For this issue, which we’ve loosely woven with a family watersports theme, we thought you would enjoy reading about other families and boating.

The beginning of summer is a time I always associate with family. It’s got a lot of built-in ingredients, such as Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, graduations, and schools closing for summer vacation. As a kid growing up in Larchmont, New York, it was the season I associated with being on the water. The words “summer” and “Larchmont Yacht Club” are synonymous in my memory.
I made sure it was the same for my kids, at least until we moved down to Miami and boating became a glorious year ‘round activity, avocation and vocation. Putting the kids out on the water early was a deliberate decision—a way to teach them courage, self-reliance and sportsmanship. (You don’t get that from video games!)  I’m proud to say that my grandchildren were raised the same way. Two of my granddaughters have already surpassed my racing career and one will be representing the USA at the 40th Annual Volvo Youth Sailing ISAF World Championship in Istanbul, Turkey, in July. For her, sailing competitions have been the entrée to world travel.
We started small; the first boat I bought my family was a project boat, a 13-foot Whaler with a big hole in the bottom. My boys and I patched it up good as new under the direction of Dick Fisher. The only reason I got rid of it was that my oldest boys suddenly sprouted over six feet tall and couldn’t ski behind it anymore.
Boating is our way of life, and if you are reading this magazine, it’s your way of life, too. We live for the blissful sunsets anchored on a smooth bay, but we’ll take the other parts, too. I like that bumper sticker popular with fishermen that reads: “A bad day on the water is better than a good day in the office.”
For this issue, which we’ve loosely woven with a family watersports theme, we thought you would enjoy reading about other families and boating.
I think you’ll get a kick out of 16-year-old Nicole Portuondo who started fishing with her dad at age four and now routinely fishes the pants off adult tournament anglers. Then there are John and Anna Stamas, third generation Greek-Americans whose love of boatbuilding is a family tradition. We have a piece about new boats from Cheoy Lee, which you may not know is a shipyard owned by a Chinese family with nautical traditions dating back to steamships in 1870. We also coaxed two noted naval architects who have second careers as writers into sharing their thoughts of boating as it relates to fathers, and we found three daysailers that look like they are from grandpa’s era, but are made of the most modern materials and deliver performance to delight an entire family.
As we started assembling this issue, our editor had her boat hauled for its annual bottom job. Taking a break from investing a little sweat equity, she struck up a conversation with another person in the yard who, upon learning that our editor lives aboard said boat, commented, “well, it must be difficult for you to never get away from boats.”
“Why,” said our editor, “would I ever want to get away from boats?”
Indeed.