In our My First Boats feature we asked readers to submit their own stories and photos of their first watercraft. Here are a couple of responses (feel free to submit your own…)—Eds
From Dale Kidd: My parents were not "water" people, so I arrived late to the boating scene. We seldom went to the beach, lake or river. My uncle had a runabout and we went fishing on it once. My best friend's family had an old cabin cruiser on the Rappahanock River and I went for a weekend or two with them.
It wasn't until I married and moved to Maryland that I acquired a fascination with sailboats that resulted from trips to the Baltimore Inner Harbor where I would see those lovely vessels docked by the pavilions.
In 1998 we moved to North Carolina near a beautiful recreational lake. One day I was reading a trader newspaper and noticed a sailboat for sale for $3000. Somewhere I had gotten the notion that sailing was for the rich (which I wasn't). It had never occurred to me that you could buy a smaller, older boat for such a price. I bought that 1978 Kells Coaster for $2500, read Sailing for Dummies and I was on the water.
The learning curve was steep and I "wrote" many stories, but I fell in love with sailing. Flying Lady gave us many nice day sails on Lake Gaston, some overnighters with my younger daughter and even a memorable family vacation on the Chesapeake Bay. I've owned two fiberglass sailboats since Flying Lady and have even built four wooden boats, the last being a Clint Chase Calendar Islands Yawl 16 which I hope to sail for many years.
From George Corrigan: It came as a kit in a box one Christmas, an 8 ft. wooden pram. We built it over the winter in our basement. Dad, the most patient man that ever lived, put up with myself and my older brother, the most over-enthusiastic and hyper 10 and 12 year olds that ever lived, plus an assortment of siblings, uncles, cousins, neighbors and assorted know-it-alls who visited the basement and pontificated on how to properly build a boat. But Dad took it all in stride and the next spring we strapped it to the roof of the family 57' Chevy station wagon and launched it at the Jersey Shore. After the seams swelled up and it stopped leaking we were a bonified boating family. Mom never warmed up to it but everyone else did. Thus was born "Corrigan's Navy".
In this picture I am the one with the captain's hat. My brother Johnny and younger sisters, Courtenay and Theresa are on board. Dad took the picture standing in waist high water with his very expensive German made single lens reflex camera ( quite the thing in those days). My cousin Elizabeth had painted the name on the the transom. The first season we just rowed it , but for the next season Dad purchased a small outboard motor: in the hands of by then an 11 year old and a 13 year old pure magic and rather frightening.
Over the years I never gave up boating , still own sailboats, still sail and still employ the skills Dad taught us in the basement that winter in the 1950s.
We also got a note from Ken White who said: Interesting article on first boats. Mine was a Minmax too, fast but impractical built when I was 17 or 18. •SCA•
My first sailboat was purchased from the Spiegel's catalog for a whopping $75.00. It was a "board boat that had a very very shallow cockpit. It was made of Styrofoam with red plastic lateen sails. It weighed 45 lbs so I could throw it on top of my car when I wanted to go sailing. I sailed it in Silery Bay off the Magothy River in Anne Arundel County MD. It would go like the wind on a reach and about an inch an hour up wind! My biggest thrill was sailing to a point I determined and then back to shore again! I named it Patty Ann after my then girl friend. It was touted in the catalog as being unsinkable which it was. However, capsizing was high up on its sailing attributes. Alas, I had it for less than a year and went on Active Duty with the Navy and while I was gone both the boat and girlfriend were stolen from me. I don't know what was the bigger loss!
A comparable boat today is sold as the Sun Flower and cost around $2000.00
When I was a teen, I was a foster child. My foster family had several small outboard boats for fishing., but nothing for sailing. One day the Dad came home and said, we're going to build a sailboat. I got pretty excited about that. It was a 13 foot OK Dinghy racing sailboat. He already had the plans. Between Dad, their son and me, we built it in their basement. He made some very careful measurements and found we could just barely get it out the outside basement door. Their was no way we could have taken it up the stairs and out through the house. Anyway, Dad had all the tools we needed and we put it together in a couple of months. Dad did most of the cutting and fitting and we ended up being helpers, and did a lot of sanding. This was before stitch and glue but kind of a precursor. There were only three frames, in addition to the transom, and the sides and bottoms were fastened with resorcinol glue and boat nails. The mast was a hollow free standing mast that rotated. We glassed the exterior. We made the sail using sail cloth and an old treadle sewing machine, and we even made our own camcleats. We did buy some fittings like pintles and gudgeons. When she was done we had a small launching ceremony. We lived across the street from the Lake and so we didn't have to take it far. It was basically a one person boat but two did not slow it down much. I and my foster brother capsized it a few times while getting used to it. The whole boat was really light at about 180 lbs. The three of us could easily pick it up but we made a small dolly with wood and bike tires, which made it easy for one person to launch it. I spent many hours sailing that boat until I went off to join the Coast Guard in 1965. Their son inherited it but didn't use it much. Unfortunately, I was on the other side of the country and it would have cost a lot to have it shipped. Eventually the PNW climate caught up with it and rotted out the wood. That was very sad. But I sure had a lot of fun in that boat.