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Read Ebook: Yachting Vol. 1 by Brassey Thomas Brassey Earl Pritchett R T Robert Taylor Seth Smith C E Sullivan Edward Sir Watson G L George Lennox
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uted for the spinners; while the steerer takes tiller in one hand and mainsheet in the other, and concentrates all his faculties on regulating the pace of the boat, and going as near as he can to the rocks without incurring shipwreck or fouling the lines.
Or imagine a morning of quite another sort. The sky is gloomy; the sun is quite invisible; it is raining occasionally, and a strong searching wind is blowing. The seas are running up in magnificent white masses on the islands outside the mouth of the loch. It is too cold to sit on deck; indeed it seems cold everywhere on board. It is impossible to do anything with the yacht, for you want to go south, and it is evidently blowing a gale outside from the south-west. It is the sort of day on which, if you had no boat, and there was nothing to do on shore, you would sit shivering most of the time below, trying to read, thinking what a miserable business yachting is in bad weather, and feeling ill from defective circulation. But if you have a good boat such a day has positive charms. You and your boating pal look in each other's eyes and say, almost in a breath, 'Let's beat out round the islands and see what the sea is like.' Indeed you almost persuade yourselves that it is a duty to do so with a view to the possibility of getting away to-morrow. So your boat is hauled alongside, and a little extra ballast is put in, and you and your mate get your oilskins, and, dropping into her, double reef your mainsail and foresail, and shove off. And by the time you have got your sheets trimmed, your halliards coiled away, and everything made snug, you are already as warm as any reasonable men can wish to be.
It is a long leg and a short one out of the harbour, and you get a heavy puff now and again from over the high land that brings your lee-rail level with the water, and makes you luff in a hurry. Three or four tacks bring you to the headlands of the bay, and as you stand out from under the weather-shore you begin to feel the real wind and sea. There is plenty of both, and you have to do all you know with tiller and sheet to negotiate the big seas that roll up on the weather-bow and to keep the lee-gunwale out of the water at the same time. It is just a little more than you can manage. A couple of steep combers that you have to luff up to knock all the way out of the boat and make her stagger; the next sea throws her head off the wind, while at the same time a heavy puff forces her lee-side under water. You put the helm down, but she has had no time to gather much way, and is slow coming to; you are forced to let go the sheet, but she has taken a good drop on board before she comes up, and there are more big seas coming. 'It won't do,' you say to your mate; 'we must have another reef in.' So you drop your peak, and wear, and run back under the shelter of the point, and take your third reef down. Then you stand out and try again; and it is wonderful what a difference the reduction of canvas has made. She stands well up, and rides beautifully over the big seas, hardly shipping a cupful of water as she rears up and lets them pass under her. It is an art, if a simple one, steering a boat to windward in a big sea. You have to put her almost straight at the worst seas, and yet you must never let her lose way, or she will fall off broadside to the sea, and perhaps be too 'sick' to come to again in time to prevent a vicious wave from breaking on board or capsizing her. And there are few things more exhilarating. Every big sea successfully surmounted is a triumph in itself, and the winning of ground to windward foot by foot against wind and sea feels like an arduous but steadily victorious struggle against a sturdy foe.
And now you find you can weather the island, and, choosing a 'smooth,' go about for the last time. If the seas breaking on it looked fine from the yacht nearly three miles off, they look awe-inspiring now close under your lee with their roar thundering in your ears. Now you are no longer riding head first over the seas, but running free at a slashing pace, sheet in hand, watching the sea narrowly over your shoulder, ready to luff instantly if some specially dangerous monster should make it necessary.
And when you are well clear of the rocks you bear up and run before it--most glorious and exulting sensation of all. The big seas come hissing and growling up in pursuit, and lift up her stern on high, and the boat seems positively to fly as she tears down their steep faces. You have to use all your strength at the tiller to keep her straight, and your mate keeps the peak halliards in hand and lowers the peak now and again to ease your task and avert a possible broach to. In less than half an hour you are back on board the yacht; a little wet, maybe, but tingling with exhilaration, and warmed through for the rest of the day.
