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How To Find Time for Family Sailing by Nicholas Hayes
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persistent theme in my writing for SpinSheet is that sailing is fantastically family friendly; unlike any other hobby or free time pursuit, it can be done by, and is fun for, adults and kids together. It’s special that way. But like anything worth doing, family sailing is never as simple as you hope. The wrench in modern family togetherness is a big one. The more people you have to get to one place, the harder it is to arrive. The more interests within the group, the harder it is to agree. The greater the time required, the harder it is to commit. The more possibilities that you must prepare for (weather, safety, experience), the harder it is to be ready. In tackling the question of how families might find time to board sailboats together, we need to come at it from three angles, not in any order. The age of the parents and kids. The family’s flexibility. The family plan.
44 June 2012 SpinSheet
The clearest path to sailing as a family is starting very early, even right away. It’s much easier for a dad or mom to convince a teenager, or for that matter, for a teen to convince a mom or dad to go sailing, if it’s what they’ve always done. This means that parents need to be thinking years in advance. They’ll plan how they will expose the child to water, swimming, boats, and training and when to transition toward deeper sailing experiences, such as joining a team, volunteering to help at a club or sailing center, or trying new advanced techniques. Best laid plans are often waylaid at about the time of the terrible twos, and by the reality that most parents with toddlers are more worried about cleaning up spilled mashed carrots than what they’ll be doing in the next decade. Imagine sitting in the neonatal ward daydreaming that your family will be the second coming of the Family Von Trapp and then waking up to the
realization, 12 years later, that nobody knows how to sing. There is the added complication of different interests among husbands and wives. What if the wife sailed as a kid, but the husband tends toward seasickness? As attractive as sailing might seem, this couple may not have the long-range planning discussion at all. The wife needs to find a way to start sailing with her child at the same time that she must convince her husband to face his own fears. Most of the time, nothing happens. I’ve met couples who have split because of this very situation. You may know some too. Then, consider how hard planning is for a single parent. Here’s the rub: young parents who do plan ahead, and then adjust their own expectations to the level of all of the members of the family, experience continuous sailing joy, and the least hardship finding time for it. But this is not always realistic, so it is rare. spinsheet.com