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Before describing the various forms of boats suitable for pleasure sailing, it will be well to give to the reader a general idea of the rigging and other parts of a small craft, so that certain terms which we shall have to use constantly may be understood by him.

Fig. 1 represents a small cutter rigged as simply as possible.

THE ROPES.

Knots, Bends, and Hitches.

What is called a cable-laid rope contains nine strands, that is, three ordinary right-handed ropes twisted together from left to right into one large rope. Right-handed rope must be coiled "with the sun" from right to left. Cable-laid ropes must be coiled from left to right.

If one strand of an otherwise sound rope be cut through it can be replaced thus. Cut off about two feet of the injured strand. Take a somewhat greater length of a strand of the same size and lay it in the interval left by the removed portion of injured strand, then proceed to halve the strands, knot and tuck in as in a long splice.

We now come to the various useful knots, bends, and hitches, all easy to acquire, but difficult to describe in words. However, if the reader will study the accompanying diagrams with a bit of rope in his hand, he will soon discover for himself how these knots are formed. They all serve their purpose admirably--that is, they are quickly made, are secure, and cannot slip, and yet are readily undone again.

Fig. 12 represents a watch-tackle, with the tail of its upper block bent with a rolling hitch on to the rope it is intended to pull upon, while the hook on its lower block is made fast with a Blackwall hitch.

A watch-tackle is a very handy tackle on board ship, and is used for a variety of purposes. A tail is strapped to the upper block and an iron hook to the lower block.

A very powerful purchase is obtained by using two watch-tackles in combination. This is done by making fast the tail of one watch-tackle to the hook on the lower block of the other tackle.

The diagram will show how it is formed. The hitch is prevented from slipping by the jamming of the rope between its own standing part and the stem of the hook.

New rope, especially manilla rope, is very apt to twist itself up into loops or kinks. This tendency to kink can be prevented by stretching the rope well before using it.

THE THEORY OF SAILING.

Leeway and lateral resistance--Heeling--Balancing sails--Tacking--Action of rudder--Longitudinal resistance--Deep keel or centre-board.

Any object floating on the water will have a tendency to drift before the wind; but a boat, with its scientifically constructed hull, sails, and rudder, can be so guided as to sail with the wind on her quarter or abeam, or even close-hauled, as it is called, that is, with the wind meeting her at an angle of about forty-five degrees.

Fig. 20 represents the deck plan of a boat sailing close-hauled under two sails. The sails A and B are drawn aft with the sheets till they form an acute angle with the line of the keel. The wind, whose direction is indicated by the arrow W, strikes the sails at a very acute angle, so that they do not shake, but are just full.

The result of this pressure on the sails is that the boat is propelled forward and also sideways away from the wind, making leeway, as it is called.

If a boat has a deep keel, her lateral resistance to the water will cause the leeway to be insignificant. If the boat is of very shallow draught and so offers little lateral resistance to the water, she will not go ahead at all, and the entire force of the wind will be expended in driving her bodily to leeward. Lee-boards and centre-boards are fitted to shallow boats in order to obviate this.

The pressure of the wind on the sails, in addition to producing the above effects, heels a boat over. A sailing-boat is so constructed as to resist this tendency to capsize. Either she is made narrow and deep and is weighted with ballast as far as possible below the water-line, or she is shallow but of considerable beam. The deep and weighted boat will heel over more readily than the beamy shallow boat, but the further she heels the greater pressure of wind is necessary to make her heel still more, for the leverage of her ballast increases as she heels, and many boats with lead upon their keels are practically uncapsizable. On the other hand, the beamy shallow boat does not heel so readily, but after she has heeled to a certain angle she will capsize.

The pressure of the wind on the sails not only propels, drives to leeward, and heels over a boat, but, unless the sails are absolutely balanced, it tends to turn her in one direction or the other.

In Fig. 20 we have a boat with two sails. If the after sail is the more powerful, it is obvious that the wind will drive round that sail and the stern of the boat with it in the direction of the arrow C, while the head of the boat will run up into the wind. If, on the other hand, the head sail be the more powerful of the two, the bow will be driven off the wind and the boat will bear away.

If a boat carrying weather helm be left to her own devices in a squall she will at once do the right thing, luff up into the wind and be in safety; whereas a boat with too much head-canvas and carrying lee-helm will run off her course and put herself in a dangerous position.

