The thing I don't understand IN THE LEAST is how normalized it is to be "yelled at" on a boat. There are only a few male skippers I've raced with who are able to refrain from yelling AT their crew (which is not the same as simply speaking loudly to communicate)... HOWEVER when someone becomes personally insulting, condescending, or drops curse words in there because they're frustrated... I mentally check out. I stop being able to concentrate, I can't keep calm myself, and then I turn into half the sailor I know I am because I'm so flustered. Which is exactly the opposite of what the person yelling at me was hoping for but they're the one who escalated the situation... its so ridiculous! Would they ever speak to the women in their lives like this or tolerate someone else doing that? Highly doubt it!! I'm really curious how other people handle these situations... if we can't yet avoid them altogether.

Alright I need you all to run with this one because it’s too good not to 😄 When a man assumes you don’t know what you’re doing and asks, “Can you handle that?” The only response in my head is, “I sure can… but only if I concentrate EXTRA hard with my lady brain.” What are your favorite mic-drop internal comebacks? Drop yours below 👇 Let’s hear them!

It's amazing (still to this day) how often it's assumed that I know little to nothing when I step on a new boat. Or how often I get interrupted, spoken over, ignored, or subtly invalidated. Once I was on a boat with someone I knew (but hadn't sailed with before) and downwind I turned around to call the breeze and talk through incoming puffs. At one point, WHILE I was calling breeze, the skipper interrupted me MID-SENTENCE to tell the brand-new-first-time-on-a-sailboat male crew, to look upwind and tell him about the next shift. The new guy just laughed and said, "I literally have no idea what that even means." and I was like... WTAF!...that is exactly what I am currently doing...are you F-ing kidding me right now?! I spent the rest of that race day in a frustrated spiral and will never sail with that skipper again. In some ways, I think I've learned to expect it (which sucks) but at least I'm not caught off guard anymore. But I've also become a lot pickier about who I sail with. More recently I've begun to relish in just quietly being a badass and waiting for that one surprised comment when they finally realize I know what I'm doing. But of course that doesn't always happen. *sigh* Are there any other tips or mantras you all have? I know we've all been there.