Kids Aboard Boating, Fishing & Watersports Magazine
For Children & Families
Posted Tuesday, December 19, 2006
As parents and sailors, one of our goals is to pass down to our children a love for the outdoors, specifically waterway & oceans, boats and sailing. This seemed easy to do when we lived aboard with our children, living and breathing boats all day long. However, now that we are no longer living aboard full time we have been faced with a challenge: How do we keep our childrens’ interest in sailing when we are off the boat for long stretches of time?
This is a challenge that faces sailors of all kinds: those who have kids, grandkids or young family members, as well as those who occasionally entertain their friends’ kids on their boat. Whether you looking forward to a day sail or a whole season full of sailing adventures, it’s crucial to “keep the sailing fires burning” during the off time. There are so many other things to distract children and teens these days that in order to make sure sailing is high on a kid’s list of interests we have to get little creative.
There are lots of activities you can do that are sailing related to keep a kid’s enthusiasm up until they actually get on a sailboat. All of these ideas are adaptable to make them fun and interesting for every age level.
There are lots of activities you can do that are sailing related to keep a kid’s enthusiasm up until they actually get on a sailboat. All of these ideas are adaptable to make them fun and interesting for every age level
- Get some boat safety coloring and activity books from BoatingSidekicks.com or the US Coast Guard. These are usually available at the boating safety booths at boat shows, and they cover the basic parts of a boat, safety equipment and what to do when someone falls overboard.
- Stage practice drills for man overboard and recovery missions. This is a great rainy day activity and you can even use real safety equipment from the boat like foul weather gear, liferings, rope, whistles and the like.
- Stock up on boating and sailing related books and spend time together reading them. See the reading list in the sidebar for some good suggestions.
- Visit maritime museums and lighthouses in your area. This not only keeps kids interested in the nautical lifestyle, they also benefit from the history that they learn.
- Get a glass bottomed bucket from a marine supply store and head to the water to see marine life. You can also get a cast net and practice catching creatures from a dock or next to the water.
- Follow high profile sailing races, easily done online, such as the America’s Cup (americascup.com/en/), Volvo Ocean Race (volvooceanrace.org), Global Challenge (businesschallenge.com/global), Earthrace (earthrace.net), Route du Rhum (routedurhum.com), and many others.
- Go for free sailing demos with Discover Sailing & Discover Boating at boat shows.
- Build a simple boat out of wood and marine caulk, there are lots of simple “instant boat” plans online.
- Get some free charts or hurricane tracking maps and track the hurricanes during the season.
- Build junior navigators by introducing them to the GPS and Geocaching. Geocaching is a fun activity where you use a GPS to find items that other people have hidden in your town or city. It’s fun and it familiarizes kids with coordinates and cardinal points. Kids love high tech gadgets, and you can even get an inexpensive GPS that they can use to practice. Check out geocaching.com to get started.
- Subscribe to at least one good sailing magazine and have sailing, boating & fishing reading materials around the house & boat.
- Even if its wintertime, head down to the marina just to look at the boats and walk the docks, take a sunset sail or a ride on a water taxi. Just being near the water is inspiration enough!
Time after time we hear adults tell stories about the quality time they spent on the water as children. These are experiences they never forget, and which end up enriching their lives in more ways than they ever imagined. Sailing is a lasting legacy of love that we can pass on to the next generation.
Hopefully these ideas have started your creative juices flowing for you to come up with your own fun ways to keep sailing alive for kids when they are not on board. When the time comes for them to actually go sailing, they will be excited and ready to put to use the new skills or knowledge they have acquired!
Curtis & Lupe publish www.KidsAboard.com, an online boating and watersports magazine for kids. They also conduct Kids Aboard Academic Boat Building workshops with schools and groups, as well as at a few select boat shows.
Sailing Books for Kids - Ordered from youngest to oldest
Boats, by Byron Barton
The Boat Alphabet, by Jerry Palotta
How I Became a Pirate, by Melinda Long
Sail Away, by Donald Crews
Time of Wonder, Robert McCloskey
Sailing with the Wind, Thomas Locker
Night of the Moonjellies, Mark Shasha
Fireboat, Maira Kalman
Boats & Ships, Scholastic Voyages of Discovery
Carry on Mr. Bowditch, by Jean Lee Latham
The Young Man and the Sea, by Rodman Philbrick
Kids for Sail, by Sam & Pamela Bendall
We Didn’t Mean to go to Sea, by Arthur Ransome
Swallows & Amazons, by Arthur Ransome
The Wanderer, by Sharon Creech
The Stowaway, by Karen Hesse