These are but two typical sails out of many that might be sketched, for the variations of weather and sea and coast are nearly endless, and the yachtsman who is a persistent boat-sailer will find his memory stocked with glowing recollections of rapturous sails and fascinating explorations wherever his yacht has taken him--in breezy English waters, and on the wild west coasts of Scotland and Ireland; in Greece and Italy, and many a pleasant land in the Mediterranean Sea; perhaps even the Coral Islands of the South Pacific, and the wooded bays of far New Zealand.
Of course there is a reverse side to the picture--days when storms make sailing too dangerous to be quite pleasant, and more often, days when want of wind makes it almost intolerably tiresome. To row, or be rowed in, a heavy boat halfway across the Bay of Naples by night is certainly an experience in tediousness. Though even such an ordeal as that is not quite without its compensations. But I feel it is rash of me to say so.
Like so many things material and other in the world we live in, every boat is necessarily a compromise between inconsistent objects. In building a boat you must compromise somewhere between speed and stability, weatherliness and the advantages of light draught. And in the case of a yacht's boat freedom of choice in design is limited by some special considerations. She must not be too heavy to carry in the davits; she must not exceed a certain length, say 25 feet; she must not be too broad in the beam to be carried inboard; and her draught of water must be somewhat shallow for the sake of convenience in landing. Subject to these conditions, stability is, I am sure, the object that should principally be aimed at in the construction of a yacht's boat. The ever-present and the most serious danger of boat-sailing is that of being overpowered by weather: that is to say, of being overtaken by a wind so strong that the boat will not carry any canvas sufficient to work her without instantly capsizing or filling with water. And a very ordinary gale of wind, such as occurs on our coasts once at least in most months of the year, will be enough for this, and will, especially if combined with sea, so overpower any open boat, of a size that can be carried on a yacht, that is exposed to its full strength, that she will be unable to show any canvas to it except just to scud before it.
I am aware that this statement will be felt a little startling, perhaps even by some sailors; but I have tried a good many experiments in sailing boats in rough weather, and I am sure it is true of any boat that the yacht-owner is likely to carry.
Builders of yachts' sailing boats are not, somehow, usually very successful in making boats 'stiff.' They will not make them flat enough in the floor, or, if they do, do not make it the right shape. Their idea, generally, is to build a boat that will beat boats of a similar class in regattas, and sail fast on a fine day in the smooth waters of a harbour; and if you allow them their own way, they will generally provide you with a crank boat, over-masted and over-canvassed, that may sail very fast in a light wind and smooth water, but which will be overpowered at once in a fresh breeze and a choppy sea. And some day, even perhaps after you have done your best to make her more seaworthy by lightening her mast and cutting down her canvas, you may have the mortification of seeing a fishing-boat no larger than your own craft making a good passage and standing up like a stake under her close-reefed sail, whilst you are unable to show a rag to the wind without being at once overpowered. And remember that you cannot make an open boat stiff by the simple process of loading her with ballast, as even some sailors vainly suppose. Beyond the amount which brings her to her best sailing trim in a good breeze, and which experience of the boat will teach you, additional ballast hardly makes her appreciably stiffer, and does make her very appreciably slower. Make stability, then, your primary object, and impress on your builder that he must not sacrifice it to speed; and that, as it is out of the question to obtain it by means of a lead or iron keel, the weight of such a thing in the case of a large boat being quite prohibitory , he must make her flat in the floor and give her plenty of beam.
With the same object in mind, her spread of canvas should be moderate but sufficient, and her masts and spars no heavier than is really necessary. These are generally quite needlessly stout. If the mast is strong enough to capsize the boat without breaking, it is as strong as it need be; anything beyond this merely means additional topweight, decreasing the stability of the boat, and doing no service. A very light mast, if properly stayed by a couple of wire shrouds on each side, will stand an immense strain.
