It’s spectacular to watch your child do something that you have only read about.

The few times I have sailed, I either heaved with nausea or drooped with medication. Even without chronic motion sickness, the opportunity to sail didn’t come often to a working class kid of a single mom nor to the waitress I became who spent her discretionary income on writing classes. Sailing has become a rite of passage exclusively for the First Class ticket holders, not for those of us whose families came to Ellis Island in steerage. Sailing with its pricey boats, yacht club memberships, and mooring fees seemed as remote to my life experience as passage on The Beagle with Darwin to discover the giant tortoises of the Galápagos Islands.

And yet, for all my lack of experience with sailing, I know so much about it. You cannot earn an English Literature degree without becoming acquainted with the masters of nautical adventure – Homer, Herman Melville, and Joseph Conrad. If vicarious sailing counted as actual sailing, I would be as seafaring as Starbuck, the first mate of the Pequod in Moby Dick … OK, I’m over reaching … more like Flask, the third mate. European countries conquered this world one commissioned sailing fleet at a time. Sailing is awe inspiring.

This past summer I sent my nine year old son Sam to Sail Buffalo’s Junior Sailing Camp for two weeks. Pierre Wallinder, Director of Operations at Sail Buffalo, is from Sweden and has socialist inclinations suggested we barter: I designed and currently manage the Sail Buffalo website in order to offer Sam this opportunity. Sam's favorite activities – skippering a dinghy with a fellow camp-mate, tying knots, and angling into the true wind on a keel boat for speed.

As I snapped pictures of him cool and confident on the bow of the ship, I couldn’t help but think of The Great Gatsby. He was my “Old Sport” discovering the breadth of his own horizon. Sail Buffalo’s Junior Sailing Camp is an opportunity to offer your child a new skill set, access to priviledge he may not otherwise have attained at birth, adventure without the absurd cost of purchasing, owning, boarding, maintaining your own sailboat. Rather than buying my kid still another lego set, I will give him more opportunities to learn how to sail his own ship.