In balancing the sails, it must be remembered that the further out a sail is on an extremity of a boat, the greater its effect in driving that end of the boat off the wind.

Sometimes a vessel's sails are not properly balanced because the ballast has not been stowed in the right place. It is obvious, for instance, that if ballast be shifted aft the weather helm will be diminished, for the stern of the boat will draw more water and so offer more lateral resistance, whereas the stem of the boat will draw less water, and will therefore be more easily blown round. A centre-board, again, is generally placed well forward, so it is found that when this is lowered the weather helm of the boat is considerably increased.

One diagram of Fig. 21 illustrates the process of tacking with the wind right ahead, and in the other diagram the wind is a point or two off, so that one tack is longer than the other, there being, in sailor language, a short leg and a long leg.

That the action of the rudder, when forced over till it is at an angle with the keel, is to act as a drag on that side and so deflect the boat's course, is plain enough. But it is not so obvious a fact that this action of the rudder in turning the boat is not to turn her bow round through the water, but to push the stern sideways while the bow is almost at a standstill. For the centre of rotation of a boat, that is, the imaginary pivot on which she turns, is always well forward.

In Fig. 22, A is the centre of rotation. So when the rudder is put over to the right, the boat will revolve on the pivot A till she is in the position indicated by the dotted lines. It will be observed that the stern has moved about twice as far as the bow. The further forward the centre of rotation the greater will this disproportion be.

It is very important to remember this effect when sailing very near any object such as a buoy, for while steering so as to turn the boat's head away from the object and avoid it, the stern is made to approach the object, and the very action that seems calculated to prevent a collision may become the cause of one.

Having shown what are the relations of the sails, hull, and rudder of a boat to the wind and water, and explained how a vessel requires either ballast or beam to prevent the wind from capsizing her, and needs draught to increase her lateral resistance and prevent her from being blown to leeward, it remains to add that the longitudinal resistance to the water must be diminished as much as possible, so that the boat can slip easily through the water and travel with speed.

Again, the larger the area of the boat's greatest cross-section , the more resistance that results and the slower she will travel. The area of the cross-section is diminished by making a boat of narrow beam, while the necessary displacement is obtained by increased length and depth.

Thus a long narrow shallow boat will run the fastest before the wind, but she will not turn to windward at all, and will capsize with great ease.

As it is recognized that beam is opposed to speed, it has been long the fashion in England to construct racing yachts extremely narrow and of great draught. Such craft do attain speed, but at the expense of all comfort, and when a heavy sea is running go through it instead of over it.

To come to the opposite extreme, we have the flat-bottomed very shallow and very beamy craft, with a deck plan not unlike a flat-iron--a veritable skimming-dish. Provided with a centre-board, such a boat is well adapted for shallow and sheltered waters. The centre-board can be raised while crossing a shoal, and the boat will then draw only as many inches as a deep-keel boat of her size would draw feet. She will be very fast in smooth water, but in rough water she will pound heavily into the seas, and, having no good hold of the water and little momentum, will lose her headway and soon prove dangerous.

For real comfort and seaworthiness--and some now maintain for racing purposes as well--a boat that is something between these two extremes answers the best; that is, a boat that is moderately beamy and has a moderate draught of water.

Some years ago we sailed to South America in a yacht that well represented the class of vessel we are now speaking of. Her length was forty-two feet, her beam thirteen feet, and her draught seven feet six inches. Not being one of the narrow deep class, she was an excellent sea boat; indeed, she once had the reputation of being the best sea boat of her size in the Channel. Now the advocates of the narrow boats will contend that speed must have been sacrificed to obtain this comfort in heavy weather. We scarcely agree with these gentlemen; for this boat, though furnished with exceptionally small sails, could do her nine knots an hour, and on one occasion travelled two thousand sea miles in ten days.

The author also once owned a centre-board yawl of five tons, which drew between two and three feet without her centre-board. She thus combined the advantages of the shallow boat with the seaworthiness of a boat that is sufficiently immersed to have a good hold of the water.

This compromise between the deep-keel and the centre-board types of boat has long been popular in America, and probably the recent victories of the American yachts constructed on these principles, over our own crack deep-keelers will gradually modify the English views on this subject.

Most of our yachting men maintain that a long hole through the bottom of a boat must weaken her; that the great strain of the centre-board, concentrated as it is on one small portion of the keel, must render a large craft thus fitted ill-adapted to buffet with a really heavy sea.

