First sail with my grandson

[Peter HK]

Recently, I managed to take my grandson, Oliver, out on his first sail; he’s 10 months old. This was on Lake Cootharaba, a lake about 3 by 5 miles and a uniform depth of about 4-5 ft except close to shore which makes it a great sailing spot if your centerboard is just short enough. The conditions were very light, starting at about 3 knots and fading to nothing by the time we stopped for a picnic lunch.

It was a good thing it was a very light day on a calm lake because after a while Oliver started strongly objecting to his lifejacket, even though he’d had some practice at home…have to keep working on that.

He enjoyed playing with the lines on the mizzen mast and casting a careful eye over everything. He even had a go on the helm, with a bit of a zigzag course.

When it became too much for him he slept under the foredeck quite happily.

They’d had an open air art show around the lake that week, including one exhibit in the lake.

The next day there was still no breeze, so we decided to rig her as a motor launch, a la the African Queen, to visit another lake which is too shallow for sailing and accessed via a creek with low bridges. I used the mizzen mast as a ridge pole with a couple of struts to set it at a reasonable height, and used a cheap tarp.

The lake’s quite pretty, and we found a nice spot to stop, but the supposedly excellent birdlife didn’t live up to expectations that day. They must have migrated north for the winter. It was very comfortable under the awning however, as winter here is very sunny with temperatures about 23 degrees C.

We did get in a bit of decent sailing a few days later but without Oliver on board. In the best of it we (two up) were both hiking hard with the full rig up and tacking up a narrow channel in the river, against a knot of current and making ground easily with short tacks while never touching a sheet. Cat ketches are great like that.

Now Oliver… about that life jacket.

Cheers

Peter HK

[wkisting]

Glad to hear the first sail with Oliver went reasonably well. Isabella objected strongly to her lifejacket also when we tried it on her before taking her out for the first sail. So, we bought a high-end neoprene lifejacket (softer than the nylon kind), ripped out the seams along the bottom of the lifejacket, pulled out the flotation foam, cut away some of the material around the neck area to give her cheeks and neck some more space, then stuck the foam back inside and sewed it up again. That seemed to help improve its fit and her happiness considerably. Of course, she still objects when the lifejacket makes her too hot, but she's much happier most of the time now.

Of course, if you decide to modify a lifejacket like we did, be sure to do a float test to make sure it will still float the child face-up, etc.