Do You Remember Sailing With Your Grandfather?

As Father’s Day draws near (it’s this coming Sunday, June 16) we’ve started thinking about the stories we’ve shared about sailors who were introduced to boats by their grandfathers. As we said in our ad last Friday about our Father’s Day gift promotion, grandfathers are fathers, too. And many grandfathers are sailors, just as many sailors are grandfathers.

Emily Zugnoni is the program director at Alameda Community Sailing Center (ACSC), and the winner of US Sailing’s 2023 Outstanding Community Sailing Program Award. Emily grew up sailing on the Estuary and San Francisco Bay aboard her grandfather’s Tartan 30 Lelo Too. In a May 2020 ‘Lectronic, Emily told us, “The foundation of my sailing knowledge came from my grandfather, Emile Carles, who kept every Latitude 38 ever printed in his garage, by the way.” Emily was also a guest on our Good Jibes sailing podcast last month.

In February 2023 we heard from Cyril Kollock, who shared his memory of sailing with his grandfather, Dave Kollock. Dave was from Philadelphia, and before Cyril came along, sailed a 110 out of Ocean City, NJ. He later bought a Shields, and Cyril remembers sailing aboard with him a few times when he was very young. Later in life Cyril reconnected with sailing through Modern Sailing and now shares his rekindled passion with others.

And then there was Cal Currier, the Palo Alto teen who at 16 decided to sail across the Atlantic, west to east. Although Cal didn’t talk specifically about sailing with his grandfather, it was apparent that the elder Currier had bestowed a good degree of saltiness upon his grandson. Cal’s grandfather sailed across the Atlantic twice. Additionally, in 1948 his great-grandfather built a boat and sailed it to the Galápagos and back. The sailing blood didn’t skip a generation either, with Cal’s father James having sailed across the Atlantic and through the South Pacific.

No doubt there are more stories in our archives about sailing with grandfathers, but we hope the ones we’ve shared above rekindle some warm memories of your own. In the meantime, add your granddad, grandpa or gramps to your thoughts for this coming Sunday (and every day), and maybe even show him some love with a Latitude 38 sailor’s gift package — he’s sure to appreciate it.