The problem of sailing with very small children and keeping them safe lasts only a very few years. Later, a family which is united in its delight in dinghy cruising has only the problem of space to consider. The trouble is, of course, that this interest is not automatic. I feel sure that part of my determination to go sailing and cruising in my early teens was whetted by the difficulties placed in the way — not only of finding the right boat to buy with the £10 available, but also to get round the wartime regulations which had banned coastal sailing for several years. My own children have had everything made easy, but their enthusiasm is less. Boats are no longer an exciting new adventure, but something which have been in the family as long as they can remember.

Part of the answer is to make sure they have an active part to play. Since they were respectively 12 & 10 years old, the two eldest have preferred taking the dinghy out alone to joining a cruise organised by someone else. From the age of ten, Jan has been a useful crew, and I have felt that it was safe to take him on coastal cruises with no other grown up — this I refused to do whilst the children still needed constant attention. But this year, when all three children were old enough to have crewed sensibly, my sailing in Scotland in the Tideway was limited by their preferences. They preferred daily pottering with canoe in attendance to a serious cruise with nights spent in different anchorages. So I am left with the same problem as the Moores — unless I simply leave the whole family behind, and go off alone. They can keep their shore-side camp — the really good places are well out of reach of car-bound visitors, among the offshore islets. But if we have a DCA holiday week, will our families readily consent to be left behind on shore ?

… and from John Deacon

Alan Moore started something in the 59th edition. If the dinghy he cruises demands physical strength then it is not, in this old man’s opinion, a cruising dinghy. My advice to Alan is acquire the capability to lower, shorten and balance the sail area, and when he can steer with one finger on the tiller, then relax and sail away.