{"id":344,"date":"2006-06-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-06-14T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/?p=344"},"modified":"2009-04-15T08:59:19","modified_gmt":"2009-04-15T13:59:19","slug":"s_logs-dashew-dashew248","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/s_logs-dashew-dashew248\/","title":{"rendered":"Children&#8217;s Safety &#8211; Infants and Toddlers on Board"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"intro\">Linda&#8217;s advice for cruising with toddlers on board.<\/div>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Dear Uli and David:<\/p>\n<p>Elyse forwarded your inquiry regarding the safety of taking your twin sons with you while you take offshore sailing lessons.<\/p>\n<p>At first I tried to think of how you could keep them safe and occupied and out of trouble while you learn about sailing and coastal cruising. Then I thought&#8230;Why would you want to take them into that situation in the first place? What could you possibly get out of a learning situation with your mind focused on the well being of your children? Would you plan to take your children with you if you were taking lessons in advanced anything on a college campus? I don&#8217;t think it would be fair to you or to your sons to place them in such a situation.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\" class=\"mosimage\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"432\" hspace=\"6\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Image\" title=\"Image\" src=\"\/images\/stories\/dashew\/emma-todd-fish.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<div align=\"center\" style=\"text-align: center;\" class=\"mosimage_caption\">The Dashews&#8217; granddaughter Emma enjoys a laugh with her dad Todd in <em>Beowulf<\/em>&#8216;s pilot house off Norfolk, Virginia in 2001.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>My advice to you is to arrange for your sons to be cared for at home while you two do the coastal cruising class alone. Then, when it&#8217;s time to take your own boat out, you can modify the space to safely keep them from harm. Mesh lee boards or lee cloths make a berth into a fine bunk. If you want to secure a play pen of sorts in the main saloon, that would be easy to do on your own boat. It would also be a good idea to string mesh on the lifelines to keep them from falling overboard when on deck. It sounds like you&#8217;re already aware of wearing life jackets and\/or tethers. All of these things would be easy to do on your own boat but I don&#8217;t think the sailing school would allow you to modify their equipment, nor would you want to. <\/p>\n<p>Hope this doesn&#8217;t sound too much like a crotchety grandmother &#8211; Maybe I misunderstood your questions and you were not planning on taking the toddlers with you on the Advanced Coastal Cruising course in June.<\/p>\n<p>Sincerely, Linda Dashew<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Linda&#8217;s advice for cruising with toddlers on board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dashew-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}