After one day of sailing a friend's old leaky snark my wife and I decided this was for us. We bought a used Sunfish for $475 (a lot of money 30+ years ago). I made a car top rack from wood and suction cups to carry it, and off we went to a local lake ... with our two kids ages 5 and 10. When we fumbled the boat into the water and loaded all four of us for our first family sail, anyone with a lick of boating sense surely was thinking ... "That damn fool is getting ready to sink his whole family."
We just barely survived that first outing while finding out that a Sunfish with four people on it can plane in a storm squall. Obviously we didn't learn enough to quit after that, and all these years and six boats later (Flying Junior, Catalina 22, Ericson 27, Ericson 30+, and now a Catalina 36) we spend every good weekend, and some not so good weekends, on the water with our sailor friends.
I'm sure this is bound to start an argument, but I'm a believer that those who learn on small, wet boats become more keenly in tune with winds and sail trim. When your early mistakes land you in the water, and when you feel the boat react to small changes in trim, you keep those skills as you move on to larger more forgiving boats. Perhaps this should be a subject of another thread
We just barely survived that first outing while finding out that a Sunfish with four people on it can plane in a storm squall. Obviously we didn't learn enough to quit after that, and all these years and six boats later (Flying Junior, Catalina 22, Ericson 27, Ericson 30+, and now a Catalina 36) we spend every good weekend, and some not so good weekends, on the water with our sailor friends.
I'm sure this is bound to start an argument, but I'm a believer that those who learn on small, wet boats become more keenly in tune with winds and sail trim. When your early mistakes land you in the water, and when you feel the boat react to small changes in trim, you keep those skills as you move on to larger more forgiving boats. Perhaps this should be a subject of another thread