Boats for Young Sailors

In Thanet - lots of good clubs around, although all sea based. I'm not sure if there are any clubs based on lakes, which may be better for the children

Bethwaite made an interesting point in his last book. He commented that (changing the language) in initial aviation training the pupil always uses a two hander and even when sailing solo has regular checks with an instructor on board so that incipient faults may readily be spotted and corrected. He suggested that we are not very good at this in conventional training because it is so much more difficult to spot and correct faults from a passing RIB, and that one of the motivations for his on shore trainer was exactly so such checks could be readily instituted.

I see the point. If you put the sailors in two handers and swap round then they have half the sailing time that they would in singlehanders. But if you don't regularly put the sailors in two handers with an instructor your ability to correct incipient faults is greatly reduced. It seems to me that there's an argument for one instructor to spend a large chunk of every session in a two hander, swapping all the pupils into it one at a time so as to be able to correct incipient faults far more readily than is possible shouting from a RIB.

They can crawl all over the deck of the Mirror, too. Mine had a wonderful time at this age playing in one.

3 and 5 are very young to be putting in a boat on their own. My daughter has sailed with me in a Mirror since she was 3 and until this year (9) she was very nervous when put in an Oppie.

in the OP's position, I got a miracle, and took them both out at the same time, although they were a couple of years older. For kids that small, I would probably find an inland venue