Anyone have an opinion on what's a good age to begin taking a kid sailing on a H14 or H16? My wife thinks our 3-year-old is too young, and thinks I should get a monohull...I've never sailed anything but Hobie 14 and 16's other than as crew.

3 years old is fine. Start out on light days it will be more comfortable for the mom uh I mean the kid. As everyone gets more comfortable on the boat then increase the wind. Not to be confused with breaking wind... Don't make the mistake of putting them in a harness and letting them hang out on the trap wire. My son (and girls) want to put trapeeze wires on my Stiletto now. Start early, makes for excellent crew and more time on the water.

Good luck,
Clayton
H16, S27

Go ahead and put some wires on it:-)
Last year there was a Stiletto 27? on Ebay that had custom made stainless steel wings.
They resembled Hobie 18 wings.

I have two daughters, ages 6 and 8 who I am sailing with as often as I can. What I have been doing is making sure I have an adult crew person whose primary job is to go in after either girl in the event they fall over board.
And still I am only sailing in light wind because I want them to want to sail more.
mike

Hey

well im only 17 and dont have kids of course but im a sailing instructor for the sailing club in Canberra which is in Austraila. Ok abit about the club, we sail on a small lake which is very hard to sail on and the worst problem is its not really a cat club we only have 8 or so cats racing. The people i work with are great sailors but they only sail mono hulls and since i sail both i preety much run the place. Well we do these kids courses and we have an age limit of 5 and above and well there problem there is we dont think putting kids on boats at that age is safe. So what we do is get an instructor to go out with them and teach them that way. This is only on hobie waves but on day some one crashed on and i couldn't fix it then and then so i took 3 kids on a hobie 16. It was about 17knots and we all know 17 is a fun wind for people who know what they are doing but even though we went out and had fun. I capsized because of a big gust and all the kids went in and they loved it no matter what. 3 would be pushing it but it would be completly fine if it was under 10 knots. I hope this helps. If you want any thing more just email me.

From Julian