This weekend I took a ferry across the Puget Sound (Kingston-Edmunds, for northwesterners) and back to see friends. I’m 38, and amazingly enough this is the first time I’ve ever been on a boat. I just don’t travel much outside my area, and when I do it’s usually to see family in the dry areas east of the Cascades. So what’s the first time you went on a boat, and how old were you?
My grandparents had a cabin on the Magothy River between Baltimore and Annapolis. They had a small motorboat. I was probably a year old the first time I went out in the boat.
My daughter as not quite 3 months old when we moved aboard our sailboat and lived there for just over a year. She got her sea legs quite young. 
Less than a year old, can’t remember.
The first time I remember being on a boat was a foot ferry between Bremerton and Port Orchard. I was about 3. The engine was seperated from the passengers by a rope. The whole thing carried about 25 people. It was barely above the water level.
I would sit in the open doorway and drag my hand in Puget Sound. As long as I didn’t cross the rope, no one paid the slightest attention.
Probably the only reason I didn’t go overboard, was The water was really cold, so I was careful.
We’ve been going to the lake since before I can remember.
I think I was five when I took a ferry from Scotland to Ireland. Parents may have been involved somehow.
My grandparents on my mom’s side always had boats. They raced them up and down the shore of Wisconsin, they spent as much times as they could out on the water. My Grandfather is (was) Member #1 at the Milwaukee Yacht Club*. Even as he got older and really couldn’t do as much boating he still kept his slip there since the wait list is years out and he still owned a boat, even if it wasn’t in the water. He’d rather pay the rent on an empty slip than get the boat bug and not have a place to put it.
Anyways, while I didn’t spend a lot of time on boats, I did go out on my Grandpa’s boat at least once a year from the time I was 5 until probably 15 or so. After that, I think he sold, without rebuying, his last boat.
*His Member Number was 1, but do to a disagreement over who was actually the first member, the other person got Member Number 0.
I grew up inland and we didn’t have much money, so boats, and trips on them, were mostly an unaffordable luxury.
First boat of any kind was a canoe at my local boy scout camp, and I would have been 11 or so.
First powerboat, a little outboard runabout that belonged to a friend’s family who had a cottage at Indian Lake (Somerset County, PA). I was 18 or so.
First seagoing vessel: the Cape May - Lewes (Del) ferry, at age 20 or so.
Things picked up a bit when I started working in the oil industry and for a number of years spent weeks at a time on offshore drilling rigs.
I was three. Same ferry.
I may have been on a smaller boat earlier although I don’t recall. My father was into boats and I am named after one. (Not Mary.)
In 1963 my family travelled on the Queen Mary between the UK and NYC. I was five. I remember being violently sea sick, but also befriending workers in the kitchen and having a generally marvelous time during the crossing.
Sometime during elementary school when I went fishing with my best friend. His father had a bass boat. I was maybe 8 years old.
Next time was a small sailing dingy when I was at college. I ended up teaching sailing a few years later.
I remember riding on a ferry that took cars (which I found very exciting) when I was four years old and we lived in London. I’m not sure which ferry that would have been.
I loved paddling a one-person kayak on vacations when I was a child (maybe 9 or 10 years old). I also remember riding in a rowboat at a very young age.
Not sure how old I was when I first took a cruise on the Red and White Fleet, but it was definitely under age 11.
My aunt and uncle who lived on Lake Tahoe had an old (1950-something) Chris Craft, and used to take us out on it every summer when we would visit. I couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8 the first time, and might have been several years younger.
Some time between the age of 5 and 9, I went on the Goodtime II (now the Goodtime III) on a class trip. Or maybe Girl Scouts? I suspect most schoolchildren within a half hour of the 9th Street Pier had the same experience.
My brother got a captain’s hat, because he was rad. And obsessed with The Love Boat.
Too young to remember. There are pictures of a trip to Victoria, BC when I was under 3. We took the ferry. From the age of 3 to around 8, my grandparents lived in the Bay Area and had a house on a marina with a boat ramp. My grandfather would take us out.
The family took a day cruise to the Bahamas when I was in elementary school. That might have been the first time for me.
So, OP…did you enjoy it?
That I remember? Either a Circle Line tour boat or a NYFD fire boat around age 12. My Boy Scout troop took a day trip to Manhattan and got a tour of a fire boat; only time I ever got seasick.
1955, Cyprus Gardens FL. Glass-bottom boat.
When I was 4, my mother and older brother and I went to Miami to visit my grandparents. One day we took a trip on a glass-bottomed boat. I remember being amazed that we could look down and see what was under the boat. There was a diver who brought up an octopus that he had killed. He slit it open, and a lot of babies came out. My brother wanted to buy one, but my mother vetoed that idea. Overall, it was fun, and I didn’t get sea-sick.
I don’t think I was on another boat until, as an adult, I took the Staten-Island Ferry and the Circle Line.
When I was in 4th grade, my class rode an old canal boat during a field trip.