How fortunate for you and your brother............with both parents.........and you filmed it and are able to relive at any time. I wonder how often your brother might have replayed these cruises in his head as he hunkered down in Vietnam.......just takes my breath away. Thank you so much.
This was good to see. Our family acquired a 22' Columbia in the late 60's. We were cruising by the mid 70's, in a VERY similar fashion : two weeks with my brother, 3 years older, and Mom and Dad, from Gloucester to Marthas Vineyard. No super 8 film, more color slides.. fun times. Made me think that MV was really far away since we often took 4 days to get there!
1961 the year i was born. It caught my eye being from new york near City Island. I really LIKED tbis video almost a tear jerker.. Bless you mom for always doing the dishes lol..
What fabulous parents, to have given you such great experiences from toddlerhood. It shows in your narrations today. They did a great job. And all those gorgeous wooden boats...oh my!
Your mom is the unsung heroine in this movie. Be it at the helm, down below cooking and washing up, or on deck...there she was smiling and all the while looking so glam in gorgeous scarves and movie star sunglasses. 💕
I know this has been out for years, but I just found it. And I must say thank you. This is, without doubt, the most outstanding sailing video I have run across. Thank you so much.
What a trip down memory lane. I will share this film with our sail racing friends. Our family captured a bit of that long ago by taking our kids as they grew to charter in the North Channel of Lake Huron. The whole family together without electronics. Priceless.
At about the 9 min mark I was just thinking there's something special about people who grow up on the water and you started talking about your mom. Just a great piece of history, thank you.
wonderful! I've just purchased a 1978 30ft broom skipper.. river cruiser.. needs a loving owner with skills,time and money! The maritime journey continues! I completed my first sailing course last summer aged 45 years.. loved it. obviously should have been done at school but no regrets.. induced my 16 and 11 year old... it was as if they had been born in a Pico! Thanks for the posts
Grew up in Philadelphia. Never sailed as a kid, the river was to polluted for that. Served in the army instead of the navy, and have always been sensitive to motion, I get sea sick. Car sick too when a kid. Yet I have always been drawn to the sea. Used to walk the docks in Philia looking at the old sailing ships, dreaming. First learned to sail in Hoby cats. Then Annapolis sailing school. Wanted my family to grow up on boats. We have had 3 so far. Kids never had much interest. As you said, they are torn between their interests these days. Computers and the internet, while making life better in so many ways, have put a wedge into activities like the ones your family grew up. Sounds like your father was a dreamer. Good thing to be IMO. I'm looking to sail again soon, when the requirements of earning a living fade, and I have time to do what I want to. To feed my soul. When my kids are grown and on their own paths. One path closes, another opens. The wheel turns. Thanks for the memories.
Going to do the same, one door is closing after 26 years on my job, I'm eligible to retire but I'll be there another 3 years until my last two children finish school and college. After that, I plan to buy and sailboat (I used to have one years ago) and return to sailing.
Hope you get around to it Bob. Me and my father just got our first sailboat this year after many years of waiting for the right boat and saving. Never been happier with a purchase. Going to have to do some bluewater stuff once we are more experienced. Good luck with yours, hopefully, it will be sooner rather than later!
@@brandonedwards1181 Thanks. Right now living the dream, retired on a 40 foot land yacht... lol. Been on the road for several months now, and while I am loving it, still dream of the open ocean, at night, passage making, but my son is in college now, other one moving on to Portland. I travel with a German Shepherd dog now, and don't think he would take to the sea, but one of these days, he will pass, and then maybe. Glad you found you dream. To many I have known have passed on with it only being a dream. Sad. Fair winds!
Enjoyed your home movies. I've sailed in SoCal for years, trips to Catalina Island, Newport, Channel Islands, but the kids never really liked it and as soon as they could, they stopped going. I sold my last boat, a Beneteau 40, about four years ago when the costs began to outgrow the fun, since we couldn't use it all that much.
Hey Christian - I love your videos. My father, born in 1907 was from Elizabeth, New Jersey but left at age 15 to migrate across the country to end up in Hemet CA. He bought his first sailboat when I was 8 (tomorrow I will be 58). We learned to sail haphazardly in Marina Del Ray but soon became fairly competent. I marvel at my mother as well - she was a hearty and adaptable companion and crew with my dad. I would love to have those times on film. Thanks for sharing this.
