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 It shows the outdated concept, that the whole family must indeed go sailing together, a concept common in mid 20th century sailing culture.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??
I learned to sail, more or less, by myself; by taking out a small singlehanded pram, exploring the nooks and crannies of a river, enjoying the wind and water, no instructor in a coaches boat yelling in a bullhorn that I was doing this wrong or could I keep the boat a little flatter. I have quite a few sailing friends (all accomplished racers) that learned outside a formal program. Unfortunately, what is lost in a junior sailing program is that confidence gained for a pre-teen in their first independent driving; by steering and handling the sails of a complicated piece of machinery, without an adult hanging over us, telling us what to do next. I'm sure that, going sailing by myself just racheted up the fun factor of sailing even more. I'm also thankful that my parents made sure I knew how to swim, was wearing a life jacket and were willing to let me push off in my 8 foot "yacht" as long as I was back by dinnertime.
I have a soft spot for juniors who are learning on their own; maybe their form isn't quite right and they are capsizing right and left but, geez!, are they having fun.
Exhibit A is the junior duo in this video making all the mistakes and grinning the whole time.
Lots of parents (especially, it seems, the Dads) take their kids out on their small singlehanded dinghies. The kids quickly discover that their comfort is secondary as they hang on, or get plopped into a corner, or sat on.
In this video it appears the father needs all of the Sunfish cockpit for himself. His daughter is to fend for herself on the deck, hanging onto the splash rail. Given her grins, this precariousness only seems to heighten her enjoyment.
In this video of a father/son sailing a Europe Dinghy, our little tyke, Benjamin, must do an intricate dance with Dad on every tack. Tacks are at the 1:30, 3:31, 4:30, 8:26, 11:35, and 16:17 mark in the video. Despite getting rolled over by Dad on every tack, our stoic Benjamin seems to warm up to the sail after a while.
Earwigoagin has been reporting on the exploits of the Tuthill sisters racing their boat-speed challenged Snark in this one-race, come one, come all, Portsmouth handicap event hosted, every November, in a different nook and cranny of Rhode Island coastline.
This year (gasp!) the Tuthill sisters jettisoned their Snark for the race, thinking they had upped their game with a lateen-rigged dink and. as it is frequently fore-ordained when you change a good thing, they unfortunately dropped the rig during the race (looks like the jury-rigged thwart lashing to hold up the mast failed). The younger sister, usually a bored, disinterested observer, was now called to the thankless and ultimately futile duty of becoming a human sidestay. These two documented the race and the disaster in a very amusing video.
Originator Chris Museler was undoubtedly pleased to have +40 boats attend this year (including the hastily splashed Crosby Skimmer Moth). I have lifted some photos from Rufus Van Gruisen's album.
The Tuthill sisters with Maharaja in "reef" mode.
My favorite "micro" dinghy, the Cape Cod Frosty.
A catboat and Penquin at the take-out ramp.
This fellow in the Zuma dinghy has a passing facial resemblance to the blogmeister (at least the mustache).
The My2Fish blog is about all things Sunfish sailing. On his blog you can find all sort of videos of Sunfish sailors and sailing (as well as some neat music videos). Just this time, let me trespass on My2Fish's subject matter with a great video of a father and daughter just kicking back and enjoying cruising their Sunfish over to some sand flats where they bother the seabirds and enjoy the simple fun of gunkholing.
And if you can't get enough (like me) of the schmaltzy but, nevertheless, finger-snapping soundtrack of the Sunfish video; General Public's "Tenderness", here is the original music video.
Nope, I wasn't the one to get out on the water last weekend but here are two videos of families that devoted part of Easter Weekend to kick around in some smallish daysailors.
The first video is, I think, from Holland. Definitely looks chilly but the sail area was kept very manageable on, what looks to be, a fiberglass Drascombe Lugger.
The next one is definitely from a warmer clime; a daytrip to Carnac Island off the West Australian coast. The boat is a similar type to the Drascombe Lugger, a plywood Welsford Navigator.
The previous header photo was of the two intrepid sisters racing the Sea Snark in the Archipelago Rally in New England. They were back again in the Sea Snark for the 2013 Rally. This is my kind of goofy regatta with all kinds of small sailing craft, dinks, canoes, catboats, some odd Frankenboats, some just useful (i.e - maybe not racing) smallboats. I covered the 2012 Rally in this post, including the stellar video the sisters put together. They put together another great video this year.
One of the founders of this sailing Woodstock, Chris Museler, has a report on the 2013 Rally over here. One of these days I'd like to put this on my fall calender.
I was watching a father and young daughter, in an Academy dinghy, puttering about off SSA last night, in very light wind, and was reminded I haven't posted any kids and parents sailing videos recently.
Here is short YouTube with a video bomb (in Internet parlance, a photo or a video bomb is when someone or something like a cat, dog or parakeet, unexpectedly intrudes on the shot).
(For Tillerman, who gave me the word and definition of redonkulous) That kid is such a wisenheimer! [wise + German -enheimer (in such surnames as Oppenheimer)].... a smart aleck.
I haven't posted about the Sea Snark for some time so when I came across this video of that great little 11' foam lateen-rigged dinghy racing in the 2012 Archipelago Raid, I knew I had blog-worthy material. The Archipelago Rally is a small boat fun race out of Rhode Island with an emphasis on kids and parents participating. If you are an adult sailing by yourself, it looks like you are encouraged to dig up or modify something unusual. As a result there is a melange of small sailing boats - right up my alley.
This is a video of, what I assume, are two sisters racing the Sea Snark. In the video you can see various sailing craft such as a Boston Whaler Squall, a C-class open canoe, a 16-30 decked sailing canoe and a traditional flat-bottomed saling skiff, all passing our intrepid Sea Snark sailors!
The older skipper sister asks;
"So how is everybody else doing?"
And the younger sister crew replies;
"Better than us!"
And here is another, longer, video of the 2012 Archipelago Rally with a detailed look at the variety of boats making the trip including some of the history of the Sea Snark dinghy.
In keeping with Earwigoagin's current theme of festivals and boats shows; from Doryman's neck of the woods, a video of the Portland, Oregon WoodenBoat Festival featuring the popular (at least in the U.S.) family boatbuilding activity, this time building flat bottomed skiffs.
Following along on my "Kids and Parents" series is a family sail in a 10'10" (3.3 meter) Mirror Dinghy. Video is kind of short but the kids seem to enjoy being captain of this vessel. (I like the Muppet sound track, I've got the latest Muppet movie on my movie list but not sure I can convince my wife to go see it.)
Update, July 2020: Well the original video went away. Here is the same videographer, the father skippering, with family crew in Penguin class races (U.S.A class, cat rigged, 3.5 meters, arc bottom).
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.
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.
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 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?
Bald but my eyebrows are growing at a prolific rate. Sailed Windmills and Y-Flyers in the 1960's. Founded Miami University (OH) sailing team. Sailed International 14's and Lasers in the 1970's. Sailed International Canoes in the 1980's to mid 1990's. Sailed Classic Moths since 2002. Enjoy boatbuilding though I'm very, very slow at it (the Internet doesn't help matters). Name in real life: Rod Mincher
After choosing this username (Tweezer is the name of my Classic Moth), further research on the Internet turned up that Tweezerman is a corporate name for a line of pedicure products. Let me emphasize that I do not work for, nor endorse these products.
