I remember it like yesterday. I was about 6 years old, sitting on the beach like poor folks, watching the rich teenagers who had power boats race around the lake, waterskiing, and generally having a good time. The kids must have seen me looking longingly at their activities, and they came to the shore and asked my mom if they could give me a ride. Surprisingly, she consented, and I was overjoyed.
I hung on for dear life (and that was before life vests were common, so I doubt that I wore one), but I had so much fun, I resolved I would get a boat when I grew up. And I did, but by then Jetskis had been invented, and I got three of those.
I don’t remember the first time I went to Disneyland, but I’m sure if I did go before the age of three I rode a boat on It’s A Small World. I remember when I was four or five I liked the boat ride through Storybookland or whatever, where you went through a whale’s mouth.
Aside from that, my dad had a boat shipped back from Japan. Philippine mahogany, and a blueprinted Olds V8 connected directly to the shaft that turned the screw. No transmission. I must have been four or five.
Between the assumed Disneyland trips and dad’s boat, mom and I sailed on a Navy family cruise ship. (I want to say USS Patrick, but A: It doesn’t look quite right; and B: it was out of service before I was born.) We rode ferries when dad wen to sea, before the Coronado Bridge was built. After dad’s boat I was in the San Diego Navy Sailing Club where I took out 14-foot sloops for a few years, and ignoring boat rides at amusement parks, the next one was a ferry across the English Channel in 1982. Let’s see… There were the dive boats when I was diving. There was the ferry to Algiers one time when I was in New Orleans. I’ve been on the Washington State Ferries and Canadian ferries several times (plus a dive boat out of Nanaimo). I had a little sailing skiff up here, and a 14-foot Zodiac-type Mercury inflatable. And I have a kayak.
My dad bought a brand new 1966 Boston Whaler Nauset a month after I was born. We went out on it that weekend.
This weekend I am taking my children to my parent’s home to ready the boat for it’s 48th year of operation. My kids expect to earn their MD boating licenses this year.
I don’t remember - I expect I was between 3-5, since I grew up with my brothers/father sailing on Lake Chickamauga and my dad wanted us all to learn to sail early and be comfortable on boats from early on.
Would have been the ferries on Sydney Harbour, and I’d have been months old, I’d say.
I do remember travelling on one of them, the South Steyne when I was tiny, and my dad holding me up over an internal railing to see the steam engine at work (the ferry was 1938 vintage), and hating the blast of heat and the noise, but also being fascinated.
That said, I didn’t get my sorry arse onto an actual SHIP until last year (aged 43), and I loved it. I really want to do the Southern Ocean and Antarctica before I’m too much older.
I lived in Manhattan from age 3 to age 6. My parents would take me on the Staten Island Ferry all the time - we didn’t have much money, and it was cheap way to spend a weekend afternoon.
I was somewhere around 10-12 years old and my dad’s brother brought his boat to the lake party for the local Eagles Club members. He was giving several of the older kids turn at water skiing bus as I was youngish and had never tried skiing before he wasn’t willing to drag me to an embarrassing and waterlogged death. He was happy to let me ride in the boat though so I spend most of the afternoon right next to him and blasting around the lake.
Age 8. My mom’s sister visited with her husband and family. My uncle arranged a deep sea charter fishing trip and let me go. Quite a lot of fun. From what I recall we caught smaller fish. Not the huge Marlins or trophy fish.
I was four. My dad built his own little cabin cruiser and we would go boating in Galveston Bay every week-end during the summer. I also remember taking the ferry to Port Bolivar and watching the dolphins.
My first experience on a sailboat (age 16) was sailing a Sunfish rented from the Naval Base in Corpus Christi. My best friend and I taught ourselves, tipped the boats over a LOT, and had a blast.
I was born at the naval hospital in Bremerton, and we lived in Port Orchard, way back in the late '60s and early '70s. I’m sure I must have been on that ferry dozens of times before we moved away. Small world, no?
My dad has kept a sailboat most of my life, and he had one when we were out there. I have vague memories of lying on my back in one of the berths and staring up at a light. I couldn’t have been more than eighteen months old, as he sold that particular boat just after my brother was born and didn’t buy another until I was seven.
I think I was around 6 or 7. We’d gone camping with my new step-father and some of his friends, and one guy had a small fishing boat. He took me, my younger brother, and our mother out on the lake on a cloudy evening. There came a downpour before we could get back and I buried my head in my mother’s lap, brother be damned.
Interesting question. Aside from fishing from a private boat in a lake, I think the first one would have been the ferry from Sault Ste. Marie Michigan into Soo Canada, before there was a bridge. I think I was 14. I flew in my uncle’s airplane before that.
But I was in plenty of boats before that, because in those days, kids going in boats by themselves was simply a subset of kids going out and playing by themselves, with orders to be home by supper time.
When I was six, my dad was stationed at Mare Island Naval base and he and our neighbor took us all out on a trip across San Francisco Bay and I think under the golden gate bridge in a PBR Mk2. I thought it was so cool that it had a siren.
I’m in Bremerton right now. I’m on the Seattle ferry at least once a week.
I grew up around boats, and I’m sure, knowing my Dad, my first time would have been as an infant. My family owned boats since I was about 3 years old. First in Upstate NY, then in Maryland. Before I had a drivers license, I got around by boat.
The earliest I can remember is about 7 on Ten-Mile creek at the Oregon Dunes. Just a small outboard.
I have relatives who fish a lot. But I don’t recall going boating with any of them until later. Fished from shore with my grandpa, for example, when little.
I’m not sure if my first boat ride was a ferry between Galveston & the Bolivar Peninsula, or if it was my grandfather’s dinky little fishing boat, but I couldn’t have been older than 4 or so in either event.
First largish ship/boat that was actually underway was a ferry in Scotland between the Isle of Skye and the mainland in 1998- I’d been aboard a couple of moored US and UK naval ships prior to that, and several museum ships.