What a great Friday Night! Went to town for some sushi and an ice cold Sapporo, then joined you on a sail to Hawaii and a trip down memory lane! Thanks for the adventure, Mr. Williams.🍻
In Greek nostalgia literally means 'The pain from an old wound.' Its a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone...It goes backwards and forwards... it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. (Don Draper) Thank you Mr. Williams for sharing your nostalgia, It has taken me to that same place I ache to go again.
Great video; and great stories. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Thank you very much for uploading this. I am a father of two, who sails. It is very hard to get families into sailing today for some odd reason. It really is a mystery to me. I, myself, love sailing; but it seems to me that wives and children these days are very spoiled. They just can't seem to live without the smallest modern conveniences, even for short periods. I just can't understand it. Times sure seem to have changed from those days. I find that I am a little old fashioned. I would have fit into those days quite well.
+Bob Simmons My four kids, oldest 45, came along if asked but never really felt the pull. My six grandchildren are overwhelmed by options, playdates, sports, tutors, travel, video games, Spotify, RUclips, cell phones and summer programs at great universities, and their parents are also pulled apart like taffy b y their own multiple invitations and interesting things to do. When I was a kid, steering a boat was power only exceeded by the driving license for which we yearned and dreamed. It was that, or baseball. So, it's just that sailing has competition, it seems to me. I think if the video game Halo existed when I was 15, I would never have cast off a line.
unplugging from modern life offers opportunities to get intimate with your kids, family and friends. Settling into some boredom or coping with being stuck in dead calm can be some of the most vivid memories along with thrilling beam reaches under 18knots. With all the distractions it is more important than ever for me and my kids to get away from it all and enjoy each other. Boating has been perfect for that. We are pushing off for this cruise August 6th.
I just stumbled across this and watched it twice. I really enjoyed it. I was not born till 1971, things were so much simpler back then. Thanks for sharing!
1961 - the year of my birth, and yet I too have cinefilm memories and a connection to the sound of a projector. Not many 'modern' families have such connections to their past that evoke happy memories of endless summers and simpler times.
Thanks very much for sharing this. As a sailor with a crew of wife and child I hope my daughter has similar memories of sailing with her mom and dad and that we can give her similar memories. Cheers.
Great stuff.. having a film camera back then was quite a luxury. .. Long Island Sound ! Ha ! We sail out of Greenwich Point. Just started getting back into it. Huge fan of the new pocket-rocket cruisers. There are some beautiful modern classics .. Morris makes some incredible boats and Brooklin BoatYard up in Maine makes dream boats i.e. 82’ Sloop. 👈 😎Probably my favorite.
Thanks for sharing your family with us, those old memories are so much better if you can go back and see them over. Coming from another experience growing up in rural Appalachia Kentucky the son of a logger and grandson of a sawmill owner those memories are where I can go to remember the unity and love of a large family. Thanks again.
I grew up with a father who was a Herreshoff fan. He spent summers in Falmouth, Ma on "Cape Cod" and learned to sail and got his first boat at age 11 and then became a top junior sailor throughout all the yacht clubs with sailing programs in southern New England that competed against each other (which is how my mother who summered in RI found out about him). I wish he were alive to watch your videos. He'd LOVE them. He taught me to sail on our Herreshoff 12 1/2 . We later had a Cape Cod Marlin which I raced in the first Herreshoff Rendesvous in Bristol, RI. .Before I was born he raced S- boats.
My parents started shooting 8mm before I was born in 1958. A thrilling Sunday evening for us as kids or teens, is when Dad would get the Bell & Howell projector and screen out and pick a dozen reels at random for us all to watch and eat scones that Mum had just baked. I know just how you feel looking at this footage. And yes, the sound of the projector...irreplaceable.
A Fascinating nostalgic glimpse of sailing in the early sixties, with long overhangs, sitting headroom and deck leaks. I remember the 50ft of 16mm film that had to be split down the middle and spliced together to make 100ft of 8mm. Your mum must have been an absolute treasure. Thanks for the upload.
You are one of my few favorite people. You are apparently my role model. When im out on the water and fear sets in or I doubt myself and my boat. I do think of you. Thanks.
