Putting Winds in Their Sails

The school's catchy motto, "Nobody yells," speaks volumes about the type of environment that Pogell wants to create: nurturing and civil, not macho and competitive. Pogell didn't come up with the motto. One of her first students did, in a note to Pogell, writing that she had learned a lot and that, thankfully, "nobody yelled." Pogell and her staff realized that the phrase neatly captured their approach to sailing, learning, and leadership: Everyone is involved, and everyone -- not just an authoritarian captain -- is responsible for the welfare of the boat.

Womanship's motto is a goal, not a guarantee. When Pattie Slagle of Easton, Maryland went on a Womanship cruise, the captain did, in fact, raise her voice during a near collision, something along the lines of, "There's no time to put your sailing gloves on! DO THE SAIL NOW!" Slagle didn't mind: It wasn't insulting or demeaning. "Sometimes you have to do it," Slagle says. "The crew has to hear the urgency in your voice. No one said, 'Wait, you said you weren't going to yell.' "

Competition and Corrosion

Pogell doesn't sail as much as she used to. Most days, she's at Womanship headquarters, which has been operating out of her downtown Annapolis home ever since Hurricane Floyd flooded the company's dockside offices in 1999. Today, Pogell is pretty swamped. A sailing magazine is calling back about an ad, a women's magazine wants her to submit an essay on sailing, and one of the charter boats had to be replaced at the last minute because of a broken bilge pump. Oh, and the forecast is calling for rain.

The boats are by far her biggest headache and expense. "You're putting wood, metal, hoses, and electrical wiring on salt water," Pogell says. "Everything is eroding. Equipment is a constant, constant issue." Back in 1999, Womanship saw its ranking decline among top sailing schools listed in a reader survey in Practical Sailor magazine. The most common complaint was poor-quality boats. Since then, Pogell has tried to rely less on Womanship's own boats and more on instructors who own and care for their own vessels. Of the 16 boats in Womanship's fleet, half are owned by instructors.

One part of the job that Pogell clearly enjoys is talking to students, even the new ones with 101 questions. She's reassuring, chatty, and maternal: "Well, I'd bring a fleece or wool sweater. This has been the strangest spring I can remember, cold one day, in the 80s the next." "There's enough water on board to take a shower, but not a long one." "It's more or less like camping."

Pogell is relieved to be busy. Thanks to the sagging economy, there's no wind in the sailing industry. According to the National Marine Manufacturers Association, sales of new boats have declined 23% in the past three years. Pogell has been forced to be more creative, adding shorter, less-expensive cruises to Womanship's offerings and expanding the school's outreach to different audiences, such as younger women.

She also faces competition that wasn't around in the early days. Most yacht clubs and many sailing schools now offer courses for women. But Pogell insists that Womanship's approach can't be easily copied. "My business is an expression of my personal philosophy," she says. "The economics -- making lots of money -- is not number one."

Helping women is. Raelinda Woad, a Boston artist, undertook a Womanship course in the British Virgin Islands last January to overcome her fear of sailing a boat larger than a dinghy. But rather than eliminating her fear, the course helped her see that getting scared is simply a reaction to new challenges, and that she could experience fear without becoming paralyzed by it. Shortly after she returned home, Woad found a new apartment and art studio, a move she had been putting off for years. Womanship energized her in a way that even therapy hadn't.

That's the sort of endorsement that keeps the wind in Pogell's sails. "If I was just running a sailing school, I would be bored to death," she says. "I don't care if our women don't remember the name of every instrument on the boat. I want them to remember what they accomplished."

Chuck Salter (csalter@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior writer based in Baltimore.