need help: BABYSAILING

[kurz]

Hello
Life went good (got a 26m
Life even got better: My son is 5 weeks old, summer here is ariving.

Need advise for babysailing

How did you do?

Thanks - kurz

[Kenr74]

We took our few month old daughter out sailing last year. It was just a few hours, so we put an infant PFD on her, and my wife held her for the duration. Just be careful, and use common sense, and it is doable.

[taime1]

Baysailing isn't too hard. As mentioned, be safe and use infant PFD and plan for shorter trips or be ready to return early. We kept the stroller on board an used it for feedings and/or when we were coming to dock and needed both my wife and I to be hands-free.

In a sense, newborns are easier to handle because they don't go anywhere. My newborn is now 18months and moves around with no concept of danger. This is much more difficult. Lucky for me, I've gotten good enough at handling and docking that I can do it alone while my admiral takes care of the smaller child. My 3-year old is old enough to listen and stay put (usually, anyways). In fact, the other day we were out and he handled the boat better than I did!

We didn't sail all that much with the babies, just when conditions were good (soft winds). We spent more time motoring about as it is simpler and more predictable (fewer lines about, fewer variables to keep watch over, etc). One investment, if you haven't already, is a portable dvd player. This has saved us from a number of crying episodes and lets us stay out on the boat longer.. That Flash McQueen is some racer!

At first I thought toting the babies with us would garner dirty looks from the other boaters, but on the contrary, people were happy to see us and in a sense impressed that we were "brave" enough to bring babies along. Many even said they had wished they had done the same.

[JohnCFI]

Took my Grandaughter (and her Mum & Dad) sailing when she was just 8 weeks old, we took a car seat and a PFD for her, and made sure it was all done very safely. I am looking forward to when she is a bit older, and can participate. I didn't have a boat when my kids were young. Looking forward to making up for that.

[Tomfoolery]

I didn't have a boat when mine were that young, but I'd give the following generic advice.

Know your sailing area, especially shoals, rocks, tidal/wind issues (winds out of the north-east make the mouth of the river here so bad small boaters are hanging on for dear life, or could even get swamped), local traffic (power boat wakes, jet-skis buzzing your boat), weather patterns (pop-up thunderstorms), things like that.

The is probably one of the safest boats of its size out there, and far more stable than just about any power boat when the ballast is in, so I don't think there are any great risks here other than the usual, which you obviously planned for. Someone dedicated to the infant if things get hairy, proper infant PFD and other safety gear, fair weather sailing, and so on. Have a working radio or two, flares, sound device (Freon horn, in case you need to wake up a skipper who's sleeping behind the autohelm).

Again, having not actually done it myself, these are just personal musings, and they're worth what you paid for them.

[bartmac]

Not so much babysailing more toddler sailing....we took our 2 (boy 5 and girl 3.5)regularly on our previous boat...San Juan 27...netted off cockpit and golden rule no standing on the cockpit seats whilst under way....the San Juan has a much more closed in stern...not as open as Macs.Biggest problem we had unless more people than the 4 of us meant the kids didn't have individual carers when sailing and at times the heeling caught them unawares....they needed other things to do usually below...ie colouring in,games etc...sailing itself wasn't that interesting at that age.Many an experience are still now recalled by our now adult kids...the time we were having breakfast aboard and they were rubbing toast together over the side and the crumbs were attracting small fish and out of the blue jumped a fish followed by a dolphin catching its breakfast (mind you jumping good 3/4 of a metre out of the water) not 2 metres away...priceless....where is the camera??

[Highlander]

Just have constant awareness @ all times & enjoy here's my 10 month old grandaughter with me last yr
http://i844.photobucket.com/albums/ab1/ ... G_0324.jpg
took about 40mins for her to settle down with the pfd on as she did not want to wear it guess their a little uncomfortable for them @ that age they do not like the restrictiveness of them on

At dockside though the new Admiral took over being in charge LOL
http://i844.photobucket.com/albums/ab1/ ... G_0912.jpg

J
with three adults on board she was a breeze as she just loves the water

[bartmac]

Hit the nail on the head.......you need a 1 adult at least per child ratio....cant assume they will sit still or just go along for the ride...they need constant interesting stimuli!!

[dlandersson]

I picked up two nice little fishing kits (Princess and Spider-man) at Bass Pro shop. The kids like to put the plastic fish in the water and then reel them up.

Hit the nail on the head.......you need a 1 adult at least per child ratio....cant assume they will sit still or just go along for the ride...they need constant interesting stimuli!!

[bartmac]

Its actually one of the problems we had where the kids were throwing ropes overboard to go "fishing"...had to be careful the other end of the rope was fastened to the Mac....also whilst motoring...our San Juan's motor was way down over the stern and not easy to access unlike a Mac

[Catigale]

Everyone wears PFDs on Catigale above deck, but with parents of kids you have to go over the Child overboard scenario carefully and convince them to NOT go in after them!

Do this at dockside.

[bartmac]

To use a boat in Australia once over a certain HP or speed you need a license....Trailersailers used to fall outside these regs (varies from state to state) but now I need a license...anyway doing the theory is fine and then to speed things along you can actually do the practical on the same day using the "school's" boat...well a 2 x 175 hp outboard shark Cat...they make you do a figure of 8 and then up and down the river and then they throw a lifejacket overboard and you have retrieve it...pretending its a man overboard....the instructor realised I was one of only experienced boat user there and had a bit joke...he threw one lifejacket and as I turned around he then threw another...."Hey the mother has just jumped in after the child" was the call!! he was looking to confuse the issue and see my reaction....well skippering a 350 hp large vessel 25ft plus in the mouth of a river on an rapid outgoing tide...certainly made thing interesting BUT did reinforce the likelihood of when things go wrong its easy for things to escalate quickly....made us practise our man overboard drill more often and also decide our inflatable c/w outboard on some sort of quick release system would make for a good rescue device.
We have inflatable PFD on board but don't wear them unless we are in condition requiring such safeguards....we do keep them handy within easy reach from the cockpit.

[dlandersson]

Had a nice day sailing today. The local coast guard was training some reservists. They stopped every boat with more than one person and ran down the inspection list, which included inflatable PFD's do not count unless worn.

[bartmac]

PFD rules have change recently but on a boat Mac size only requires them on bar crossings......I think....but smaller boats requirements are different.Still see people taking chances regularly...and then rescue services which are largely volunteer have to go out and risk their lives!!!

[mastreb]

I have to say, we went from day-sailing our Columbia Sabre 3 weekends a month to four times in four years after my 1st child was born. I sold it due to lack of use at that point--we weren't using it enough in the first six months to keep it slipped, and then on a mooring ball it just was way too hard to use and was neglected.

Would have been a different story with the Mac, however, since I could have parked it in the back yard and let it wait there for us to get back to sailing.

Life was just two rough with 1..2..3.. babies right in a row for us to deal with sailing. We bought the Mac when the youngest turned six and was able to listen to instructions.

Hopefully you'll get some good enough advice here to make baby sailing simple, but I never figured it out.