It is a disputable question whether such a boat should be a lifeboat. The air-tight compartments, usually made of copper, certainly add to her weight, and, some say, make her less stiff. On the other hand, it is pleasant to feel that your boat is unsinkable, and that if you knock a hole through her bottom with a rock, or ship an unlucky sea, she will not go down. But if you decide, as I should do, on a lifeboat, be sure that she really is one, and that her air-tight compartments are large enough to float her with ballast and crew on board. A 25-ft. cutter, such as is built by White of Cowes, will carry more than half a ton of ballast and half a dozen people quite comfortably when she is full of water. But I have seen small steam-launches, nominally lifeboats, that would undoubtedly, with their engines and boilers on board, sink like stones if they were filled with water.
Wooden air-tight compartments are lighter than copper tanks, but they are apt to warp and become leaky. Twenty-two years ago, in New Zealand, I had a lifeboat sailing-cutter sent out to me by long sea that I had had built for me in England. As soon as she arrived I took a friend out for a sail on a rough day and filled her with water, just to show him her marvellous properties. The result was ignominious. The water-tight compartments filled, and we drifted helplessly home, thanking the Fates that we had nothing but water ballast on board.
The shape of the stern is another point on which opinions may reasonably differ. There is much to be said in favour of a boat being sharp at both ends. A sharp stern is undoubtedly safer when running through broken water or before a heavy sea, and when a boat 'squats' in running before a strong wind it does not drag dead water behind it, and makes a cleaner wake. But unless increased length can be given to the boat it diminishes stiffness. The square-sterned boat carries her bearings farther aft, and so, if both are of the same length, the square-sterned boat, other things being equal, will be the stiffest of the two. But if you decide for a square stern let the boat have a fine run aft, and let the square surface of the stern be small and well up out of the water.
Any sort of a counter is an abomination, dangerous to a boat in a sea-way.
She should have a good side; that is, a high side above water. It adds to her stability, as well as making her much drier. If her side is rather low, washboards fixed along the top of the gunwale will be found advantageous in rough weather. She should be higher out of water at both ends than amidships, and the line of her rail should describe a graceful curve from bow to stern. A boat that looks quite level from end to end is generally a poor sea-boat, and, if her bottom corresponds with her top, a bad steerer besides.
I think she should certainly have a centreboard. Several of the smartest yachts' cutters use instead a half-moon-shaped keel of galvanised iron, clamped on to the keel of the boat. I cannot see that this contrivance, which makes a boat useless for anything but deep-water sailing, has any advantages of its own over a centreboard, and its disadvantages are serious. It makes it impossible to beach the boat, or to attempt any landing-place when the water may be shallow, and whenever the boat runs aground or hits a rock, as she is sure to do sometimes when fishing or exploring, it is nearly certain to get broken or bent; and whenever it is left behind, a boat of this kind will cease to be very weatherly, and may even miss stays. Moreover, it must be rather an awkward thing to put on and take off when the boat is in the davits.
A wooden false keel of more graduated shape, deep in the middle and tapering to nothing at the ends, is a better contrivance, but it is open to some of the same objections about landing, in a minor degree.
It is hardly necessary at the present day to combat the prejudice against centreboards. But for many years there was a curious dislike and distrust of them among British boat-sailers and builders. They were excluded altogether from most regattas; and not one in twenty of the boats that would have been vastly improved by them were ever fitted with them. They were regarded, for some mysterious reason, as unseaworthy, unsportsmanlike, and unfair; and when the average boating man found his craft beaten out of sight in going to windward by a centreboard boat, he considered the discovery that she had a centreboard a satisfactory explanation of his defeat, and seldom drew the further conclusion that a centreboard was an excellent thing.
