It may not be appropriate to a lot of people but it must apply to some.
A lot of problems appear to arise (particularly in the US) from a lack of ponds - or ponds with any wind. So, why not bigger lakes or the sea?
The answer of course is your poor little Footy sailing off iinto the distance, totally out of control, next stop Ireland/Japan/Wherever.
Many moons ago my father ran an Optimist fleet at Holyhead Sailing Club. It was convenient to run classes for very young kids without a rescue boat - but he (obvously) did not want them to behave like errant Footies.
Solution. Two concrete sinkers with eyebolts and hauking off lines (see Course Construction thread) dropped 50 metres off the beach. A piece of (floating) scrap car ferry mooring hawser attached to the hauling off lines in the middle and tied off on the beach at the ends.
Result: a play-pen for Optimists. If anything got out of hand - fights, disaters …-, all you had to do was pull in on one end and the whole shebang ended up on the beach.
It may be an idea which will work on some of the smaller large lakes Angus… if you can get putting anything in the water here past the DNR.
But on my big one… Michigan… erm no probably not. It often goes un-noticed that Sheboygan is the home of the "Dairyland Surf Classic’, the largest freshwater surfing competition in the world. (OK when you all stop laughing!) Which is pretty cool I think :rolleyes: The inference being that surfing needs surf… I love Lake Windermere, I was there last year again. But where dear old Windermere will just kinda sit and look at you, Michigan will eat you for breakfast!
Happily I think the lack of ponds may have been overstressed somewhere. While the younger parts of the USA do lack victorian parks and town ponds as we are used to in GB, there are many other types of pond here. Many midsize businesses have clean decent size ponds in the grounds. My nearby Plymouth tourist office has a nice pair of ponds. I understand that Florida housing developments typically have their own usually decorative run-off ponds. Apart from the very dry states I would imagine that there is a decent pond or small lake within a sensible drive of most places. It’s then all about finding one and making it happen.
There was no model boat group in Sheboygan until last September when an old Yorkshire mate listenned to me moaning about it and said… “well start one”… so I did http://www.mcallisterdesigns.com/sabm.htm Not a formal club with all those shinnanigans… just a group of skippers with a beautiful small lake, yes that is part of it in the background, Wood Lake, Kohler, WI. Go get it !
30 Cents LaterBy 9 a.m. on a beautiful Saturday morning, Mike and I were working for Mrs. Martin. She was a kind and patient woman. She always said that Mike and I reminded her of her two sons who were grown and gone. Although kind, she believed in hard work and she kept us working. She was a task master. We spent three hours taking canned goods off the shelves and, with a feather duster, brushing each can to get the dust off, and then re-stacking them neatly. It was excruciatingly boring work.Mike’s dad, whom I call my rich dad, owned nine of these little superettes with large parking lots. They were the early version of the 7-11 convenience stores. Little neighborhood grocery stores where people bought items such as milk, bread, butter and cigarettes. The problem was, this was Hawaii before air conditioning, and the stores could not close its doors because of the heat. On two sides of the store, the doors had to be wide open to the road and parking lot. Every time a car drove by or pulled into the parking lot, dust would swirl and settle in the store.Hence, we had a job for as long as there was no air conditioning.“And you don’t?” I asked.“No, not really,” said rich dad. “If you want to learn to work for money, then stay in school. That is a great place to learn to do that. But if you want to learn how to have money work for you, then I will teach you that wow power leveling. But only if you want to learn.”“Wouldn’t everyone want to learn that” I asked.“No,” said rich dad. “Simply because it’s easier to learn to work for money, especially if fear is your primary emotion when the subject of money is discussed.wow gold”“I don’t understand,” I said with a frown. buy wow gold for cheap …“Don’t worry about that for now. Just know that it’s fear that keeps most people working at a job. The fear of not paying their bills.wow gold, The fear of being fired.wow gold, The fear of not having enough money. The fear ofstarting over. That’s the price of studying to learn a profession or trade, and then working for money. Most people become a slave to money… that is wow power leveling web page for cheap wow power leveling, and then get angry at their boss.”“Learning to have money work for you is a completely different course of study?” I asked.“Absolutely,” rich dad answered, "absolutely."For three weeks, Mike and I reported to Mrs. Martin and worked our three hours. By noon, our work was over, and she dropped three little dimes in each of our hands. Now, even at the age of 9 in the mid-1950s, 30 cents was not too exciting. Comic books cost 10 cents back then, so I usually spent my money on comic books and went home.By Wednesday of the fourth week, I was ready to quit. I had agreed to work only because I wanted to learn to make money from Mike’s dad, and now I was a slave for 10 cents an hour. On top of that, I had not seen Mike’s dad since that first Saturday.“I’m quitting,” I told Mike at lunchtime. The school lunch was miserable. School was boring, and now I did not even have my Saturdays to look forward to. But it was the 30 cents that really got to me.This time Mike smiled.“What are you laughing at?” I asked with anger and frustration.“Dad said this would happen. He said to meet with him when you were ready to quit.”“What?” I said indignantly. “He’s been waiting for me to get fed up?”“Sort of,” Mike said. “Dad’s kind of different. He teaches differently from your dad. Your mom and dad lecture a lot. My dad is quiet and a man of few words. You just wait till this Saturday. I’ll tell him .you’re ready.”
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