They went outdoors and played. Sailboats were small, affordable, and even free! We found the following ad from a s edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. We know a Styrofoam Snark would be lucky to last five minutes on the Cityfront before it became flotsam drifting up onto the Emeryville shoreline, but if you took it to Lake Merritt with your family, the kids could have a blast. And you could take photos of them to show your friends, with your Kodak film camera.
Small, affordable boats made sailing boom. California was at the epicenter of that boom, with Costa Mesa builders flooding the world with small, affordable fiberglass sailboats. Lake Merritt in Oakland was a hotbed of small-boat sailing. Free Snarks also launched thousands of sailors. The first bright-yellow plastic sail ripped, so our mother sewed a new one out of clear plastic.
The Snark, plus a Turnabout, a Rhodes 19, a , and a Laser were the small boats that started us off on a lifetime of sailing. It sounds like an awesome boat and would be a ton of fun to race in the class, but will it really re-energize sailing in the US?
Can you grow participation in sailing by selling quarter-million-dollar boats? One of the most successful sailing clubs on the Bay is the Richmond Yacht Club because of their emphasis on small boats and youth sailing. Small boats allow you to fit more sailors and sailboats within the confines of limited space on a shoreline. We love big boats and our big Sabre 38 sloop, but when we see sailing growing, we see it happening when small-boat sailing is reenergized.
Fantastic, fast foiling boards are awesome, but so is singlehanding your Westsail 32 in the Three Bridge Fiasco. You can find inexpensive boats in our Classy Classifieds or great youth sailing programs in our Youth Programs page. Think big, but start small.
