charter goddess 368
Julianna Linsdell of Duxbury, Massachusetts, is a very successful businesswoman, as sharp with her investments as she is with her Mac OS X.
She’s a devoted mother of beautiful twin girls and a highly accomplished lifelong sailor and charterer, gaining much of her experience from her family’s longtime association with the Duxbury Yacht Club (www.duxburyyachtclub.org).
She also happens to be married to Jimmy Linsdell, a professional skipper who my partner, Rick Martell, and I met when we worked as crew in the Caribbean. When we first encountered him in the islands, Jimmy already had years of sailing in his wake, having worked the bareboat company fleets in the Mediterranean and throughout the Caribbean island chain.
We became fast friends and often worked together aboard charter boats. Jimmy also was well known in the British Virgin Islands as a checkout skipper-the captain who stays with vacation sailors aboard their boats until they feel comfortable enough to go it alone.
Rest assured, Jimmy has plenty of stories to tell-like the time he met up with a blonde, energetic sailor in a flotilla from the Duxbury Yacht Club who’d come to sail in the B.V.I. one winter more than a decade ago.
The rest is history, and so, it explains why, as crocuses and daffodils were bursting out of brown New England earth on a rare balmy day a few weeks ago, Rick and I decided it was time to accept a longstanding invitation from Julianna and Jimmy to visit with them and their girls, Melissa and Elizabeth, at their Duxbury home.
Once there, we strolled down to the waterfront and past the yacht club’s Sprague-Parker Clubhouse to the Duxbury Bay Maritime School (www.dbms.org), where Jimmy works on the Marshall Catboats, Flying Scots, and O’Days, putting them in top shape for the season. The award-winning, nonprofit school offers educational and recreational activities to all ages, from sailing instruction, rowing, kayaking, and windsurfing to a range of courses, events, and programs.
Then we made our way back to the Linsdell home and fixed our attention on the Mac, looking at loads of pictures, slideshows, and videos from charters taken over the years, all Julianna-produced. She swears it takes little time to create this digital memorabilia. For a sample of her work, check out the Linsdell family web link .
But there’s more. When it comes to sailing in waters away from home, Julianna’s an organizer and logistics point person for the DYC Southern Cruisers, a subset of the yacht club’s members who participate in winter and summer flotillas. The words Ed Hamilton (noted vacation broker), Sunsail (charter company) and flotilla (a fleet of boats sailing together in a single cruising ground) are part of her daily lexicon. Trust me, this woman knows the world of bareboat and crewed sailing, and she knows it well.
Not only does she use her sales expertise to negotiate bareboat rates, but via the Mac, she creates and stores spreadsheets detailing vital vacation information. She maintains lists of must-have items crew need to include in luggage, from sunblock and swim suits to snacks.
Most intriguing to me is that this home-spun system allows her and her family to bring virtually every food item and accessory they need so that they forgo paying for any provisioning services. At first, I didn’t believe her, but she swears by this system. “The only thing I buy is fresh fruits and veggies,” Julianna says.
She has the meat frozen and vacuum-packed by grocery stores near her home. Each crew member, whether grown-up or kid, carries some of the items in her list, from toilet paper to salt and pepper. Besides one piece of luggage each, the family transporrts one cooler. “What do you need to bring other than an Ipod and a swimsuit?” She asks.
I sat down at the computer and started nosing around the folders containing Julianna’s spreadsheets. I even asked her if I could have copies of them, and with the pride of a truly enterprising proprietor, she turned me down with a passionate, “No way!”
You go, Goddess!
