Sailing Hair, Don't Care: Going Short and Ditching the Dye

In short

Before we moved aboard, I cut my hair short and stopped dyeing it. I went in a blonde and came out a brunette. A short cut means I can go to any salon, or even a barber, and stop worrying about colour. I also bought bendable glasses. After ten years on a sailboat, I can tell you those were flimsy: I now buy sturdier plastic frames, as metal ones tend to rust.

I got my hair cut short yesterday. Mission: sailing hair.

At first, I made an appointment a high-end hair salon. The shop I picked was the kind of place where you go to listen to gossip about other people’s dysfunctional families while getting hair extensions.

The kind of place where men with tight-fitting shirts mill about and mingle with women who are happy to be adored, if only for an hour, as they fondle and fiddle with their tresses.

Then, I decided that this sort of salon was not really in sync with my wish to go boat-shoe granola. Since I was going back to my virgin hair colour, I figured it would make more sense to go to a grass-roots salon. So, I picked a place that was somewhere between sha-la-la and über-budget.

Goodbye Hair Dye: Going Back to My Natural Colour

I went in as a blonde, and discovered that I am a brunette. Who knew! I kept my Barbie-like braid but I don’t feel very sentimental about it. It was my braid, but it had been dyed and re-touched so many times, it wasn’t really my hair anymore. My hair is brown, not blonde of various shades.

This haircut is significant because it means I can go anywhere to maintain it. I can even go to a barber. I don’t have to worry about the colour. Sailing hair. It is what it is. I kind of like it.

Low-Maintenance Sailing Hair

I am glad that I got my hair cut because I can now think about other things. It was consuming way too much of my time. I worried that this hair cut would change my identity — that I would look older, that suddenly I would look like a trucker. I wondered if I was pulling an attention-seeking move. Remember Britney Spears when she got a buzz cut and attacked paparazzi with her umbrella? (But, nope, it’s just a haircut.)

So, my hair is short and tousled looking. It’s sailing hair. It’s not particularly edgy. I don’t look goth like Lisbeth Salander from “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. (See Noomi Rapace in the 2009 original movie version.) It’s just a haircut.

New Glasses for Life on a Sailboat

And, because it’s just a haircut, and an inexpensive one at that, I followed my trip to the hair salon with a trip to the optician and justified spending a bundle on a new pair of glasses. I just love them. They are bendable – even the bridge of the nose is flexible, and can be bent right in half, which is an important consideration when you have kids. At least, that’s what the marketing folks at iGreen Eyewear would have me believe.

They will look like this:

I don’t know that a new haircut and pair of glasses prepares me for sailing. But, I’m certainly ready to stop thinking about these things.

I really should be working on my on-line RYA Day Skipper Theory course.

Note: I had fun writing this post. But, after living on a sailboat for 10 years, I can tell you that those flexible glasses were flimsy. I now buy beefier plastic glasses. Metal ones tend to rust.

Without this blog post, it would be hard for me to recall a time when thoughts about my hair were distracting.