And yet, after nearly twenty-five years' experience of them, I have never been able to discover what the objections to them are. The case of the centreboard is said to get in the way; but unless you want to load your whole boat with very bulky cargo, I am unable to conceive what it can get in the way of. And the merits of a centreboard are many and obvious. It enables you to combine the advantages of deep and shallow draught. You can run your boat up on a beach, and be holding your own to windward against a deep-keeled yacht ten minutes afterwards. It makes the most ordinary boat weatherly, smart, and handy to steer. It gives you timely warning of shallow water, and the only result of its touching the bottom or striking a rock is to send it up into its case. I have never had my centreboard either bent or broken by such contact. But it is well to have it lowered on a chain or wire rather than on an iron shank, with a joint or two near the handle, as in most of White's boats. Because when the centreboard hits the bottom and is forced up into the case, these joints will double up inside the case, and the solid part of the shank be driven through the top of it; which would be unpleasant for anyone who happened to be sitting there.
A centreboard, except in so far as its weight makes ballast, does not make a boat stiffer, as the uninitiated often suppose, but in the case of a broad, shallow boat, rather the reverse, as it prevents her from being blown away to leeward. And in a boat such as is being here considered, it should not be too heavy for one man to haul up. It should be made of a thin sheet of galvanised iron.
As regards her rig, nothing is really so handy and capable as the cutter, or, to speak more accurately, the sloop rig; consisting of mainsail and foresail, as ordinary working canvas. I prefer the sloop rig of a single foresail on a short iron bumpkin, to the end of which the forestay is attached, to the cutter rig of staysail and jib with a regular bowsprit; for a bowsprit is an awkward thing in rounding to and coming alongside a ship, under all sorts of conditions of wind and tide, and a second head-sail gives you more gear to attend to when you are single-handed. And on a boat of this size a single foresail is not too large to be easily handled.
What makes this rig so suitable for the peculiar and varied purposes of a yacht's boat is, that, with mainsheet and peak halliards kept in hand, it gives such absolute control over the pace and direction of the boat at a moment's notice. In whiffing round the rocks after pollack, for instance, in a flawy wind, by lowering and raising the peak, and easing off and hauling in the mainsheet, it is easy to maintain a perfectly level pace of two or three knots. In a squall, or in going alongside a ship or a landing-place, the peak can be dropped and the boat eased or checked at once without becoming unsailable. This constitutes, in my opinion, a very important advantage over the standing lugsail, of which, of course, the peak cannot be lowered. A downhaul should be attached to the end of the gaff, as the peak will not always drop when the wind is pressing the sail against the topping lift.
The foresheets should lead aft and be made fast round cleats or pins within reach of the steersman for convenience when sailing single-handed; the mainsheet should travel on an iron horse across the stern; but care should be taken that the shackle, A, that attaches the block to the horse, should be of a size and shape that will not jam when the block hangs down loosely, and perhaps takes a turn, as it may in going about. One squally day this year, the writer, who had always wondered how people could be so foolish as to get drowned through their mainsheets being foul, found himself, after going about, with the lower block of his mainsheet twisted and jammed under the horse, at such an angle that the sheet would not run: while, to make the mischief complete, the tiller was jammed by the block as well, so that he could neither luff nor ease the sheet.
A jackyard topsail that requires no topmast can be set, and a spinnaker will be found very useful for running in light weather. A bowsprit can also be run out and a jib set; but this will probably be found to upset the balance of sail on the centreboard, and make her carry lee-helm, in which case it will be of no use.
If a standing lugsail is preferred, the peak should be cut high, and the long yard should be as light as is consistent with the necessary strength. I can see no advantage over the cutter mainsail, except that the halliards are rather simpler. Old sailors and fishermen will tell you that a boat with a yard is always stiffer than one with a gaff. With a dipping lug, such as fishermen use, or a balance lug, this seems not improbable, as in these rigs a considerable part of the yard and sail is to windward or in front of the mast; but with a standing lugsail, which, if it has a boom, is practically identical in shape with a cutter's mainsail, it is hard to believe that there is much in it--the peak halliards can hardly make much difference.
