CHAPTER
I.
THE SAILING BATTEAU
MY boyhood town was
located on a point of land commanding a beautiful blue
harbor, an arm of the salt sea whence came in daily
stately ships, standing in from the open roadstead and
sweeping majestically through the crowds of small sail
craft, until the grizzled port pilots gave the signal
to let go anchor, or a puffing tug took charge and
nosed them into the wharves. That was before the U.S.
Government dredged out our harbor to admit steamers.
We were a great sail ship port, and our people dealt
in commodities that are carried from far distant
lands. Later it all gave way to huge smoky steamers,
laden with prosaic iron and coal, and the town became
a big manufacturing center.
But we boys were of the sail period of the
Republic; the salt sea was in our breath all day, and
to be "Cap'n" of even a ten-foot sail dory was the
ambition of every one of us when but six years old. By
the age of ten we had usually learned to swim well and
then had the parental permission to own a boat, a
sailboat of course, usually rigged from bowsprit withe
to topping lift cleat entirely by ourselves. There
were plenty of fish to be caught, and the bay abounded
in wild fowl, so that from April to hauling-out time
in November we lived in or on the water. I carry the
weatherbeaten tan of those days to this hour, and no
amount of city living can eradicate it!
We usually began with a flat-bottomed batteau,
fitted first with a sprit sail and centerboard or keel
board, and later added the glory of bow deck, wash
boards and standing rigging; sold the precious frigate
at about the age of fifteen and acquired a
round-bottomed sharpie; sold her and got a catboat;
and, before we were nineteen years old, had graduated
into the full glory of the racing 18-rater knockabout.
And, as the port had a flourishing yacht club, we boys
were much in demand for crews, both for racing and
cruising. Our own particular crowd of five boys were
the crew of the Ocean Spray, a forty-foot racing
sloop, whose owner we were only too glad to help at
over hauling time, in return for being taken on a
cruise or two in the summer and allowed to help man
the yacht in a race. It was a thorough school of
seamanship -- I think every boy of our squad is today
a yacht owner and a naval reservist -- and, though the
motor boat with its general air of landlubberliness
seems to have come to stay, the ancient sport of
sailing is more than holding its own in dozens of
ports along our seacoast.
My first cruiser was a thirteen-foot flat-bottomed
batteau, four and a half foot beam, that cost me ten
dollars just as she lay, a common rowboat, in Capt.
Milham's slip. I bought her with the money of my
eleventh Christmas, having convinced Pater the summer
before that I could outswim him by challenging him to
catch me. We were all in swimming off the end of
Parker's pier, in about two fathoms of water, and
Pater, after a vain chase of maybe twenty minutes,
nearly got me; but I dived under him, and, coming up
about where his heels were, I made fast and ducked him
properly! And so that Christmas I received permission
to buy my first boat.
 THE
13-FT L.W.L. SAILING BATTEAU Margaret
She was a staunch, light batteau; two strakes,
cedar planking; an able boat in the seaway that got up
in every easterly blow that hit our harbor. I bought
her in March (it seemed that January and February
would never pass), and my first work was to paint her
and put her overboard. That meant a can of copper
paint for her bottom, a can of white lead for her
outside, and a can of buff for the inside coating.
These were all quart cans, as two coats each were
needed, so the bill was $1.95 that stared me in the
face. A whole lot for a boy of eleven years, but I
raised it somehow. Her seams lay wide open, but the
caulking was in good shape, so all she needed was
putty in the seams and then the paint. Meanwhile, my
chum Eber, who owned a similar boat, fifteen feet on
the waterline, was happily working over his craft
nearby in the warm spring sunshine, and we combined
forces when it came to getting the boats overboard.
Both promptly filled to the water's edge, as is the
way with all flat-bottomed craft until the planks
swell shut, but in a week they were ready to bail out
and were tight as drums the rest of the summer.
