Posted by Ross Cossar on November 07, 2005 at 02:42:53 from 216.168.110.99 user rlcossar.
In Reply to: Re: Learning to sail - cold water posted by Dan on November 06, 2005 at 13:33:24:
I was raised by a mother who was thoroughly hooked on Ransome and the idea of sailing and a father who was happy in the canoe. The canoe won out and my childhood was spent paddling Ontario rivers. So my introduction to sailing came from our beloved books. At age 11 I was lucky enough to go to a school that had a sailing program and managed to keep at it through my teens.
When I was reading these stories to my eldest son 10 years ago, I felt the need to show him what boats are about. We have become a sailing family, with a 15 foot Albacore, an Edel 540 (small cabin keel boat that my wife and I can overnight on for a week at a time) and our kids are active in Brigatine sailing on the St Lawrence II out on Lake Ontario.
Cold weather sailing is not an issue as I leave my boat in to sail on my November birthday each year and have silently glided through snow falls and heard the tinkle of cat ice breaking around me.
It is a rare trip out that I don't remember something from Ransomes descriptions. On Thursday last week, in a particularly hard blow I got into some shallow water while dealing with another issue. Having run aground, I remembered how John took Swallow over the shallows to win the race into the Amazon River. "All hands leeward". Over we healed in a controled move. The keel lifted and we moved back to deeper waters. 3 Cheers for AR.