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Reprinted with permission from the book by Gwenda Cornell, CRUISING WITH CHILDREN, published by Sheridan House, Inc. It is available for $18.45 from the publisher: Sheridan House, Inc., 145 Palisade Street, Dobbs Ferry, New York, 10522, (914) 693-2410. MAKING THE MOST OF A HOLIDAY CRUISE Part One (of 2) As an increasing number of parents take their children to sea, there comes a point when something a little more exciting than a day trip beckons across the horizon. Even the most dedicated racing enthusiast may decide to change his style for a family holiday. While some families may be content to putter around the shores of their home area, others may prefer to take a cruise that is a little more adventurous, and there are few children who do not enjoy the excitement of going to foreign places. From the south and east coast of England, it is but a day's sail away to France, Holland or Belgium, while Mexico beckons to the Californian and down-east from New England leads to Canada. Another possibility for making a change from the home cruising area is to take a charter holiday, which also may be one way to decide if the family really likes cruising before investing in a suitable boat. The number and diversity of bareboat charter companies has risen dramatically in recent years, offering the attractions of cruising in beautiful faraway places without the expense and time involved in taking one's own boat there. Flotilla sailing among the Greek islands and bareboat chartering in the Caribbean are the two most popular cruising holidays, although charter operations are to be found almost anywhere the cruising is good, from Tahiti to Tonga, Yugoslavia to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. The more exotic is, of course, the more expensive and some parents may have doubts about whether it is worthwhile to spend such money on a family holiday. Nevertheless sailing in an area where the weather is sunnier and more predictable is a great attraction for those living in colder climes. Children may learn to enjoy sailing much more readily when the air is warm, the sea temperature perfect for swimming and when any spray that comes on board is warm spray. Whatever kind of cruising one does, whether one splashes out on a charter holiday or is content to enjoy the known pleasures of home waters, it is still worth making some effort to ensure that a child both enjoys himself and gains from the experience. JOBS FOR CHILDREN The first step in fostering a child's interest in sailing is to involve him as much as possible in the sailing of the boat. This not only keeps the child busy and occupied, but also gives a sense of achievement and pride in mastering the skills involved. One way of increasing a child's sense of participation is to designate a particular job as that child's sole responsibility. Even quite young children can be founds jobs to do, such as scrubbing the decks or tidying and coiling ropes. When they were small, my children enjoyed making a round cheese of the sheets on the aft deck, particularly winding the large main sheet very carefully. With all the ropes neatly coiled or decoratively wound, it meant our boat looked shipshape too. Putting on the sail covers and lacing them up when one arrives in port is another job that fairly young children can manage to do successfully, and two small ones can help each other if the cover is too bulky for one to manage alone. Learning to tie proper knots is something that most children enjoy, from putting a simple figure-eight in the end of a sheet to the more complicated bowline on a mooring line. Once one is satisfied with their knot tying skills, children can get on with tasks such as tying on fenders, while even those not trusted with knots can easily take the fenders off and pack them away tidily. Early in our cruising life, my son Ivan was designated the flag officer, with the responsibility of raising and lowering our ensign, courtesy and code flags, and folding them away neatly. He took this job very seriously, especially after we acquired a complete set of code flags, learning all letters, codes and how to dress the ship overall in the correct fashion. Identifying the flags of other countries became one of his hobbies, although the skipper of a small motor boat in Sicily, flying the Panamanian flag of convenience to avoid local taxes, did not appreciate being told by a six-year-old that he was flying it upside down. Ivan kept a flag folder as part of his school work, drawing and coloring each new flag he spotted, making a note of where and on what vessel he had seen it. He also found out about the origins of some of the flags which often reflect the history of the country concerned. An older child of seven or eight can handle the jib sheet if the wind is not too strong or alternatively can tail for an adult pulling in the sheet. Self-tailing winches are an aid as far as children are concerned because they can be operated with two hands. Sometimes my two children would pull together on the sheet so as to gain the necessary muscle power. Handling the jib sheet when the sail is hoisted, or adjusting it when the point of sailing is changed, is one job that a child can do without going on deck but from safely inside the cockpit and still feel a sense of participation in the sailing of the boat. A small sail such as the mizzen or a staysail can be given over entirely to a child as his responsibility. If the sail area is not too large or if it is a sail used only in lighter airs, the child can feel the satisfaction of hauling it up and setting it correctly, maybe even learning to decide when it should go up or come down, depending on the point of sailing or weather conditions. After a few years of sailing, I made a mizzen staysail to help push or heavily laden boat along a little faster in lighter breezes. Doina and Ivan took this sail over completely as their sail and were in charge of hoisting it, although as it was a three-handed operation they did employ the skipper on one of the sheets. To set a large sail correctly needs more strength than most children are likely to possess, but if they are enthusiastic to try, let them hoist as much as they can before an adult tightens those last few inches. From around ten or twelve years old, children can be positive help on a boat, no longer mere passengers but able to share in the work load. That means that if one parent is off watch and snoozing in the daytime, he or she need not be wakened if a sail needs changing, a bonus on a longer passage. By the time children are teenagers they should be capable of being full members of the crew, tackling nearly all the tasks of handling sails and boatwork that an adult would. Nearly all children love to take the helm and even the youngest can have a closely supervised turn, although he may need some extra lift in the way of cushions so that he can see where he is going. If there are points of interest, such as buoys to round or a shoreline to follow, the child's attention can often be held for longer periods before he gets tired or bored. There is a lot of satisfaction to be had by children at the wheel or tiller, for it does make them feel that they are in charge and that the boat is under their control. On many cruising boats the helm will be taken over by the automatic pilot or self-steering gear, but an equal feeling of being in charge can be obtained by the