My first problem was one that troubles many a boy,
-- how to overcome leeway and how to make a rig for
her. A flat-bottomed boat will skid over the water
like a leaf if she has no centerboard. Leeboards are a
clumsy and landlubberly contraption for a regular
boat, though well enough on canoes, and a centerboard
is rather expensive $2.75 was the best price I could
get from the "Cap'ns" alongshore, who all did a bit of
boat carpentry in the winter. My first scheme was a
hinged centerboard. A piece of twelve-inch-wide yellow
pine three feet long was secured for ten cents from
the local wheelwright, and two stout galvanized iron
hinges with brass pins were screwed to it, about eight
inches from either end. The Margaret was then
hauled up on the beach and turned on her side, while I
attached this centerboard to the keel strip by its
hinges. Two stout galvanized iron screw eyes were next
screwed in the lower edge of the board, and from them
was led out two pieces of flexible copper rope a yard
long each and costing ten cents a foot. These fastened
in cleats on opposite sides of the gunwale, and the
board was then ready for use.
This board worked rather well. A knot in the copper
rope told me when she was perpendicular to the keel,
when both ropes would be belayed on their cleats, and
she held up well, making little leeway. When the boat
began to heel down and move right along under a smart
breeze the ropes thrummed as they cut through the
water, making the whole boat vibrate and of course
reducing her speed, so she was beaten by nearly every
craft in the harbor that carried a sail.
KEEL
BOARD FOR 15-FT SAILING BATTEAU
My chum, who was a Florida boy and hated to be
beaten, devised a keel board for his boat, preferring
beaching troubles to going slow. He used a 7/8 x
12-in. yellow pine plank five feet long, cut on a long
slant at both ends. This was spiked securely to a
strip of 2 x 4-in. dressed pine running the full
length of the keel board, and this in its turn was
screwed to the bottom of his batteau. A second strip
was screwed along the other side of his keel board and
toenailed to it. The whole thing was then copper
painted and it made a strong job, a deep, permanent
keel in fact, and he lost no speed from copper ropes
thrumming underneath. Of course his troubles came when
he got into shallow waters or wanted to beach her,
when that tender keel would strike and had to be
nursed to prevent it going adrift. The photo shows how
we made the latter type of board; they both cost about
the same, $1.00, as we both were mighty short on the
coin of the realm !
My first rig was a six-foot by six-foot
leg-o'-mutton, made of two yards of unbleached muslin,
the upper corner of which being cut off and added on
below made the whole sail. It looked huge, in the
house, and my mother was very much frightened at my
carrying all that canvas (!) but on the boat it looked
like a pocket handkerchief and just about gave her
steerage way. The mast was a piece of bamboo picked up
on the beach and the boom a square strip of yellow
pine -- can you beat it for landlubberliness! However,
in a hard blow the sail drew well enough to let me
learn the simple arts of tacking, running free and
running dead before a blow, and it was a much safer
rig in the last case than one with a peak. This sail
got dirty and mildewy, and, at the height of its
disreputableness my father and old Cap'n Tom Little,
the port pilot, decided that I had progressed far
enough in sailing to carry a bit more canvas, and so I
received permission to add a peak. This was done, a
snowy triangle of unbleached muslin added to the
filthy leg-o'-mutton, and with that and a light sprit
spar to hold it out, I scandalized the
harbor!
This in its turn got muddy and dirty
from numerous shipwrecks and cruises up muddy
saltwater creeks after snipe, and then I found another
boom and a longer spar for a sprit and so added about
two feet more to the leach of the sail, making it
eight feet along the boom, six feet hoist and six feet
head. This is about as small canvas as I would advise
any boy starting out with, for a thirteen-foot boat;
it gives her good speed and she is not set back so
much on a tack by the tide drift. My sail now
resembled Joseph's coat of many colors, but I did not
care -- wasn't I the eleven-year-old "Cap'n" of a
sailboat myself! And presently November came around
and the hunting season was in full blast, so I spent
more time in the forest with my air rifle than on the
water in the Margaret, and soon she was hauled out and
turned over, bottom up, on a pair of skids and left to
the snows of winter.