What a wonderful series of memories brought back to life... I too started out on Long Island, but didn't start sailing till we moved to California (as my dad was in the aerospace industry). My younger brother and I rented a sabot sailboat in San Diego when our dad was giving a speech at a spaceflight conference and it led to designing, building and sailing a custom catamaran the year after high school. Sailing is just affordable space travel.
very late to the party but i just want to tell you how very much i've enjoyed all of your videos, but this one in particular. thank you very much for sharing. you're a talented story teller and i hope you're still sailing and doing well today.
Wow that was so cool. I was a kid then too and I think everything looked softer and better then , Don't you. Thank good ness your mom was a team player !
Thank you for sharing these wonderful memories! My father had a dream of sailing also but opted to buy a small island in the Exumas, Bahamas back in 1962. Dennis Cay is the name of the island and is located in the Pipe Creek sectional on the cruising charts. We spent our summers there building a small cabin on the ocean beginning in 1967. He sold the island in 1994 and I have just purchased a Hunter 40 with the idea of "getting back" to the islands! Thanks again for these extraordinary personal home movies! Loved it!
Very moving video and it shows what a great country we have. I have lived on Long Island with water all around me and salt in my blood my whole life. Great family life being near the ocean. Would not trade it for a second.
How fortunate you were to have such a great family, or at least, you do a great job of portraying that. Your videos always take me back to somewhere I've never actually been. Thanks for sharing.
Great film thank you! I was 10 in 1956 and did a similar family cruise on a 19 ft sloop. My uncle, 3 cousins and I did a week to Tobaga Island from Balboa, Panama. Got me hooked on cruising!!
I remember Pacific Palisades Marineland was there my father and mother would take me to Marineland to see the whales sometimes we stopped at the Pike which was an amusement park in Long Beach I have such great memory there maybe that's why I have the sailboat in Long Beach at this time but anyhow all that footage reminds me of that time thank you so much.
That is very interesting! My mother who served in the Navy during WWII would have been 41 in 1961 having just given birth to my youngest sibling (4 years younger than myself)! My father who also served in the Navy during the war had re-upped after being recalled for Korea... We lived just up the east coast in Massachusetts in a small town outside of New Bedford. I find 8mm and 16mm home movies (if well done) are fabulously entertaining. It is certainly apparent to me when I examine old home movies that the personalities of the film maker shows through. Besides being encapsulations of the individual family's lives, they are windows into the past. I have a small collection of them as well as a few projectors. I would contend that very few electro-mechanical devices that required such precision in their manufacture have fallen so drastically in value, five dollars being the average price I paid for the 8 and 16mm projectors I've purchased. I think my most prized film shows what I am assuming is a young, VW of North America executive and his wife being flown to Germany to visit the VW factory in Wolfsburg, while doing some sightseeing as well. Totally fascinating... As for this video of your films, I applaud it, standing ovation even. As well as showing these images to many thousands more than had ever seen them, they are now a part of YT, there for all to see, instead of sitting in a dusty box! I for one would LOVE if every film I have were narrated by the person making it... Or narrated by you good sir! Thanks for sharing.
Great memories! I grew up doing the same thing. My family started cruising in 1969 on a Pearson coaster. We sailed out of Hempstead harbor. My dad would close his medical practice for the month of July and we would head to New England. I now sail out of RYC in Perth Amboy. Small world.
Beautiful memories, no doubt! Enjoyed seeing the recordings. That's something I enjoy, documenting so others may share the memories and experiences. Thanks for sharing.
well done its how we grew up same way in small boats and they got bigger ,and we did to , and now i see those old boats still around and reflect back and wonder how we did it ,still sail the same waters , but we dont have the lead line and spinning log any more and the boats have come along thanks ,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Great Memories and film, I wish I had taken more photographs when I was younger, I still shoot film, it has a look that just can't be imitated by digital. My Brother was 5 years older than me and when I watch this I think of the two of us growing up in Long Beach Ca, thanks for digging this out and converting it to digital, I really enjoyed watching it.
The Sound still provides some good sailing, gunkholing and interesting harbors. Often a lot busier, but you can still find days when you’re alone out there. And that southwest breeze usually means beating to get home. Thanks for the memories.
