Posted by John Pazereskis on July 03, 2001 at 03:21:21 from 216.125.107.14:
I have been looking at various web sites and thinking about a proper boat for a Swallow or Amazon of today. It seems to me that some of what I see and hear is primarily addressed to adults who want to recapture a childhood they probably never had. The actual boats on which R modelled the children's boats were ordinary, economical dighies of the era. To think about building beautiful little "reproductions" for the use of today's children seems a bit unreal. I did have the good fortune to grow up sailing what might be thought of as the American equivalents of the boats of S&A, class B dinks and Snipes. But if I had children today who I wanted to learn a bit of self reliance, I can think of few boats that would be better to go adventuring in than the type of self rescing boat typified by the Laser. I mention Laser to suggest a type, but there are, indeed, a fairly large selection of similiar designs. As I said, they're self rescuing, but also very easy to get underway, pleasant to sail, reasonably priced when bought used, able to take great abuse, etc. Am I alone in thinking this? Do real Swallows and Amazons have to sail boats that physically resemble the originals, or should the idea of the thing... good, reasonalby economical fun be the thing.