How did you get your start in sailing?

[merlin2375]

How'd you get your start in sailing I'll add a poll with hopefully enough choices to get everyone!

[wchevron]

i started going on wednesday night races with my father & uncle when i was about 7 or 8. i enjoyed the sailing but really used to go for the box of cracker jacks my uncle always kept on the boat. my uncle sold the boat when i was ten and since then have only been out on other peoples boat a handful of times. last year i chartered a 54' hinckley for our 10th anniversary, got the sailing bug again and 2 months later bought our first boat.

[genieskip]

Nearly fifty years ago as a newly minted ensign in the Navy I was stationed in Great Lakes, IL as skipper of an LMD (Large Mahogany Desk). Special Services (Recreation) had an active sailing program with a dozen Interlake 18' and a old Alden Malabar 48' ketch. Over the two summers I was stationed there I sailed nearly every day. When I got back to NY I was an experienced crew (and a bachelor) so I was able to gets lots of berths on big races. Been doing it ever since, though now on my own boat and cruising rather than racing.

[speciald]

Annapolis Sailing School - learn to sail in one weekend course in 1976.

[merlin2375]

/\/\ sorry I didn't have a "Formal Instruction" without having the US sailing/ASA designation

[DrB]

• Took sailing at scout camp one summer
• Dad had a Laser sailboat which I sailed around Mendon Ponds Park in Pittsford, NY
• Taught sailing a few summers later at Scout Camp
• Dad had a 22' Catalina for a while
• Finally bought my first boat at 42 years old - Pearson 10M
• Have had it less than a full year and already have 3 foot itis.

DrB

[Sailormon6]

I bought a Super Porpoise board boat 35 years ago, while on vacation in Florida, and learned by doing. The next year, I took a beginning course and cruising course at Annapolis Sailing School in St. Petersburg, Fla. I raced, cruised and moved up in size a couple of times until I retired, and bought a C&C 35 Landfall. Life is good!

[TrueBlue]

Pictures are worth a thousand words.

Started with daysailers on the Boy Scout Camp's Yagoog Pond . . .



Eventually graduated to sailing with friends on Newport Harbor in my teens . . .



Aquidneck Island (Newport County) is difficult to live on without enjoying sailing . . .



Recent years to present - sailing along all of coastal Southern New England . . .

[merlin2375]

Great story/pics TB!

[chucklesR]

I'd have to check multiple boxes on the poll.

Went out once with a friend in late September.
Bought a boat 3 weeks later - sailed the boat all that winter.
Annapolis Sailing School 3 day class in May, The total time on the water did not equal the time I already had.
Bought bigger / newer boat in June, sailed it 4 years with a couple BVI bareboat catamaran charters thrown in.
Bought Catamaran in May last year.

Mostly - self taught, taught by friends