A balance lug, however excellent for racing or for fine-weather sailing in protected waters, is unsuited for the varied purposes of a yacht's cutter, and the rough experiences to which she will be exposed. For it is not possible either to lower the peak, or to trice up the tack, or to brail up the sail by means of the topping-lift, and in a squall it is not unlikely to jam against the mast and refuse to come down.
Though the yawl may not be quite so handy as the cutter-rig in the matter of instantaneous control of pace and direction--for there is the mizzen as well as the mainsail to think about--it has certain special and important advantages of its own. When it is necessary to shorten sail, to strike the mizzen is equivalent to taking a reef in the mainsail without any of the difficulty and delay involved in that operation; or you can lower the mainsail and reef it at leisure whilst you sail under foresail and mizzen. To lower the mainsail of a cutter in order to reef it involves losing way and falling off to leeward. Moreover, whether the sail be up or down, it is much easier to take reefs down on the main-boom of a yawl, which is well inside the boat, than on that of a cutter, which is right out over the stern. To haul down and secure the earing on the main-boom of a cutter when she is plunging in a sea-way and burying her rail with the force of the wind is a difficult and even dangerous operation, which is not unlikely to end, if you are not careful, in your finding yourself in the sea and your boat careering gaily away without you.
The tiller of a yawl must be shaped or placed so that the mizzen-mast does not get in its way; there are several ways of contriving this. A yoke with lines does not give sufficient power, unless so large as to be inconvenient.
The amount of ballast required will depend somewhat on the shape of the boat, but about 11 cwt. will probably be found to be about the right amount for a 25-ft. boat with three or four men on board under ordinary circumstances. When there is a very strong wind and fewer hands on board, an extra 2 cwt. or 3 cwt. may be added. But much extra ballast makes a boat slow--much more so, oddly enough, than the same amount of weight in people--without adding very much to her stability.
Blocks of lead about 1/2 cwt. each make the best ballast. These should be cast so as to fit two long boxes along the floor on each side of the keel in the centre of the boat. But it is well to have some of the ballast in the form of shot-bags weighing about 40 lbs. each, which can be placed further aft and shifted about as required.
Water ballast is unsatisfactory. Its bulk is not the only objection. Its specific gravity is so small that it will not make a boat stiff, and so even a boat that has no water-tight compartments will be safer in a strong wind with lead or iron ballast. A lifeboat that will float 3/4 ton of lead or iron is, of course, much more so.
I give here dimensions, drawings, and diagrams of two typical yachts' sailing boats, well suited for knocking about in all sorts of weather, one belonging to the writer, the other to Colonel Gamble of the 'Aline.' The former, the 'Black Pearl's' cutter, is a 25-ft. lifeboat, with copper air-tanks, built by Messrs. Fay & Co., from a design of T. Soper's, with a centreboard, and sloop-rigged. She has a high side, and a good deal of shear, while her forefoot is somewhat cut away. She is fairly fast, and weatherly, fairly stiff, and a beautiful sea-boat. She carries usually 11 cwt. of ballast, occasionally as much as 14 cwt.
Colonel Gamble's boat is a 22-ft. lifeboat, with wooden air-tight compartments, of the Lamb & White pattern, built by Hansen & Sons. She has no centreboard, but a 9-in. wooden false keel, deepest in the middle, and tapering to nothing at the ends, is screwed on to her keel. She carries a standing lug mainsail, and a foresail. The peak of her lugsail is cut very high, and her mast, yard, and boom are very light and workmanlike. Her side and ends are less high out of the water, and she is in every way a smaller boat than the 'Black Pearl's' cutter, and probably less of a boat in a sea-way: but she can sail round the latter in a light wind, and in a strong one is very nearly as fast, and stands up like a stake. The reader will please to notice the flatness of her floor in the drawing of her midship section on p. 207. She has been, I believe, very successful in races against boats of her class, showing that speed and stability are not quite so incompatible as they are sometimes supposed to be. She carries usually about 9 cwt. of ballast in shot-bags, and when full of water will float 4 in. clear of the sea, with that ballast and four men on board.