A friend forwarded your video to me. I too grew up spending summers on boats on LI Sound at about the same time as you. We were fortunate to have very close friends who had us aboard every weekend. I started boating at age 5, and at the time our friends owned a Mathews (stink pot) which had a sailing dinghy. One afternoon while anchored in Eaton's Neck they rigged the dinghy and I went for a ride with my father. I spend the rest of the weekend alone in the dinghy. They couldn't get me out. Our friends traded up to a 41' Alden yawl, which we all sailed for several years, and I would help out with the maintenance in the winter as well. I was very smitten with sailing and devoted all my spare time and efforts in its pursuit. As with your experience, almost every weekend was devoted to our two families spending time on the water. Our base was City Island, and traveled as far as Montauk for vacations, and a similar distance on the Connecticut shore. As you noted in your dialogue spending weekends with family on a boat is a rarity today. I feel it helped bond the family, and as a youth you learned working with others, and the many skills associated with boating, be it knots, splicing, whipping, navigation, storm survival, etc. These are all generically transferable skills and experience to life, and there seems to be little to replace it today, nor an interest in doing so. I watched very closely your encounters with other boats at sea or in harbor, in the off chance that I might see the Alden yawl BELLATRIX. But it was not to be. I can go on and on, but I did dedicate my life to yachting, ultimately becoming a naval architect and except for a few years during Nam when I was involved in military craft, have spend the past 45 years involved in the design/engineering of yachts, both sail and power. Somehow the adage, "if you don't want to work a day in your life you should make your avocation your vocation", made an impression on me, and true to the adage I have not worked a day in my life. So thank you for waking up a few dormant brain cells with your movie. Change the boat and the faces, and it could have been my family movie. Alan Gilbert
Thanks so much for posting this. We had a 1929 Matthews that we would take our summer cruise on. Single screw, real ice box, no TV, no iPhone... no radar, sonar, or GPS. Just charts and compass and Dad's courses worked out with headings and minutes. A couple of times we towed our Herreshoff 12 1/2 for sailing around the harbors.
Thanks for sharing...reminds me of Mr. Biddle's films. He used to travel around and show his films and narrate them live... They were absolutely wonderful!.... And the projector sound was so very memorable!
Jumping off the sand hills at Port Jeff, going through Plum Gut, going ashore at Dodson's in Stonington to walk up to the store, the ferry at Shelter Island....summer cruise memories. I was a decade later than you, so it was fiberglass boats for us.
I don’t know how, but you managed to make me nostalgic for a time when I wasn’t alive.
This man has a way with words. It's magical.
How fortunate for you and your brother............with both parents.........and you filmed it and are able to relive at any time. I wonder how often your brother might have replayed these cruises in his head as he hunkered down in Vietnam.......just takes my breath away. Thank you so much.
This was good to see. Our family acquired a 22' Columbia in the late 60's. We were cruising by the mid 70's, in a VERY similar fashion : two weeks with my brother, 3 years older, and Mom and Dad, from Gloucester to Marthas Vineyard. No super 8 film, more color slides.. fun times. Made me think that MV was really far away since we often took 4 days to get there!
One of the best youtube video's I've watched in years perhaps... thank you for sharing the memories.
1961 the year i was born. It caught my eye being from new york near City Island. I really LIKED tbis video almost a tear jerker.. Bless you mom for always doing the dishes lol..
Aah, simpler times when everyone in a doctor's family smoked. You have a remarkable way with words. Enjoyed your Hawaiian sailing video as well.
The entire family smoking was sad to watch.
What fabulous parents, to have given you such great experiences from toddlerhood. It shows in your narrations today. They did a great job. And all those gorgeous wooden boats...oh my!
Your mom is the unsung heroine in this movie. Be it at the helm, down below cooking and washing up, or on deck...there she was smiling and all the while looking so glam in gorgeous scarves and movie star sunglasses. 💕
That was a masterpiece!
I know this has been out for years, but I just found it. And I must say thank you. This is, without doubt, the most outstanding sailing video I have run across. Thank you so much.
What a trip down memory lane. I will share this film with our sail racing friends. Our family captured a bit of that long ago by taking our kids as they grew to charter in the North Channel of Lake Huron. The whole family together without electronics. Priceless.
At about the 9 min mark I was just thinking there's something special about people who grow up on the water and you started talking about your mom. Just a great piece of history, thank you.
Such a pleasure to watch this, and your commentary made it that much more interesting. Thanks for posting it.
wonderful! I've just purchased a 1978 30ft broom skipper.. river cruiser.. needs a loving owner with skills,time and money! The maritime journey continues! I completed my first sailing course last summer aged 45 years.. loved it. obviously should have been done at school but no regrets.. induced my 16 and 11 year old... it was as if they had been born in a Pico!
