Looking for recommendations. First, my story:
First sailing experience was 4 years ago on Barnegat Bay on the Joisey shaw. A female friend invited me and my two young boys for a day of sailing and I said OK. Our vessel was to be a Sunfish, the use of which was negotiated (extricated) from a previous relationship of hers. She knew little about sailing; I, nothing. In the area we were launching, the bay was a bit shallow so she decided we did not require a centerboard for this journey. I took her word for it.
Leaving my boys (9&7) on the stinky, rotting seaweed and green-headed fly infested shoreline, we took of for a "brief" cruise. There was a small island/large sandbar about 200 yards off shore and we thought we would just sail around it and come back. We achieved the far side of the island OK enough, but when we tried to come back to the shore, we found the wind direction just wouldn't permit it. Without the centerboard, every time we tried to steer in the direction we wanted to go, the boat would just drift sideways. We were accomplishing nothing except getting further and further away from my poor fly swatting kids. After almost an hour of this I decided we were far enough away and the only way to get back was to abandon ship and walk the boat ashore.
Now for those of you that have not had the pleasure of walking in Barnegat Bay I will share my experience. The water in our area of the bay was not deep, maybe 3', but the muck on the bottom added another 2'! I don't know about anyone else, but walking in 2 feet of soft, squishy, possibly broken glass/rusty metal laden muck is at the very top of my worse case scenario nightmare list. I was literally walking knee deep in this stuff. My squirmy yuck-o-meter was on tilt. I made it 100' or so and couldn't take any more. I grabbed a line from the bow of the boat, swung it over my shoulder and started breast-stroking to shore. Little Miss "We don't need the centerboard" thought that as long as I was towing the boat, she might as well hop on for the ride! NOT. Any sense of chivalry vanished as my first step sank into the muck.
Long story short (too late, I know) we made it back. The kids were fine. We put the centerboard in and spent the next two hours with me at the helm and the boys taking turns as 'crew'. I tacked back and forth and back and forth and started to get the hang of it. The feeling of tacking windward (terms I came to learn much later) was nothing short of exhilarating. The memories of the day's earlier nightmarish adventure faded with every successful maneuver. I was hooked.
A few years went by without repeating the experience when I noticed a small sailboat for sail in a neighbors yard. Having just installed a trailer hitch on my Honda Element for the purpose of a bicycle rack, it dawned on me that "Hey, I can now tow a boat too" $750 later I found myself the proud owner of a mid-60s Flying Junior racing dinghy.
I live in western New Jersey about a mile from one of the most popular inland sailing destinations in the state, Spruce Run Reservoir, and me and the boys spent last summer taking every chance we could try and get out on the lake. As luck would have it, it was one of the calmest summers I can remember. I fly rubber-powered model airplanes and am very sensitive to wind conditions. There have been countess times when a planned trip to the flying field had to be scrubbed due to a quick glance at the treetops swaying in the breeze. Of course as soon as I get a sailboat, there is not a breath of wind to be had
On more than a few occasions we found ourselves paddling back the dock. More...
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