It does not come within the scope of this chapter to give a full and elementary manual of the art of boat-sailing. Descriptions of the thousand and one things belonging to a yacht and the sailing of her, a glossary of nautical terms and their meaning, and a full account of the art of sailing are given in another portion of this work. The leading principles of boat-sailing are the same as those for sailing a larger vessel. The gear of a boat, as far as it goes, is identical, and the knots, bends, and hitches that are most used are common to both. I need not, therefore, describe them, nor waste space by repetition in giving such elementary directions as that a boat should be luffed in a squall, or in explaining what is meant by 'gybing' a boat or 'putting her about.' But there are some things in the art of sailing that have a special application to open boats, so perhaps I may be allowed, even at the cost of an occasional repetition of what has been said elsewhere, to give a few hints and directions, based upon practical experience, as to the handling of a boat, together with some of the simple rules that experience has taught me are the most important to remember, even though some of these may seem to be of a very elementary character.
Still no one will ever be a passable boat-sailer, or will ever enjoy boat-sailing as it can be enjoyed, until he learns to dispense with professional assistance and to manage his boat single-handed if necessary. So, when he has learnt with his eyes, as far as a man can, how things should be done, other than steering and giving orders, let him go out alone or with an amateur like himself and learn his business. Let him choose a fine day and sail away if possible out of sight of the most powerful glasses on his ship, and then deliberately and of set purpose practise everything essential that is comprised in the art of boat-sailing. He will instantly discover that between knowing how things are done and doing them there is an extraordinary difference, and he will find himself curiously awkward in doing what he has seen his men do a hundred times. He will make acquaintance with the malign tendency of all ropes to get foul of each other, and the strange law that whenever you are trying to put something right on a boat something else always goes wrong. When he first tries to reef his sails--he will do it at anchor if he is wise--he will find that the foretack is horribly inconvenient to get at, and that the foresail will keep running up the stay and muffling his head, while the main-boom seems to be possessed by a devil and tries to push him overboard whichever side of it he gets. When he gets under way again he finds that he has got the anchor-line foul of the foresheets, and while he is clearing these and re-reeving them through their fairleads, a puff of wind knocks the boat nearly flat and sends him scrambling aft to the tiller and the mainsheet. He will bruise his shins and bark his knuckles all manner of ways--he hardly knows how; he will get hot and blown, and go near to tumbling overboard in the violence of his exertions; he will do things and he will forget to do things that it will make him blush in bed to remember afterwards. But let him not feel too deeply humiliated. For even experienced sailors will make the most monstrous blunders in a boat when they are strange to her, and to boatwork; and he will find that his awkwardness seems to vanish miraculously after a few lessons, and it will not be long before he has the satisfaction of feeling that he can handle his boat as well as any man on the ship.
It is foolish to go far, and especially far to leeward, when there is every appearance of bad weather coming on, and a low glass. You may do it many times with impunity, but some day you are sure to get caught, and the consequences may be serious. Remember that you are always liable to meet with an amount of wind that your boat will not be able to bear under the shortest canvas that you can work her with. Many people do not realise this; and indeed it requires some powers of imagination, when a boat is standing stiffly up under her full canvas in a good breeze, to realise that in a few hours, or even minutes, there may come an amount of wind which will make it impossible to keep her lee-rail out of the water even with close-reefed sails and sheets flying loose. But a few rough and unpleasant experiences will soon convince the young boat-sailer of the fact, and teach him that a boat has no business to be out in a gale of wind, and that when he is caught in one the thing to do, if it is possible, is to gain shelter at once. If he sails much he will come across plenty of bad weather without courting it, and when he does he will probably meet it with more coolness and confidence if he is free from the depressing sensation that the scrape into which he has got himself, and perhaps others as well, is entirely due to his own wanton folly.
