I've always heard people describe sailing as long periods of boredom followed by short moments of shear terror. Well, unfornately for me, not only did I consider my performance during that first experience with shear terror a failure, but I also had to drag my untrained family along with me, quite possibly scaring them from sailing altogether. With my frequent trips out on the sound alone my confidence in my abilities were building despite my never having formal sailing training. My wife was getting increasingly more interested in joining me out on the water, and we have had a few perfect days out sailing together until this day. The day started out perfect as usual I tried to push myself to go alittle further than normal by circling Hat Island on Possesion Sound near Everett on a single trip a distant of about 8 nautical miles. We started perfectly and caught a good wind and was having fun on a close reach. after reaching my first waypoint we tacked to port and into a close haul which slowed us down. It's amazing how fast time flies on the water if you're not paying attention. My first mistake was not estimating an expected time for the trip. Long story short my lack of keeping time resulted in a tied change and an increased headwind about 15 knots, which made going around the island more difficult task then I was willing to partake with an unexperienced crew. We turned to head back on a broad reach under an ever increasing blow and angry sea. My second mistake was I waited too long to make a sail change. I discovered my weather helm getting increasely difficult to control. Not having a roller furling I had to go to the bow leaving the tiller with my wife to drop the head sail before we lost control. My wife being nervous by the growing waves could not keep the helm straight so we proceeded to spin out of control until I got genoa down. The stress level immediately went from 0 to 100 as my wife began panicing and the children taking queues from her also begun panicing. So I had a sail configuration that needed changing, a out of control helm, and paniced frozen crew to deal with. In my own fog of war mentality the only thing I could think of was of getting my family out of the situation. So another mistake I made was droping the main and trying to start the outboard to power my way back to the safety of the jetty channel. Mind you we were doing a steady 7 knots in 5 foot seas on just the main, but the combination of a paniced crew where I'm now feeling guilty of putting in this situation and my own inexperience in five foot seas proved too much. I couldn't get the outboard started and found a bad situation getting worst. I ended up calling the coast guard on the radio who got us a tow from another nearby sailboat a 35 footer Ironically named "Temperary insanity". The captain also had his family out but he was obviously very comfortable in the conditions. After getting back to safety with my now traumitized seasick family. I reflected on the situation a thousand times. My wife was surprisingly understanding, but I realised that if at least one more experienced crew member were there we wouldn't have had made that many mistakes and it would've been a more manageable situation. I've since taken the boat out of the water for the winter am not willing to go back out with such an unreliable outboard, but I feel I'm just making excuses.