Thanks for the posts
How fantastic life was when we were young, Thanks for Sharing, Loved it.
Grew up in Philadelphia. Never sailed as a kid, the river was to polluted for that. Served in the army instead of the navy, and have always been sensitive to motion, I get sea sick. Car sick too when a kid. Yet I have always been drawn to the sea. Used to walk the docks in Philia looking at the old sailing ships, dreaming. First learned to sail in Hoby cats. Then Annapolis sailing school.
Wanted my family to grow up on boats. We have had 3 so far. Kids never had much interest. As you said, they are torn between their interests these days. Computers and the internet, while making life better in so many ways, have put a wedge into activities like the ones your family grew up. Sounds like your father was a dreamer. Good thing to be IMO.
I'm looking to sail again soon, when the requirements of earning a living fade, and I have time to do what I want to. To feed my soul. When my kids are grown and on their own paths. One path closes, another opens. The wheel turns.
Thanks for the memories.
Eat some ginger biscuits an hour or two before you go sailing.
Going to do the same, one door is closing after 26 years on my job, I'm eligible to retire but I'll be there another 3 years until my last two children finish school and college. After that, I plan to buy and sailboat (I used to have one years ago) and return to sailing.
Hope you get around to it Bob. Me and my father just got our first sailboat this year after many years of waiting for the right boat and saving. Never been happier with a purchase. Going to have to do some bluewater stuff once we are more experienced. Good luck with yours, hopefully, it will be sooner rather than later!
@@brandonedwards1181 Thanks. Right now living the dream, retired on a 40 foot land yacht... lol. Been on the road for several months now, and while I am loving it, still dream of the open ocean, at night, passage making, but my son is in college now, other one moving on to Portland. I travel with a German Shepherd dog now, and don't think he would take to the sea, but one of these days, he will pass, and then maybe. Glad you found you dream. To many I have known have passed on with it only being a dream. Sad. Fair winds!
seven years late to find this amazing video, but never to late to enjoy it all the same.
Enjoyed your home movies. I've sailed in SoCal for years, trips to Catalina Island, Newport, Channel Islands, but the kids never really liked it and as soon as they could, they stopped going. I sold my last boat, a Beneteau 40, about four years ago when the costs began to outgrow the fun, since we couldn't use it all that much.
boy o ' boy , those 8 mm films bring back memories. thanks, Feeling old right now.
Thankful for finding this video, nostalgic for undetermined reason.
...speechless.
Thank you Mr. Williams,
Carlos M
Hey Christian - I love your videos. My father, born in 1907 was from Elizabeth, New Jersey but left at age 15 to migrate across the country to end up in Hemet CA. He bought his first sailboat when I was 8 (tomorrow I will be 58). We learned to sail haphazardly in Marina Del Ray but soon became fairly competent. I marvel at my mother as well - she was a hearty and adaptable companion and crew with my dad. I would love to have those times on film. Thanks for sharing this.
What a great Friday Night! Went to town for some sushi and an ice cold Sapporo, then joined you on a sail to Hawaii and
a trip down memory lane! Thanks for the adventure, Mr. Williams.🍻
In Greek nostalgia literally means 'The pain from an old wound.' Its a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone...It goes backwards and forwards... it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. (Don Draper) Thank you Mr. Williams for sharing your nostalgia, It has taken me to that same place I ache to go again.
Thank you for sharing. 1961 a special year. Hope you found your calling . x
Oh wouldn't it be nice to be young again? Good memories with family, they always remain with us.
Great video; and great stories. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Thank you very much for uploading this. I am a father of two, who sails. It is very hard to get families into sailing today for some odd reason. It really is a mystery to me. I, myself, love sailing; but it seems to me that wives and children these days are very spoiled. They just can't seem to live without the smallest modern conveniences, even for short periods. I just can't understand it. Times sure seem to have changed from those days. I find that I am a little old fashioned. I would have fit into those days quite well.
