In Days Gone By: Family Sailing

This 1942 cover of The New Yorker passed through Facebook and merits a repost here. It shows the outdated concept, that the whole family must indeed go sailing together, a concept common in mid 20th century sailing culture. The cover is a parody of family sailing, something that most likely escaped the general readership of The New Yorker at the time. For Dear Old Dad has decided this racing boat (most likely a Star) is the proper family boat, even though it is laid over on her ear and wife, and son, and daughter are stacked in vain as the lee rail is well awash. Dad is having a grand time. The others??

Eleven years ago, I wrote about this very same scenario from personal experience.

Over the years I have also sprinkled a series of Earwigoagin posts about sailing with Parents and Kids.

Can anyone tell me who the artist was on this cover?

Update August 1: From a comment from an anonymous reader; the artist was famed cartoonist Perry Barlow.

The hard life on the rental beach

I've never worked at renting out sailboats, in fact I've never rented a sailboat. But I imagine most days on the rental beach, the conversation goes like this;

Sun-bleached blonde rental dude, "How much sailing have you done?"
Pasty white Northern dude, "Oh I sail all the time back at home!"

And then the rental dude watches the pasty white Northern dude flail away just off the beach; in irons, out of irons, heeled over, in irons, maybe a capsize, and the rental dude gets in the motor skiff and hauls him in.

The caption for the following video says it all;

"This is one of our clients who went sailing with a GoPro on his head. He capsized and lost the GoPro, now, three months later we found it. This is his story..."

Can you sail? from Simon kearns on Vimeo.

I sense some real trepidation when watching the body language of the girlfriend/wife (anytime a person plunks down in a corner of the boat and rigidly holds that position = "I don't know about this" which is an astute observation given the sailing skills of her skipper). I fear this incident has put her off sailing forever.

Are We Having Fun Yet? Family Sail

I ran across a YouTube video, that in a sideways fashion, brought back memories of my dad and his attempts to get our entire family sailing.

Our Dad first bought an 8' El Toro, which both he and I eagerly embraced in learning to sail and, then we divvied boat time up among ourselves as we puttered about the creek. My brother was lukewarm to sailing a pram, my sisters and mother were definitely not too enthusiastic. So to light the fire and get the whole family participating, he bought a 16' Rebel sailboat, a commodious fiberglass daysailer still raced in the MidWest. Our first family sail in the Rebel resulted in us going hard aground in the Chesapeake black mud. My Dad could string some profanity together at the drop of a hat and this was one of those times. Both me and my brother leapt overboard and pushed us off but the remaining day's sail remained under a black cloud. The second attempt at a family sail had us sail smack dab into the middle of a vicious thunder squall. Thankfully we were still in the creek and managed to get the sails down, but it poured buckets, and thunder and lightning filled the air. My Mom and sisters squeezed themselves under the small foredeck and waited it out; to me it was all a grand adventure. After that, I don't think my Mom ever set foot again in a sailboat, and my sisters went out occasionally but never took to it as I did. My Dad and I continued on, eventually competing in the racier Windmill and Y Flyer. My brother returned to sailing as an adult, enjoyed it immensely and became a very competent dinghy racer.

The following video features an English family sailing a Lymington scow, which isn't a scow at all, at least in the American definition, but a small dinghy. By small, the Lymington scow is 11'4" long and a tad under 5' beam, a hair bigger on those dimensions than my Classic Moth. In this video, the Dad is having a great time (Ah! The male ego.... "This is good, this is what it's about". Something I could well be accused of saying!), the older son enjoying himslf as well, the younger son is affixed on the leeward gunwhale in his own reverie and the Mom, well the Mom has her game face on (and is bailing with a passion) but I have a feeling she is thinking this is really bloody stupid. I wonder how much Mom has been out on succeeding family sails on this Lymington Scow, or has she always found some excuse to opt out?

Lymington scow video no longer available.

Here is a video on the Rebel class.

Edge of Having Fun Zone

The title quote is from Douglas DeCouto, participant at the ongoing 505 Worlds on Berkeley Circle, a big wind destruction derby, crash fest, heavy air smackdown that is San Francisco Bay in August. The SAP 505 World Championship has the most comprehensive web reportage of any dinghy sailing event I've come across; with professional video by Tucker Thompson posted every day, photos and photos and more photos, and geeks on Sailing Anarchy that seem to have nothing better to do than twitter all the mark rounding positions.

I sympathize because I sailed the 1993 International Canoe Worlds on San Francisco, held also in August. We lucked out and didn't see any of our races blow over mid 20's and most days the first beat would be in the teens and then build quickly into the 20's after that. The problem with Berkeley Circle is boats like the 505 and International Canoe are too fast for the track; i.e you can't really steer around the short chop upwind because you are onto the waves too quickly so you alternately launch or plow and sometimes in the big gusts, stagger with most of the rig luffing. Downwind it's the same story but you are going so fast that launching or plowing at the wrong time is disaster. The good guys were able to keep the pedal down but I found it faster to back off and pick my way downwind. And the water is cold!

Douglas's interview fits San Francisco dinghy sailing to a tee; blasting exhilaration ending in some disaster, you're swimming and not quite sure how it happened. For Douglas Decouto and all the other 505 mid fleeters the regatta becomes somewhat of a grind, trying to put the debacle and the carnage of the last race behind and soldier onward. I finished about half the races in the 93 IC Worlds (I did have two races I can file in the sailing memory bank compartment marked good). I wasn't physically up to the rigors, which wasn't a big surprise. The IC Worlds was just the middle part of the grand adventure of driving cross country with my family. And the sailing and the trip all add up to great memories.

This is the only 93 IC Worlds sailing pic I've come across (I was in some video shot at the Worlds). This is one of my stellar starts (I'm 208 tacking over to port on the start line)