Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Kids and Parents and Sailing

A few years ago, Nick Hayes published a book "Saving Sailing; full of suggestions to grow the sport. Tillerman wrote a post about his thoughts on the book over here . One of the suggestions Nick made was that parents should actually go sailing with their kids rather than dropping them off at the club to be herded around the water by some college aged instructors. I think there is some merit in Nick's suggestion, though I am not one that can be held up as an example; I was much more into my singlehanded sailing as my kids were growing up and not so much into taking them out. Understandably my kids went off and found other activities they enjoyed more.

Here are three very different videos with parents/adults sailing with their kid(s).

The first one has a young tyke, somewhat overwhelmed, bombing along close to the water with his parents in a Hobe Tri-Foiler.

Salim goes sailing August 2011 from AaronDavis on Vimeo.


The second video has mom crewing for her two kids, one steering and one tending the jib on an older wooden catamaran (by the look of the crossbeams it may very well be an old Prout Shearwater, but I'm guessing this is Australia so it may be some home grown design). The video ends with what looks like Dad and maybe an older son, double trapezing on a modern skiff type vessel.


Sailing at the richmond river sailing club and rowing sunday 6/11/2011. from Callum on Vimeo.


And for Baydog, who has written about his family sailing on an E-scow , here is a kid steering an E-scow. By his grin from ear to ear, an experience he'll remember the rest of his life. (And plenty of grins and laughter from the old farts too!)





I've got to add this one from a fellow blogger. My2Fish, blogger about Sunfish sailing, music, and Michigan State football , points to his video of sunset sailing on his Sunfish with his oldest son. Beautiful colors in this video.

sunfish sailing with my son from my2fish on Vimeo.

5 comments:

Baydog said...

Sweet, Tweez! I can't believe it took me this long to read this post. Man o Man how great it was to grow up sailing on E-scows. The one in this clip is a bit more advanced than the wooden, canvas-decked, dacron-clad, wooden-sparred battle wagon we were sailing that day heading toward our picnic destination. I saw many a technical transformation in that class in the years during which I worked the backstays, bilgeboards, and jib. Sigh........................

my2fish said...

Tweezerman, I haven't read that book yet, but have read several blogger's reviews of it.

I love sailing with my boys - here's a video of me with 2 of them on Lake Michigan 2 summers ago.
http://vimeo.com/15889918

I took each boy out on Lake Erie this summer (but haven't edited the video down yet). My youngest (now 3.5 yrs old) LOVES being on my Sunfish, and talks with me a lot about the times he's been able to sail with me.

tillerman said...

I definitely recommend Nick Hayes' Book to anyone interested in the future of our sport. The link to my post about it in the post above was about my thoughts after going to see Nick speak about his book, and may have been unduly critical. My original review of the book is here.

It really is a great book and a very enjoyable read. You don't have to agree with everything he says to recognize that he's on to something in the way he talks about families spending time together in activities in which they can all participate. In that sense his message is much broader than sailing.

Tweezerman said...

Tillerman,

I've corrected the link to your review of Nick's book in the main post. Thanks for pointing it out.

Tillerman said...

I wasn't really saying you had got the wrong link. I wrote about the book several times and I just wanted your readers to see the full picture of what I thought about the book