+Bob Simmons My four kids, oldest 45, came along if asked but never really felt the pull. My six grandchildren are overwhelmed by options, playdates, sports, tutors, travel, video games, Spotify, RUclips, cell phones and summer programs at great universities, and their parents are also pulled apart like taffy b y their own multiple invitations and interesting things to do. When I was a kid, steering a boat was power only exceeded by the driving license for which we yearned and dreamed. It was that, or baseball. So, it's just that sailing has competition, it seems to me. I think if the video game Halo existed when I was 15, I would never have cast off a line.
unplugging from modern life offers opportunities to get intimate with your kids, family and friends. Settling into some boredom or coping with being stuck in dead calm can be some of the most vivid memories along with thrilling beam reaches under 18knots. With all the distractions it is more important than ever for me and my kids to get away from it all and enjoy each other. Boating has been perfect for that. We are pushing off for this cruise August 6th.
You brought back my childhood sailing on the sound. Wonderful! What good times they were.
This is a great video, to think that a family could sail together on a small boat for 2 weeks. No electronics, just family. Loved this.
Thanks for posting. What a great way to grow up.
I just stumbled across this and watched it twice. I really enjoyed it. I was not born till 1971, things were so much simpler back then. Thanks for sharing!
WOW beautiful movie, i am soo glad i found it,
Lovely family memories to look back on Christian
1961 - the year of my birth, and yet I too have cinefilm memories and a connection to the sound of a projector. Not many 'modern' families have such connections to their past that evoke happy memories of endless summers and simpler times.
Thanks very much for sharing this. As a sailor with a crew of wife and child I hope my daughter has similar memories of sailing with her mom and dad and that we can give her similar memories. Cheers.
I am just a few years younger than you and look back on this time as if it were another world. In so many ways it was...
wow that brought a tear to my eye
Thank-you so much for sharing and narrating.
Dreams and Memories are made of this! 🙂
Great stuff.. having a film camera back then was quite a luxury. .. Long Island Sound ! Ha ! We sail out of Greenwich Point. Just started getting back into it. Huge fan of the new pocket-rocket cruisers.
There are some beautiful modern classics .. Morris makes some incredible boats and Brooklin BoatYard up in Maine makes dream boats i.e. 82’ Sloop. 👈 😎Probably my favorite.
Thanks for sharing your family with us, those old memories are so much better if you can go back and see them over. Coming from another experience growing up in rural Appalachia Kentucky the son of a logger and grandson of a sawmill owner those memories are where I can go to remember the unity and love of a large family. Thanks again.
This reminds me of the Endless Summer for one reason or another, maybe the feel of the picture, the narration. I greatly appreciate this film.
Envy. Best video of family sailing.
Christian,
I just had to immerse myself into those memories , your memories of a time that once was... Thank You .
Robert
North Star
I grew up with a father who was a Herreshoff fan. He spent summers in Falmouth, Ma on "Cape Cod" and learned to sail and got his first boat at age 11 and then became a top junior sailor throughout all the yacht clubs with sailing programs in southern New England that competed against each other (which is how my mother who summered in RI found out about him).
I wish he were alive to watch your videos. He'd LOVE them. He taught me to sail on our Herreshoff 12 1/2 . We later had a Cape Cod Marlin which I raced in the first Herreshoff Rendesvous in Bristol, RI. .Before I was born he raced S- boats.
Great to watch! Enjoying life without laptops and mobile phones on the sea.
Thats what its all about.
Thank you for posting.
Sir, You talk, I listen. Thank you for your videos!
Thanks for sharing your wonderful stories.
Excellent. I really enjoyed this. Thank you for sharing.
My parents started shooting 8mm before I was born in 1958. A thrilling Sunday evening for us as kids or teens, is when Dad would get the Bell & Howell projector and screen out and pick a dozen reels at random for us all to watch and eat scones that Mum had just baked. I know just how you feel looking at this footage. And yes, the sound of the projector...irreplaceable.
A Fascinating nostalgic glimpse of sailing in the early sixties, with long overhangs, sitting headroom and deck leaks. I remember the 50ft of 16mm film that had to be split down the middle and spliced together to make 100ft of 8mm. Your mum must have been an absolute treasure. Thanks for the upload.
Really enjoyed this. You can feel the moments and authenticity of a simpler time.
You are one of my few favorite people. You are apparently my role model. When im out on the water and fear sets in or I doubt myself and my boat. I do think of you. Thanks.
What a wonderful series of memories brought back to life... I too started out on Long Island, but didn't start sailing till we moved to California (as my dad was in the aerospace industry). My younger brother and I rented a sabot sailboat in San Diego when our dad was giving a speech at a spaceflight conference and it led to designing, building and sailing a custom catamaran the year after high school. Sailing is just affordable space travel.
