How did you first start sailing

[accomplice]

As a little kid I was enthralled with sailing. I grew up with a single mother in a town with a nice lake about 350 acres -- and we didn't have a boat. At age 3, I convinced her to buy a sailboat for the family to use on the lake. It was a stretch for her, but she picked up a Snark styrofoam boat, and that is what we used for a few years. I remember her being terrified that I'd hit something hard with it and it would break in half. Fortunately, that never happened. A few years later a neighbor bought an O'Day 23 and I would crew for him on daytrips and loved it. I've been sailing ever since, with a few years off after an accidental jibe on a C&C44 hit me in the head.

[sammyy]

A friend of my brother didn't want to crew in his dad's Firefly any more, so got him to go down and sail with the dad. I went along for the ride, and got a job crewing someone else. That was in 1975, and even though I sail other boats more, I still think of myself primarily as a Firefly sailor. First impressions are very strong.