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Woman in The Wheelhouse
Woman in The Wheelhouse
Woman in The Wheelhouse
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Woman in The Wheelhouse

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If ever there was a woman in a man's job, this is it! The author spent six years -- until shore-bound by the birth of her first child -- in the world of commercial mariners, first as cook and deckhand, then as licensed mate -- one of the first women in the country to hold a USCG license to operate coastal tugs. Two weeks before their marriage, her husband became captain of an old DPC tug built in 1943. A month later, she joined him on a short run on the upper Chesapeake Bay. Although she had been aboard tugs before, this was different, "like the first taste of a drug -- intoxicating, seemingly harmless, but the beginning of a slowly growing addiction."The book initiates the reader into the beauty and romance of life on the water combined with the exhausting, dangerous work. Robson relishes the incredible closeness to Nature: whales, porpoise so close she could nearly touch them and birds that come into the galley to watch her making bread, as well as the magnificent spectacle of a sunset on a clear winter's day as it glows behind a black network of bare-branched trees along the shore. She also endures the fear of being maimed or lost overboard, the male opposition, and the drudgery, collapsing more than once in icy, sodden clothes into an unmade bunk. On seagoing trips that ranged from the Chesapeake Bay to Cape Cod, from Maine to Florida, to Bermuda, New Orleans and Mexico, she felt the frustrations of failure but also the tremendous exhilaration of success. It's a world that many imagine what it would be like to share in all its adventurous, terrifying glory, though few actually experience it. Robson brings that world alive and takes you along for every hard-won but glorious nautical mile. This book is for anyone who every imagined running away to sea, for every woman who wonders what it would be like to live a real-life adventure romance, for every man who relishes the outdoors, and for everyone who loves a good yarn.
Author of numerous articles and essays, Nancy Taylor Robson is also the author of two novels: The award-winning coming-of age story, Course of the Waterman, and A Love Like No Other: Abigail and John Adams, A Modern Love Story. A freelance writer for many years, she has published personal essays, features, maritime reporting and analysis, travel, garden and more for such places as The Washington Post, Yachting, House Beautiful, The Baltimore Sun, the Christian Science Monitor, Southern Living, Sailing, and more. She is also a University of Maryland Master Gardener and Bay-Wise certifier, who grows and cans the family's fruits and vegetables. She writes, sails, races sailboats (occasionally), walks the dogs, and cooks for friends and family.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 21, 2021
ISBN9781939632135
Woman in The Wheelhouse
Author

Nancy Taylor Robson

Nancy Taylor Robson is one of the first women in the country to earn a US Coast Guard license. She grew up sailing and building boats with her father and worked as a housepainter, desk clerk and yacht maintenance person while in college. After earning a degree in history, she had planned to go to law school, but instead, met and married a sailor/tugboat captain, a graduate of the US Merchant Marine Academy, and shortly after their marriage, she went to work alongside her husband as cook/deckhand on an old 85-foot tugboat built during WWII. The fear of being maimed or lost overboard, the male opposition, and the drudgery during seagoing tours that ranged from Maine to Florida, Bermuda, New Orleans and Mexico was coupled with romantic sunsets, a ringside seat on nature and an appreciation for hard won accomplishment. Robson, one of a handful of women who paved the way for every intrepid woman who has followed, brings that world alive. She met only one other woman during the six years she worked out there, running up and down the Atlantic and in the Gulf of Mexico, hailing barges loaded with everything from sulfuric acid to truck parts and RR train cars bound for Iran, to nuclear turbines. This, her first published book, written after coming ashore when her first child was born, was originally published to great reviews and has been reissued in paperback. She and sailed and raced for many years on the Chesapeake Bay on various sailboats as well as delivering sailboats up and down the Atlantic Coast and Inter-Coastal Waterway.

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    Woman in The Wheelhouse - Nancy Taylor Robson

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