Cockpit table classics - the Kellogg's variety pack

Being dragged off on the boat for long cruises to boring harbors with the parents was my introduction to Type 2 fun. Type 1 fun is, of course, fun that you know you're having while you're having it. Type 2 fun only reveals itself as having been fun later - winter camping and being dragged off on the boat for long cruises with the parents being two prime examples.

Of course now those "boring harbors" like Hadley Harbor and Westport Harbor are the first places we head to, their beautiful serenity being much more attractive to stressed-out adults than to kids mad about having been ripped away from friends, sailing class, and swim team.

There was, however, one reliable bribe/reward for our complicity in these adventures - the Kellogg's variety pack. Being the well meaning and generally responsible people my parents were, we were restricted to boring healthy cereals at home. Raisin Bran was about as wild as it got in our house. On the boat, however, you got to start each day by choosing one piece of forbidden, sugar-laden fruit. As I recall, this daily ritual was one of the rare times my older brother and I didn't "negotiate" by slugging it out. We each had our preferences, my top two being Sugar Corn Pops and Apple Jacks. We knew there would be two jokers in the deck - Raisin Bran and Corn Flakes - which we'd figure out how to manage. And that was that.

That must be one of the enduring draws that boats have for kids, that they're put in these situations that are outside of their norm, and given responsibility that they wouldn't normally have. I don't recall Dad ever having eight year old me take the wheel of the family car, but I drove our cruising boats from here to there and back again. The family that first took me "real fishing" showed the kids how to wash and store the gear and then wash the boat (while the adults headed straight to the marina bar, no doubt). 

So yeah, as much as we crabbed about these ocean voyages that took up a seemingly huge amount of our precious summers, there are no fonder memories I have and the culinary wonders of the Kellogg's Variety Pack are right in the middle of that.