Set Sail Aboard a Tall Ship - Grandparents.com

Introduce your grandchild to lobster and lighthouses, seagulls and seals, on a Windjammer cruise.

What happens to a rambunctious 5-year-old grandson if you remove him from his mom, his friends, TV, video games, jungle gyms and ice cream shops, and contain him within a 65- by 20-foot space for three days and four nights?

He learns to love sailing in Maine, is what happens.

Photo by Christian Hatfield

Sam and his father

Nostalgic for those golden days when we took our three young children cruising off the coast of Maine some 30 years ago, I decided to give grandson Sam a taste of some of the best days of his dad's childhood. So Sam, his dad Christian, and I signed on for a cruise of Penobscot Bay aboard the 65-foot schooner Isaac H. Evans, out of Rockland, Me.

The Evans is one of a dozen historic tall ships in the Maine Windjammer Association that have been reconfigured as passenger cruising ships from their original purposes. Built in 1886, she was an oyster schooner that worked the Delaware Bay for 85 years and is one of seven vessels in the Windjammer fleet that is now a National Historic Landmark.

Photo by Christian Hatfield

The Isaac H. Evans at anchor

One more special thing about the Evans: her captain is a Her, as well. Brenda G. Walker owns and operates the sailing ship with an expertise that is becoming famous. You can watch her navigate the Evans through "The Basin," a precarious passage at Vinalhaven Island, on YouTube.

A five-year-old doesn't care whether his captain is a he or a she, or how well she tacks; he just wants to leave the dock and start sailing, which we did after a quiet night docked in Rockland harbor. Sam was the only child on board, but his dad, his grandma and the other 12 passengers and four crew members were kindly tolerant of children. The Evans welcomes little ones six and older, and even offers special family cruises, such as a Pirate Adventure, but we didn't find such a theme necessary. For a little boy who has spent all five of his years in the desert of New Mexico, everything on the Maine coast is amazing in itself, from the seagulls and seals, to the lighthouses and lobster boats.

In the midst of lobster country, Sam found the crustacean as exotic as a white leopard. He was fascinated by the fact that the Evans carried a lobster trap that she could lower to the bottom of the sea around us and catch live lobsters any time.

When the Evans brought three dozen live lobsters with us to tiny Russ Island for a cookout on the beach, Sam, mesmerized, followed the box from the dinghy to the shore, where the captain laid it in the water to keep cold while she built a fire.

Photo by Christian Hatfield

Penobscot Bay

Russ Island is one of Maine's protected, uninhabited islands — for visiting only — pristine and covered with spruce pines and rocks. A tiny trail leads to the top of the hill, where the view of the schooner in the afternoon sunlight, surrounded by the sparkling water of Penobscot Bay, dotted by islands, and a lazy sailboat here and there, is mind-boggling beautiful. But Sam was more interested in getting back down to the beach, to ask if he could open the lobster pot and check on the critters.

"Sure," said Captain Brenda. "Go ahead. But just put the top back on when you're through looking, so the sun doesn't dry them out."

Photo by Christian Hatfield

Sam handles a lobster

Assured by the captain that each lobster claw was secured with a tight rubber band, Sam managed the courage to lift one out of the pot to hold it while it wriggled and flipped its tail. His whole afternoon was taken up by checking on these wild creatures of the deep, as well as walking the beach with his dad to see periwinkles, a washed-up jellyfish, and thousands of barnacles.

Sam squatted down over the barnacles attached to boulders at the edge of the sea. His dad explained that they were all alive, with tiny tentacles that felt around for food and pulled back when they sensed danger. Sam experimented by passing a finger over the tentacles to watch them retreat, just as dad had said. Talk about maritime studies!

"Is the water boiling?" he kept asking Brenda as she got the big pot ready for the lobsters and corn on the cob. When it was finally bubbling, Sam watched the captain and her crew dump the lobsters into the pot and fill it with seaweed and corn. Twenty minutes later, when they poured out the steamed red lobsters, Sam smiled. With a shrug of his shoulders, both hands open to the sky in a gesture of complete wonder and awe, he exclaimed, "And now, they are food!"

Did he miss his new Star Wars video game? I had worried. Well, as the little wooden launch carried us back to the majestic Isaac Evans anchored offshore, Sam asked, "Can we go back to this island tomorrow?"

"No," his dad answered, "Tomorrow we're going to sail to an even better one."

A grandma in the galley

Show me a 5-year-old who isn't picky about food; but when you're tacking across the bay near Rockport, all sails up with a 20-knot wind blowing over your bow, all food tastes wonderful. Sam ate everything that Margi the chef created, including lots of foods that he thinks he doesn't like when onshore. Margi's the grandmother of two 5-year-olds, and, in addition to singing sea songs and dancing a hornpipe around the deck, she can make better funny faces than Sam can make back — and did — to his surprised delight.

While many of us helped to raise the sails, lower the anchor, and steer, Sam was too young for those chores. His job was to ring the dinner (and breakfast and lunch) bell, to a round of applause from his fellow passengers.

On land, he never wants to go to sleep when he's having fun. But each night at sea, when I tucked him into his cozy little bunk berth piled with pure wool blankets and cotton quilts, I couldn't read more than a few pages of his Hardy Boys mystery before his eyes closed.

Our Labor Day cruise included Windjammer Weekend, during which the entire fleet sailed into Camden to be greeted dockside by a bagpiper and a singer of sea chanteys. The festivities continued with a talent show at Harbor Park overlooking the bay.

Photo by Christian Hatfield

Sam and his grandmother on shore

Grandparents of young children might worry that their little ones would need more exercise than sitting on a sailboat for four days offers, but we stopped every day at islands and little towns and got in plenty of walking. They might worry about the danger of falling overboard, but little ones need to be watched whether they're on or offshore; you can't avoid it.

Just as this cruise brought pleasant memories of his childhood sailing days to my son, I'm thrilled that this Windjammer cruise provided his son some of the same magic. Hereafter, his Maine sailing adventure will be a part of Sam's own sweet past.