Is boating a sport that welcomes women?

Sure – according to nearly half the men on the water. They think boating is equally friendly toward men and women alike. Ask the women, though, and the answer is decidedly different. Two out of three say boating is a sport that is more friendly to men.

Take this 12 question quiz and then match your answers against the Mad Mariner Poll.

That's just one of the findings in a national poll that Mad Mariner commissioned to explore the role of women on the water. The poll asked 200 men and 200 women – all boat owners – a broad range of questions about their vessels and how they use them. The results show that the majority of men and women enjoy the sport of boating, but that they enjoy it in different ways – and not always how the other perceives.

Moreover, while some stereotypes about women boaters stem from truth – they are less confident than men and play less of an ownership role aboard their boats – others have the ring of fiction, such as the idea that women shy away from driving the boat and are often relegated to the role of dock hand.

While boating is one of the few sports that draws men and women – individually, as couples and as families – the National Marine Manufacturers Association says little hard data exist in the United States about the role that women play.

"More women are getting into boating. We're hearing that from dealers at the retail level anecdotally," says Ellen Hopkins, the NMMA's director of marketing. "But nobody has really delved into it."

Until now. Mountain West Research Center, an Idaho-based polling firm, conducted the Mad Mariner Poll in June using secure surveys delivered and completed online. The margin of error was plus or minus 5 percentage points. (For full poll results, see link.)

The 400-person sample was roughly representative of the boating marketplace: 64 percent owned powerboats, 9 percent owned sailboats, 16 percent owned both and 12 percent owned another type of boat, such as a kayak or inflatable. Almost two-thirds of those polled owned boats between 15 and 34 feet long. Their average age was 41, and 77 percent were married or living with a partner.

WHAT ROLE DO WOMEN PLAY?

As the poll data show, much can be learned by examining what men and women actually do on their boats.

For example, a student at the Sea Sense women's boating school named Charlotte once sat in the cockpit of a Grand Banks 42 on Florida's Gulf Coast, shoulder to shoulder with the half-dozen other women who had signed up for the liveaboard cruising class. She was shy about giving her last name as she described her boating experience: the person who handles the lines while her husband shouts commands.

Her worst memory, she admitted, was the Easter Sunday when he tried to impress everyone at their yacht club with his new express cruiser. He had forgotten to bring lines at all, so when they arrived at the marina, he told her to jump onto the dock and pull the boat in by the bow rail. A few minutes later she was spread-eagle hanging from the rail, with the entire yacht club watching the boat yank her by her tippy-toes off the dock. The last thing she remembers thinking before falling into the water is, "I'm going to kill him."

Almost 10 percent of women polled said they didn't understand how boats worked or were novices not actively learning, while just one man out of the 200 polled described himself that way.

It's an oft-repeated stereotype, that of the husband driving, navigating and basically doing all the "boating" while his wife watches the kids, cooks in the galley and tries to handle the lines on his command, without any sense of the difference between a figure eight and a half hitch.

But is it true? Anyone who has spent time in a marina knows first-hand that this dynamic does exist, but poll results show it may be far less prevalent than dockside stories suggest.

Almost two-thirds of the women polled said they spend time driving the boat, and only about one-third said they regularly handle dock lines. The numbers indicate that the percentage of women relegated to the role of mate while their spouse serves as captain may be smaller than assumed.

There are also many variables that can affect this dynamic, from the size of the boat to the age of the crew. A couple in their sixties with a 56-foot sailboat and a couple in their thirties with a 24-foor center console may have very different relationships, with each other and with their boats.

But when it comes to the technical aspects of operating the boat, men do, indeed, appear to be doing more of the work. Less than 15 percent of women said they perform routine tasks such as monitoring the AC/DC panel, performing engine maintenance or speaking on a VHF radio. The number of men performing such duties varied between 30 percent and 40 percent.

Furthermore, women and men don't appear to want to be in the same places or to be doing the same things while aboard. Some 64 percent of men said the helm was their favorite place on the boat, compared to only 24 percent of women. On the flip side, more than half of women said their favorite place on the boat was the foredeck or sundeck, an opinion shared by only 14 percent of the men. The numbers seem to indicate that men enjoy the work of boating more, while women better enjoy the leisure the sport offers.

Though the duties of cooking onboard and cleaning the boat were evenly split among respondents, childcare was not. Fully 80 percent of women said the children are their responsibility on the boat.

Two out of three men said their favorite spot on the boat was behind the helm. While two thirds of women said they drive the boat, only one in four women cited the helm as a favorite place.

"That, I think, is an age group thing," says Capt. Patti Moore, of Sea Sense. "If they are younger with kids, that's usually their primary job. But when the kids are older or gone, and you're buying a boat together, she's saying, 'That's my boat.'"

WHOSE BOAT IS IT?

Actually, the poll results say it's his. Much ado has been made in recent years about manufacturers adding "family-friendly features" to appeal to women, but the poll is unequivocal: A whopping 93 percent of men said they chose their family's boat, while only 40 percent of women said the boat was their choice.