On the other hand, the American builders emphatically deny that a centre-board is a cause of weakness, and point to their noble pilot vessels and trading schooners, which are all provided with centre-boards, and which are exposed to every sort of weather.

It is unnecessary to dwell longer on this controversy; for though there is much divergence of opinion as regards large craft, there can be no question as to the advantages of fitting centre-boards into many kinds of small craft, especially in those that are intended for river sailing.

ON SMALL BOATS.

Open and half-decked boats--Ballast--The centre-board--False keels--Lee-boards--Counters, square and pointed sterns--Battened sails.

The following observations apply chiefly to small boats, which can be rowed as well as sailed, and be easily handled by one man--that is, boats from the smallest size up to about eighteen feet in length.

OPEN AND HALF-DECKED BOATS.--A small boat is often half-decked, that is, she is provided with a small deck in the bows and a narrow deck on either side, low coamings being carried round the inside edge. Such a boat must to a certain extent be safer than an entirely open boat; that is, if she be struck by a squall and heel far over, or again, if she run her nose into a sea, the water will flow off her decks instead of pouring into her and possibly swamping her. But a small boat is not a yacht, and she ought not to be sailed in so reckless a manner as to drive her bows or gunwale under and ship large bodies of water in this way. A quite open boat, if she be properly constructed, not over-ballasted, not over-canvassed, and of course properly sailed, will go through an extraordinary amount of sea without taking a bucketful of water on board; and not only this, but she will sail as fast if not faster than the half-decked craft of the same size staggering along under excessive canvas, with the water under her lee coamings. The slight additional safety, or rather inducement to recklessness afforded by the half-deck and waterways, is more than counterbalanced by several disadvantages. In the first place, this deck--too narrow to walk along--will occupy much of the already limited space available on board a small boat, and it will be in the way of and impede one working the sails or rowing to an extent that it is difficult to appreciate until one has tried the experiment. In the next place, this deck must be of considerable weight--a serious disadvantage if the boat has often to be beached. And not only is the deck heavy in itself, but, situated as it is high above the water-line, it tends to make the boat top-heavy, and this must be counteracted by putting more ballast into her than would be required in an entirely open boat of the same dimensions. Now, if a small boat is intended ever to venture into rough water, the less ballast she carries and the more buoyant she is, the better.

We therefore do not recommend half-decks for the class of boat of which we are now speaking. When a boat is big enough to be a small yacht, and the half-deck forward covers a cuddy large enough to afford sleeping accommodation to the crew, the case is different, and the half-deck becomes a decided advantage.

BALLAST.--A small boat's ballast, whatever form it may take, should be readily movable. Thus, if lead is used, it should be cast in small blocks of not more than half a hundredweight each, and in order that it may be lifted with ease, each block should be provided with a handle. Lead being very heavy, and therefore occupying little space in a boat, is the most convenient form of ballast, but it is also by far the most expensive. The iron half-hundredweights with handles at the top, which can be purchased at any marine store dealer's, are nearly as convenient as lead weights, and are very cheap.

Battens should be nailed to the bottom of the boat to keep the ballast in its place, otherwise it might slide to leeward in a squall and cause a capsize.

Stones and bags of sand are often employed as ballast, but water contained in small barrels, or, better still, in metal tanks, shaped so as to fit closely into the bottom of the boat, is far the safest ballast that can be used. For if a boat provided with water ballast capsize and fill she will be no heavier than if she contained no ballast, and, consequently, she will not sink.

Another advantage of water ballast is that it can be pumped out to lighten the boat when a calm necessitates the use of oars, and be quickly admitted again when a breeze springs up and the sail is hoisted. Again, when the water-tanks are empty the boat is practically converted into a lifeboat, and if a sea fill her she will still float.

The advantages of water over other forms of ballast are so numerous that nothing else would be used in small boats were it not for the great amount of space it occupies; and so serious is this objection that one but rarely comes across a boat thus ballasted.

THE CENTRE-BOARD.--In England the centre-board of a small boat is generally of galvanized iron; thus acting also, to some extent, as ballast. In America wooden centre-boards are more often used. If a boat has often to be beached or carried, lightness is an important object, and therefore the wooden centre-board is to be preferred. One objection to the centre-board is that its trunk or case occupies so much space in the interior of the boat. A telescopic or fan centre-board has recently been invented which folds up into itself when hauled up, and therefore requires no trunk. We believe, however, that this is only adapted for canoes and other very small boats.

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