksonville and Philadelphia to Puerto Rico. The Atlantic was magic, but the heat became intolerable; I upgraded and came back to Alaska.
That brings us to the present day: I'm determined to continue, to grow and change and to earn my living. And determined to let other women know they can do this too. There is nothing holding you back.