Thank you for sharing these beautiful memories.
I have a 56 wooden H28 ketch... I aspire to family adventures like this.
Great home movies! Loved the old wood boats and your family adventure.
thanks so much for the video. maybe I could still fulfill my childhood dream of living off a boat cheaply in the gulf coast.
Wow... I didn't realise it was you. Great movie. Hope your family are having a long healthy life.
Outstanding - how I came across this, I will never know, but what a gem!
very late to the party but i just want to tell you how very much i've enjoyed all of your videos, but this one in particular.
thank you very much for sharing. you're a talented story teller and i hope you're still sailing and doing well today.
hanks. Enjoyed it well. brought back memories form those 60's years. Those WERE the good old days for sure.
11:55 still my favorite thing to do on my boat on a hot summer day!
Wow that was so cool. I was a kid then too and I think everything looked softer and better then , Don't you. Thank good ness your mom was a team player !
What great family and sailing footage. The movies are absolute gold. Thanks for sharing.
What a fabulous video. Thanks for that.
Thank you for sharing your wonderful memories with us. Very special.
Thanks for posting... I see and listen.
yet another excellent film - well done indeed
Very nice. Thank you.
amazing video..lucky kids!
Christian, Thanks for sharing the great 8mm footage. Very nostalgic to see your family and vintage boats!
Oh to have the simplicity of those times yet again. Thanks for sharing. Its as if I were there with you. Great commentary.
Thank you for sharing these wonderful memories! My father had a dream of sailing also but opted to buy a small island in the Exumas, Bahamas back in 1962. Dennis Cay is the name of the island and is located in the Pipe Creek sectional on the cruising charts. We spent our summers there building a small cabin on the ocean beginning in 1967. He sold the island in 1994 and I have just purchased a Hunter 40 with the idea of "getting back" to the islands! Thanks again for these extraordinary personal home movies! Loved it!
Very moving video and it shows what a great country we have. I have lived on Long Island with water all around me and salt in my blood my whole life. Great family life being near the ocean. Would not trade it for a second.
How fortunate you were to have such a great family, or at least, you do a great job of portraying that. Your videos always take me back to somewhere I've never actually been. Thanks for sharing.
Great film thank you! I was 10 in 1956 and did a similar family cruise on a 19 ft sloop. My uncle, 3 cousins and I did a week to Tobaga Island from Balboa, Panama. Got me hooked on cruising!!
Love watching all your movies. Thanks for sharing. Incidentally, just finished digitizing 6000 feet of super 8.
I remember Pacific Palisades Marineland was there my father and mother would take me to Marineland to see the whales sometimes we stopped at the Pike which was an amusement park in Long Beach I have such great memory there maybe that's why I have the sailboat in Long Beach at this time but anyhow all that footage reminds me of that time thank you so much.
Marvelous! Really enjoyable. And a nice addition to the history of family sailing.
That is very interesting! My mother who served in the Navy during WWII would have been 41 in 1961 having just given birth to my youngest sibling (4 years younger than myself)! My father who also served in the Navy during the war had re-upped after being recalled for Korea... We lived just up the east coast in Massachusetts in a small town outside of New Bedford.
I find 8mm and 16mm home movies (if well done) are fabulously entertaining. It is certainly apparent to me when I examine old home movies that the personalities of the film maker shows through. Besides being encapsulations of the individual family's lives, they are windows into the past. I have a small collection of them as well as a few projectors.
I would contend that very few electro-mechanical devices that required such precision in their manufacture have fallen so drastically in value, five dollars being the average price I paid for the 8 and 16mm projectors I've purchased.
I think my most prized film shows what I am assuming is a young, VW of North America executive and his wife being flown to Germany to visit the VW factory in Wolfsburg, while doing some sightseeing as well. Totally fascinating...
As for this video of your films, I applaud it, standing ovation even. As well as showing these images to many thousands more than had ever seen them, they are now a part of YT, there for all to see, instead of sitting in a dusty box!
I for one would LOVE if every film I have were narrated by the person making it... Or narrated by you good sir! Thanks for sharing.
Great memories! I grew up doing the same thing. My family started cruising in 1969 on a Pearson coaster. We sailed out of Hempstead harbor. My dad would close his medical practice for the month of July and we would head to New England. I now sail out of RYC in Perth Amboy. Small world.