It is always best, if possible, to reef down and make everything snug before the squall or storm comes upon you; but you cannot be continually reefing down for every threatening cloud, so this is not always practicable. When the wind has become too strong for the sail you are carrying, you will have to act according to circumstances. It is not always wise to attempt to reef at once. There may not be sea-room enough to lower down the sails to reef them, and to attempt to reef a cutter's mainsail in a squall when she is nearly overpowered by wind is extremely dangerous. For the sheet must be hauled right in, and cannot be eased while the earing is being made fast. It is better under such circumstances to lower your peak altogether, taking up any slack in the topping-lift so as to support the boom. This will ease the boat immensely, and gives you a capital leg-of-mutton sail. Possibly this will be a sufficient reduction, and you may stand on under this canvas until you get shelter, or sea-room to reef in, or there comes a lull in the squall. If it is not, and the boat is still overpowered, haul down the foresail as well and double reef it, and when it is set again you can, if you have then got sea-room, take down the reefs in your mainsail, keeping the peak down all the time.
There are generally three reefs in a cutter's mainsail. If when these are taken down you have still too much canvas, let the throat run down, and lash the jaws of the gaff down to the boom. It is well to have a line of reef points running from the throat of the mainsail to the cringle of the third reef on the after-leach to make this arrangement snug. It is then called a balance reef.
Most boats will stand rather more wind when it is on the beam than they will when they are close hauled. For while they do not feel it quite so hard, it is easier to keep good way on, and you can spill the sails by slacking the sheets as much as you like without fear of losing it. So that in smooth water you will be as safe in a blow with the wind abeam as you are when sailing close to it and luffing up into the puffs. But a beam sea is the most dangerous sea of all, and when it is heavy you must always be ready either to luff up towards it, or to keep right away before it, as may be best. But if you do the former be careful not to have too much way on, or you will run your boat's nose right into the sea. If your course gives you a dangerous beam sea the best plan is to keep your luff until your port is well to leeward, and then up helm and run for it.
In running before a strong wind and a dangerous sea do not attempt to carry much sail. It is a common belief among the inexperienced, founded upon nautical literature absorbed in youth, and even amongst some who ought to know better, that you must carry plenty of sail in order to run away from the sea and avoid being pooped. But, in the first place, you cannot run away from the sea, which travels more than twice as fast as any boat can sail, and a press of canvas which buries the boat's stern as it drags her through the water increases the danger of being pooped. Moreover, it makes her harder to steer, and increases the much greater risks of broaching to or running the boat under water in those desperate rushes on the steep front of the big seas, which are at once the danger and the delight of running before a wind. So far from its being desirable to emulate the pace of the sea, the sooner the wave passes the boat, and the shorter, therefore, these rushes are, the less is the danger.
I learned this once by experience. Many years ago, on the coast of New Zealand, I was caught out at sea by a gale of wind in a 13-ft. sailing dinghy, and had to run home before it in a short, dangerous, rapidly rising sea. The little boat tore before the wind under a reefed mainsail and jib, running her nose and stern alternately level with the water, until it became evident that we should be swamped in a few minutes. I ordered the man who was with me to haul down the sail. The moment he did so the little boat, which was sharp at both ends and was steered with an oar, began to ride the seas like a duck, and we ran home before the gale with ease and safety under a bare stick and a fragment of head-sail.
A boat with a sharp stern, steered with an oar, has a great advantage under such circumstances. For the rudder is sometimes right out of the water and useless; and though the water of a great wave does not really move forward with the wave as it appears to do, the breaking top of it does, and when the rudder is in this water, which is going faster than the boat, it is useless for the moment. It is well to have a place for a crutch in the gunwale far aft, so that an oar can be used to steer with if necessary.