"The man, more often than not, starts the process," says J.D. Schmid, a longtime boat dealership owner who is now director of product training for Sea Ray, where he teaches Women on the Water classes. "The first time we ever see someone from a family, it's the husband that walks in. I think the wife is cooperative in the decision-making process, but she has the ability to stop the process. She's killing the deal more often than she's sealing the deal."

And once the boat has been chosen, it remains the man's, according to the poll. More than three-quarters of men said their boat was primarily theirs, while only 21 percent of women laid claim to the family vessel.

Interestingly, the poll indicates that most women are actually happy with the boat itself. Among men and women alike, only about 1 in 5 said they would prefer a different boat.

That's true of individual boat features, too. A majority of men and women said features such as helm controls fit their body shape well or fairly well, and fewer than 1 in 10 said they had difficulty using convertible features such as removable tables and sunpads.

MEN ARE MORE CONFIDENT

The numbers show that men are more confident on the water. Almost 20 percent described themselves as expert-level or captain, compared to only 5 percent of women. Nearly half the men polled described themselves as veteran boaters, too, compared to just one-quarter of the women.

Almost 10 percent of women said they didn't understand how boats worked or that the were novices not actively learning, an opinion shared by just one man out of the 200 who were polled.

Of course, boating educators say that not everyone who describes themselves as a good boater actually knows what to do on the water.

Fully 80 percent of women said the children are their responsibility on the boat.

"You don't see many women thinking they know everything there is to know about running a boat," says Roger Field, vice president of the Chapman School of Seamanship. "There are an awful lot of people operating boats out there who don't know very much about boating. They think they do, and that generally speaking is a man."

This confidence may make men correspondingly more adventurous at sea. When asked if they ever boat alone, 40 percent of women said they never do so, compared to just 8 percent of men.

"Women are less likely to jump into buying a boat and crossing the Atlantic before they know what the Atlantic might throw at them," Moore says. "As women, I think we're more afraid of what we don't know. I don't know if that's an ingrained thing, but we tend to want things to be safe. You can't enjoy something if you're afraid of it."

That's not to say women never boat by themselves – particularly after undertaking some form of boater education. Field recalls a student who arrived at the Chapman school in her 60s, after her husband died and left her with what Field called "a good-sized Hatteras.

"All of her friends had told her to get rid of the boat because she didn't know how to run it, and she said, 'I'm not going to do that. I'm going to learn how to run this boat, and I'm no longer going to be the one serving drinks.' By the time she had finished with us, she was able to get her 100-ton captain's license. Since then, she became the commodore of her local U.S. Power Squadron."

HANDLING DIFFICULTY

Interestingly, the poll showed that men and women experience emotional difficulty on the water at about the same level. Roughly a third of all respondents, men and women, said they have often or sometimes felt embarrassed while trying to carry out common boating activities such as anchoring or driving. About the same percentage said they have been yelled at often or sometimes by a spouse or friend while trying to perform these tasks.

The differences may lie in how men and women react to these situations. The common belief among boating educators is that when things go wrong on the boat, women get embarrassed while men get frustrated.

"We've had some female students who became very despondent because they weren't doing well, and we've had men feel the same, but women take it more to heart," Field says. "I don't know why, except that maybe we men sometimes do think we know it all."

About a third of all respondents said they have been yelled at by a spouse or friend while trying to perform a boating skill, and about a third of men and women alike said they have felt embarrassed while trying to anchor or drive the boat.

Moore has seen the same thing in her classes. "There's a very big difference in how males and females react to different things," she says. "There are scientific data that actually show our brains work differently. Guys tend to jump into something and react to what happens, and women prefer to know what's going to happen before it happens. So where boats are concerned, he's saying, 'Let's do it!' and she's saying, 'Oh my god. Look at all I've got to learn.'"

Indeed, almost half the men polled said they had no need to take a boating course. Moore says she hopes that attitude is changing, based on the kinds of requests Sea Sense is getting for enrollment.

"We're teaching more and more men," she says. "Once they've hired us, there's not a different attitude toward learning. Men take golf lessons. They don't think that's demeaning. If they decided to fly a plane, they wouldn't tell you they know everything about it. I wonder why, with boating, the feeling is still different."

A WAY OF LIFE

So why do men and women go boating? Because they like it, plain and simple.

Nearly 90 percent of men and 80 percent of women in the Mad Mariner poll said they choose to boat not for their spouse, their family or any reason other than that they enjoy the sport. More than half the respondents said they have children, too, which means they are likely passing on their love of boating to a whole new generation.

"We tend to stay away from terms like hobby and pastime," Schmid says, "because for most people, boating is a way of life once they get it in their blood."

And why not? The majority of men and women alike said they are rarely embarrassed or chastised while operating their boat. In fact, three-quarters said they have received praise for the way they performed tasks on the water.

"The truth is that most women handle boats better than men," Field says. "They're more gentle at the controls, they don't gun the engines to make a maneuver in tight quarters, and they learn to pivot the boat on a dime. The operation of a boat is more smooth under their care. More women should get into it, I think."