Beautiful memories, no doubt! Enjoyed seeing the recordings. That's something I enjoy, documenting so others may share the memories and experiences. Thanks for sharing.
Brilliant snapshot from another time
I cried. so nice
Seeing your mom reminded me of our family vacations in the late '50's and early 60's to Florida. Good film.
Visually mesmerizing ! Truly special to get to see history in this format, especially in this day and age.
Everything is perfect, the story, the video, the sound and your voice
well done its how we grew up same way in small boats and they got bigger ,and we did to , and now i see those old boats still around and reflect back and wonder how we did it ,still sail the same waters , but we dont have the lead line and spinning log any more and the boats have come along thanks ,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Great story telling, enjoyed the whole memory trip.
Great Memories and film, I wish I had taken more photographs when I was younger, I still shoot film, it has a look that just can't be imitated by digital. My Brother was 5 years older than me and when I watch this I think of the two of us growing up in Long Beach Ca, thanks for digging this out and converting it to digital, I really enjoyed watching it.
I am impressed. It is a treasure. Thank you for sharing.
The Sound still provides some good sailing, gunkholing and interesting harbors. Often a lot busier, but you can still find days when you’re alone out there. And that southwest breeze usually means beating to get home. Thanks for the memories.
Thanks for sharing such charming memories Christian!
A friend forwarded your video to me. I too grew up spending summers on boats on LI Sound at about the same time as you. We were fortunate to have very close friends who had us aboard every weekend. I started boating at age 5, and at the time our friends owned a Mathews (stink pot) which had a sailing dinghy. One afternoon while anchored in Eaton's Neck they rigged the dinghy and I went for a ride with my father. I spend the rest of the weekend alone in the dinghy. They couldn't get me out. Our friends traded up to a 41' Alden yawl, which we all sailed for several years, and I would help out with the maintenance in the winter as well. I was very smitten with sailing and devoted all my spare time and efforts in its pursuit.
As with your experience, almost every weekend was devoted to our two families spending time on the water. Our base was City Island, and traveled as far as Montauk for vacations, and a similar distance on the Connecticut shore. As you noted in your dialogue spending weekends with family on a boat is a rarity today. I feel it helped bond the family, and as a youth you learned working with others, and the many skills associated with boating, be it knots, splicing, whipping, navigation, storm survival, etc. These are all generically transferable skills and experience to life, and there seems to be little to replace it today, nor an interest in doing so.
I watched very closely your encounters with other boats at sea or in harbor, in the off chance that I might see the Alden yawl BELLATRIX. But it was not to be. I can go on and on, but I did dedicate my life to yachting, ultimately becoming a naval architect and except for a few years during Nam when I was involved in military craft, have spend the past 45 years involved in the design/engineering of yachts, both sail and power. Somehow the adage, "if you don't want to work a day in your life you should make your avocation your vocation", made an impression on me, and true to the adage I have not worked a day in my life.
So thank you for waking up a few dormant brain cells with your movie. Change the boat and the faces, and it could have been my family movie.
Alan Gilbert
"...our friends owned a Mathews (stink pot) which had a sailing dinghy."
Was it Jon Brooks who posted above?
Thanks so much for posting this. We had a 1929 Matthews that we would take our summer cruise on. Single screw, real ice box, no TV, no iPhone... no radar, sonar, or GPS. Just charts and compass and Dad's courses worked out with headings and minutes. A couple of times we towed our Herreshoff 12 1/2 for sailing around the harbors.
Just googled "1929 Matthews". Wow!
I like this video reminds me of simpler times when anything was possible
Thanks for sharing...reminds me of Mr. Biddle's films. He used to travel around and show his films and narrate them live... They were absolutely wonderful!.... And the projector sound was so very memorable!
I really like your videos. Thank you for uploading.
This is among the best history I've seen,and as usual the commentary is first class,thankyou😊
Wow did that bring back memories
Jumping off the sand hills at Port Jeff, going through Plum Gut, going ashore at Dodson's in Stonington to walk up to the store, the ferry at Shelter Island....summer cruise memories. I was a decade later than you, so it was fiberglass boats for us.
Great memories!
Great memories! Thank you for sharing. I loved “Alone Together”.
That was very touching. Thanks for sharing those precious memories...