There is generally less wind under the shelter or lee of the land. But this is not always the case, and the most experienced seaman cannot always foretell whether this will be so or not. Sometimes the wind seems to belong to the land, and there may be little or none of it out at sea. Under high land--cliffs or mountains--you may lose the wind altogether; you may find it blowing in occasional baffling puffs of great violence and uncertain direction, or you may find it blowing much harder, not in puffs merely but altogether. It is not an uncommon experience, especially in the Mediterranean, to run down a coast before a fresh breeze, and to find a perfect tornado blowing when you turn a corner and luff up under the land. This is one of nature's paradoxes--one of the undoubted facts that one occasionally meets which seem opposed to all reason and probability. I do not know how far it has ever been scientifically explained.
Some places where there is high land seem to brew their own wind. Loch Scavaig, in Skye, under the Coolin hills, is an instance of this. It may be fine and almost calm outside, but as you sail into its gloomy waters you may find a perfect tempest blowing in or out. It staggers one to think what it must be like in a real gale of wind.
In Carlingford Lough, Ireland, last autumn, when there was but a fine-weather breeze blowing outside, the puffs off the mountain on the south of the lough took the form of a succession of regular waterspouts, any one of which would have twisted the mast out of the boat or capsized her if it had struck her. We kept as far to leeward as we could, and most of them died away before they crossed our track, but they felt very uncanny.
Speaking generally, high land is always dangerous for boat-sailing, as well as trying to the temper. On a day when there is nothing but a fine-weather breeze elsewhere, under high land you are liable to get puffs as violent while they last as a gale of wind. It is as though the hills bottled up and concentrated the wind, so that when it is let loose it comes with double force; and these puffs are specially dangerous to a boat apart from their force: first, because the angle at which they will strike is so uncertain, and secondly, because, coming from above and striking downwards, a boat does not relieve the pressure on her sails by heeling over as she does when the wind blows horizontally along the water. This is the reason why you will probably find that the squalls that go nearest capsizing your boat are not those that you have seen tearing towards you turning the water into smoke as they come, violent as these may be, but those which you have hardly seen a sign of on the water at all, and which strike the sails with a downward blow straight from the mountain side. The Sound of Raasay, outside Portree Harbour, when a westerly wind is blowing over the tremendous cliffs of Skye, is a fine place for the study of these phenomena.
When the wind is blowing up or down a channel with high land on either hand, the fiercest puffs will be near the sides which seem to concentrate the wind, and the safest place will be the middle of the channel. One day, in Loch Scavaig, beating out of that inferno of furious winds against the usual succession of tearing puffs, with double-reefed sails and all passengers down in the bottom of the boat, I stood rather far over one tack under the high mountain on the west side. Just as I was preparing to go about a furious blast struck the boat like a cannon-shot. I thrust the helm down, letting fly the mainsheet. The foresheet fortunately carried away of itself, but for a few seconds a volume of water poured over the rail, and I thought we should go over or fill. A minute later, as we were standing off on the other tack, setting things to rights and pruning our ruffled plumes, my coxswain, a most excellent boat-sailer but a man of a somewhat sardonic humour, remarked grimly, 'I should think that would be a lesson to you in future not to stand over too far under high land.' It has been.
Here follow a few of the things which it is well to remember when boat-sailing, whether you are acting as captain or crew, or both in one.
As soon as your sails are set and properly trimmed, coil away the ends of all your halliards, topping-lift, &c., in the bottom of the boat, capsizing the coil after you have made it so that the part of the rope that has to go up first becomes uppermost, and so will not get foul when the halliards are let go.
See that all your blocks are clear. A reef pendant getting drawn into the mainsheet block, or a bit of bunting or spunyarn into the block of the peak halliards, may easily cause an accident.
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