Sailing with a young family

[Guest]

Any tips for sailing with small children. Ours are 2 years and 3 months respectively. We are very keen to buy our first boat after much crewing for others and Day Skipper night school over the winter. We realise that it won`t be easy but with care surely its possible. Any advice gratefully accepted

 

[Guest]

We have three kids, 10 yrs, 8 yrs and 4 yrs. We have spent weeks on our 23 foot virgo voyager so we know all about trying to keep everyone happy.
The kids have a specific area, forepeak, which is theirs. They have plenty of toys, books, colouring etc. especially the drawing and colouring. We brought a 12v telly for them but th tell the truth they rarely watch it even though at home they cant get enough. When we are sailing they always wear lifejackets with harness and are always clipped on when outside. We made our own safety lines up as these are ridiculously expensive and too heavy for kids. Get some good webbing made up with aloop in each end. We used carabinas from a mountain shop. Your kids are younger but I know ors like jobs to do, fenders etc. We keep our boat in a marina as we didnt fancy the dinghy ride with kids.
Basically we dont sail for more than about 5 hours max and when we get to a harbour or marina they have plenty of freedom ashore.
Dont let people put you off sailing with tiny babies. We sailed our dayboat for hours with the little one asleep under the thwart. Have fun!

 

[johndf]

Fix a car seat somewhere in the cockpit -we arranged one in the companionway, lashed to a U bolt on either side. Another way is to screw it tothe washboard. When you need all hands on deck, but not the little ones, such as when coming alongside or reefing, you can just strap little Johnny in the seat and have no worry that he will crawl around in the way. When its a bit less hectic, you can just put the children in safety harnesses, with lines too short for them to go overboard.

One other piece of advice that we stuck to was to do our best to avoid rough seas.

 

[CaptainChaos]

Just a word of encouragement - we are a british couple cruising the Indian Ocean, although we do not have children ourselves, we have met many long-term cruisers who have the most wonderful children born and educated on their boats, there is quite a network out there once you start - the families help each other and the children we have met do their education mostly by internet - a great way to bring your children up - goodluck.

 

[robp]

Kirky said a lot of it. Our 18 year and 15 year olds don't come so much now but 7 year old abslolutely loves it. He started at 3 months old. However he's like a coiled spring when we arrive anywhere, so I know most of the ports with fields or kid friendly areas. We now go ashore and play ball games asap. Also where possible, I used to tie a long line to the dinghy and let them go off on it. They are all very capable oarsmen now.

Kirky, how are you progressing with your channel crossing plans?

 

[billmacfarlane]

My 2 daughters have been sailing since they were in the womb. They're now 20 and 18 and don't go with us but fondly remember sailing holidays. The main thing we did to keep us ALL happy were:
1. We kept day sails as short as possible to alleviate boredom for them. Toddlers especially have an impossibly low boredom threshold. We didn't anchor often as a 30' boat is VERY small for 2 small children. The only exception being if we were off a beach i.e Studland Bay or East Head in Chi harbour.
2. We always tried to go to what I term child friendly harbours where they could meet other children. Bembridge is a good one.
3. When going on holiday to France we always crossed the Channel at night. They loved going to sleep and waking up next morning in France.
4. A good auto-pilot helps. The old maxim, one hand for the ship, one for yourself , doesn't work with small children. You also need one for them. Since the Maker's design doesn't stretch to 3 hands, we found that an autopilot helped a lot.

 

[Guest]

We've sailed with our two boys from womb to A-levels, but agree interest tapers off in the teens, or in our case, moves to dinghy sailing. Comments are:
- Although we are competent sailors, when the kids were say under 12 yrs, we did a lot of flotilla charter sailing - mainly for the company for the kids and to supply the third hand mentioned in another posting in the event of serious trouble, eg an injury.
- As the kids got older, we found bringing a friend along contributed to family harmony - everybody (including the skipper) behaves better with a guest on board. It also provides hours of interest.
- Now the boys are old enough to leave alone (or with a friend's family), last year we did Week 1 out with Son 1 and a friend, and Week 2 back with Son 2 and a friend, exchanging in Falmouth, including swapping return train tickets. Worked a treat for everyone.
- Lastly, the obvious advice - never attempt anything more challenging than what the weakest member of the crew can manage. Otherwise you risk putting them off for life. If conditions get unexpectedly rough, ours simply sleep, usually behind a lee cloth. Keeping the head horizontal is the best non-medicated cure for seasickness.

 

[ChrisJ]

"Never sail for more hours than the age of the youngest in years" - although this can be modified to "never sail with the little ones awake, for more hours than the age of the youngest".
Never sail upwind.
Plan your harbours to be child friendly - stepping onto a pontoon carrying a little one asleep is OK - but climbing a 5 metre high harbour wall is not.

Passing sleeping kids up from a dinghy into the cockpit, and then down to the cabin is a work of art!

We always used to rig up a lee-board for one of the berths. In there we put books, colouring things, duplo (lego is too small! it gets lost too easily), and some ropes. As parents pull on ropes, so kids from 6 months upwards will like a rope to pull on.

You need a quick place to put them for coming alongside.

Once they are old enough to have fallen in once (which they will do - in general from a pontoon rather than from the boat), they are old enough to "help". The windward winch is always a good one to start with!

Must have life jackets on all the time. We found parents also wore life jackets much more - if a little one goes into the water, one or other of the parents seems to follow quickly to keep them calm.
Harnesses are a must. To start with they are simple straps, but as they get to the age of 3 or 4 they need to be able to walk about the decks safely.

Get sailing quickly - the "teen years" will come too soon, and the kids will prefer sailing dinghies at that time than sailing with the old folks.

Have fun.

Chris

 

[Guest]

I think the main thing is to involve the children and make them feel that they're doing something useful. We have two children aged 3 and 5. They learn much faster than adults do which makes up quite a lot for their lack of strength so they can be useful members of crew (suitable clipped on).

We started by naming them each "ship's boy" and had them scrubbing the decks and the interior. They adored this! And the boat became noticeably cleaner...

Recently as an experiment I sailed for a couple of days with just my 5 yr. old (daughter) as the crew. We (both) had a really great time. One of the best sails I can remember. I treated her as a "proper" crew.

For example she:

(i) always hoisted the mainsail, and did it quickly (on a 32 footer - children are really strong for their size). All I had to do was finally tension it on the winch.

(ii) although she can't see over the coachroof when steering, she could steer a dead straight compass course (we were close hauled, 16 - 18 knots of wind). She learned to do this immediately on her first attempt, faster than any adult I've seen (we sailed past Kingfisher while she was doing this -could that be symobolic?). Previously I had only let her steer under motor and hadn't thought of giving her a compass course, which she can easily see.

(iii) rowed me in our inflatable around an estuary - this was the first time she had ever rowed and it took about ten minutes for her to learn to row a straightish course.

When she had little to do on the way back and the wind was moderate I hoisted her 2 or 3 feet above deck in the bosun's chair (+ lifejacket) and let her swing in the rigging and fed her the occasional banana. She didn't want to come down for hours.

In the evenings I read her "Swallows and Amazons"...

I'm really looking forward to our next outing, and so is she. Can't be bad!