child standing a watch. Among the many families I have met cruising, almost all the children over the age of ten or eleven took full daytime watches. Sometimes two younger children stood watch together, while older teenagers also stood a night watch, often the first one of the evening. Children usually respond very well to being given responsibility and take the jobs very seriously. Start by giving a child a short watch of maybe half an hour and keep an unobtrusive eye on how attentive the child is being, checking that he is not too easily distracted into playing games or reading. It is helpful if the circumstances when the watchkeeper should alert the skipper are explained carefully, such as another vessel approaching, sighting land or a buoy, or the appearance of a threatening black cloud. Navigation is another subject in which it is easy to arouse the interest of children and which they usually enjoy because it enables them to follow the progress of a cruise more closely. Even those children who do not enjoy sailing all that much can be quite keen to find out how soon the destination will be reached. Most children are fascinated by charts and pore over them, picking out landmarks they have recognized, or puzzle over identifying a certain rock, island or other feature. Checking the number on a buoy with binoculars or timing a light with a stopwatch can be fun, not a chore. Quite early on, my children learned how to use the handbearing compass and with a little help could transfer their readings into lines on the chart to pinpoint our position. Ivan became so interested that he mastered using the sextant, too, and by the age of ten could take a reasonably accurate noon sight and work out our position. A cheaper plastic sextant that we had as a back up was given over to him, so he could take sights in parallel with his father and compare results. Some of the tasks the children undertook were not strictly necessary but just an interesting diversion. A favorite was to estimate the speed of the boat by one child dropping a piece of paper off the bow and the other child timing its arrival at the stern with the stopwatch. From the time taken for the paper to travel the length of the boat (y), it would travel 60/x X y feet in 1 minute. Multiplying this figure by 60 gives the distance traveled in 1 hour. For example, if the paper took 5 seconds to travel the length of a 35 foot boat, it would traveled 60/x X 35 X 60 feet in 1 hour. To find the speed in knots, the distance traveled is divided by the number of feet in a nautical mile (6,080). For the example quoted above, this works out to be 4.14 knots. The rapid development of electronic equipment in recent years has brought about a large change in what a boat will be equipped with, particularly as regards navigation. Many parents may well find that their children, brought up in a technological age, turn out to be more or less at home with on-board computers or GPS system than they are themselves. Older children may also come to use the radio like a telephone. During the ARC transatlantic rally in 1990, in which some 120 yachts crossed the Atlantic from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean, 17-year-old Samantha Hill sailing on Kirtonia with her family, including a younger brother and sister, ran a children's radio net, keeping in touch over the airwaves with other boats and children on board. If instruments such as depth sounders are down below at the navigation station, children can be useful messengers in relaying data such as the depth to the skipper on deck, who maybe is carefully looking out for dangers when coming in to anchor, or so he knows how much anchor chain to let out. Our standard method of coming into an unknown lagoon in areas of coral reef or coral heads was for Jimmy to climb the mast while I remained at the wheel, unfortunately out of hearing because of our wheelhouse. This was solved by stationing one of the children on the aft deck to relay the skipper's commands, 'ten degrees to port,' 'ten degrees to starboard,' or 'keep straight ahead.' It is not only the fun side of sailing that children can take part in: they should also help with the less popular tasks too. That inevitably means the washing of the dishes, which appears to be the least popular chore on a boat as well as on shore. Our two children took it in turns to wash up, one taking odd dates and the other evens, with Jimmy solving the problem of 31-day months by doing that day himself. Many children enjoy cooking, but this is one job that has to be handled very cdarefully when at sea because of the danger of scalding. Yet even that can be solved in some way or another, such as an enthusiastic young cook making a cake, which the adult supervises putting in and taking out of the oven. For younger children it might be wise to restrict their culinary activities to when one is in port or at anchor. Involving the children fully in all aspects of life on board is an excellent way of counteracting any boredom that might result from being confined in a restricted space at sea. The lack of space is most noticeable where active children are concerned and never so much of a problem with the kind of child who is happy curled up in a corner with a good book, whether he is at home or at sea. Children vary enormously in temperament and character, so that there can be no hard rules; an activity which is perfect for one child can be a pain for another. Certainly if one's child is happy reading on his bunk or listening to his favorite music tapes, there is no merit in forcing him into spending a lot of time on deck. While at sea the opportunities for an active child are more limited; in port or at anchor there are plenty of activities where a child can expend excess energy, from swimming to rowing the dinghy. The challenge of climbing the mast is regarded as a great sport by many sailing children and we have motored into several anchorages in calm weather with two children perched on our spreaders. Like little monkeys, children swing from ropes and sheets or play in the rigging and ratlines, especially on larger, older boats with heavier gear. Even on a smaller boat, the bosun's chair shackled onto the mainsail halyard can make a swing that will keep a child occupied for quite a while. Another marvelous pastime is that of spinnaker flying, but warm water is essential for this or else a hardy constitution. The anchoring arrangement of the boat has to be changed so that it is anchored or moored from the stern, with the stern into the wind. A bosun's chair or similar canvas seat is then suspended between the two tacks of the spinnaker or cruising chute. Climbing into the seat in the water and stretching apart the tacks with the hands, the person is lifted up to fly above the water as the wind fills the sail. How high one flies depends on the strength of the wind and one's weight, although the spinnaker halyard can be payed out to increase this height a little. In fact, a light breeze which will not lift a grown man out of the water is ideal for children, whereas the stronger winds needed to give a man a good ride can lift a child frighteningly high. A line attached to one tack and left slack can be used to bring down a child who has had enough-or more likely one who refuses to give anyone else a chance. (Be sure to check out Part Two of this article.) Bed and Breakfast Inns |
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