I wanted to title this blog: Mansplaining or Just Logic? That seemed a syllabic handful though. Sorry – am I mansplaining?

‘No,’ Lulu says, ‘you can’t mansplain because you’re not a man.’

Oh, ok. So girls don’t have the purchase to mansplain, even though mansplaining isn’t supposed to be a desirable attribute anyway. No worries. On Quest, we’ll find a way – even if a missing Y chromosome means we don’t have the ‘man’ in the mansplaining edge.

The Cap swears that he just contains simple logic exclusive to his brain. His brain. And he is the only male on Quest. Is this not classic mansplaining? And yet he is logical – there is no system he can’t remember, sometimes the muscle memory of just starting is enough for him to remember the rest. He always maintains he just wants to tell us about his logical findings. Yep; lucky us 😊.

I wonder, in this environment, if boats function as the source and reason for all mansplaining. It’s true that living aboard can lack a certain charm – when often orders are what are required rather than soft talk. Sailing can also be brusque living – ‘Pull that rope, tie that knot, don’t clunk the anchor.’ It’s a language based on keeping safe, sometimes to the detriment of protecting feelings.

Within our own motley crew, Quest also has a young teenager with a special dislike of mansplaining. Perhaps this isn’t so unusual for teenagers. Then, funnily enough, I can’t help but notice she has the exact habit herself – usually straight to her little sister. I tend to chuckle – and feel her sister’s pain. The younger kid just wants to be loved, so she tends to soak it all up. Another layer of sailing hierarchy.

As a boat can exist as mirroring microcosms, we often pick up each other’s behavioural tics without even realising. Coming aboard Quest, a person may even think we spend a concerning amount of time explaining how to flush the heads, or the correct way to bucket wash the cockpit floor – well that’s not crazy at all. To us.

‘Are you mansplaining about mansplaining?’ Lu asked, peering over my shoulder. Oh dear. I gotta go.