But her skipper was not idle; far from it. My
twelfth Christmas, word having gone throughout the
family that I was going to rig the boat and put in a
centerboard, and that cash would be very acceptable in
lieu of presents, resulted in about $12 in my
stocking. I needed a powder rifle and a tomahawk very
badly but, oh, gee! I did need everything imaginable
for that boat! A new main sail, a jib, spars,
centerboard, bow deck, washboards, standing rigging,
running rigging, anchor, paint -- what not! I spent
all January planning, and resisting the temptation to
sell her and add the money to my $12 to buy a
round-bottomed boat, but I wisely stuck to the able
little Margaret, for the other boat would need
complete rigging too, and I did not propose to worry
through another season half found. During February
conferences with Cap'n John Milham, who was very busy
building boats for the men at the yacht club, brought
me his promise to put in a centerboard, put on
washboards, bow deck and bowsprit all for five
dollars, so this amount was set away until it would be
needed in the spring. The remaining seven had to buy
canvas for the sails, rope, blocks, spars, etc., and
it required careful planning to make it cover all the
necessities, while the rifle and tomahawk were
relegated to another time. Mr. Kearney, owner of the
sloop Kitty Maginn at the yacht club, coached
me on the rig that was to be her final "grown-up"
outfit.
SKIPJACK
BATTEAU UNDER FULL SAIL
Eleven-foot boom, eight-foot gaff, eight-foot hoist
and sixteen-foot leach were settled on for the
mainsail, and thirteen-foot hoist, ten-foot six-inch
luff and six-foot six-inch foot were the dimensions of
the jib. My school arithmetic was taxed to the utmost
to find out how many yards of canvas this called for,
but we made it eighteen yards, and this was bought in
American drilling at ten cents a yard (now about
fourteen cents). Then, one sunny Saturday in March, we
pegged out the dimensions of mainsail and jib on the
lawn, running a cord from peg to peg so as to give us
a full-sized outline of the mainsail. We gave the foot
a one-foot rise, which brought us a tall, sassy peak.
The canvas was then unrolled, the first strip being
laid along the leach line, and this was cut to the
string along head and foot. Each gore was then added
to this, overlapping to the blue line on the canvas
edge, and pinning every foot, cutting off along the
sail outlines until both mainsail and jib lay rough
finished on the lawn and there was but a small bit
left of my roll of drilling.
With these sails I went home and cajoled mother
into hemming them all around, sewing down the gore
seams and finishing the sails for grommets, etc. With
this light canvas, an ordinary house sewing machine
with forty cotton thread and heavy needle is amply
strong enough.
Before the next Saturday came
around, oh, joy -- I had the mumps! No school for two
weeks and only two days of misery -- that is what it
means to a boy! No wonder that that disease (and
measles) are considered by boys blessings in disguise,
no matter what parents think of them! Two bad days in
a darkened room, and then, still confined to my room,
I was up and about. I had stored the closet full of
salty paraphernalia: manila rope, sail needle and
beeswax, a ball of sailmaker's twine, some smelly,
tarry marline, brass grommets a box, galvanized pulley
blocks -- a sailor's paradise forsooth! At the end of
every seam I put in a 3/8-in. No.1 brass grommet.
These little brass rings come in two parts, a
"thimble" and a ring, costing 30 cents a gross box.
You cut a hole with your scissors, insert the thimble
through one side, slip over the ring on the other, and
turn over the edges of the hat with a marlinespike or
fid, or even a stout wire nail will answer. Finish
with a blow of the hammer and there you are! Along
head and foot these grommets go, not only at the end
of every seam, but along the hem midway between the
seams also, giving you one about every foot. Through
them is rove the head rope and foot rope which secure
the sail to gaff and boom respectively. Simply pass it
round and round the spar taking in a grommet hole at
every turn and securing with a double half hitch at
the end of the spar.
I got in the grommets for both mainsail and jib and
then went at sewing on the bolt rope. An ordinary hem
will not do for a boat sail; it stretches too much and
soon pulls the sail all out of shape so she will not
draw well and you lose speed. You simply must have a
bolt rope, a stout manila rope, sewed to the hem with
sailmaker's twine. For a sail such as the
Margaret's 3/8-in hemp rope is ample. Your
twine should follow the lay of the rope, fitting
neatly in the bottom of the twist and nowhere exposed
to the rough usage that it will surely get if it goes
round the bolt rope at any old angle. I had about a
hundred feet of bolt rope to sew around the two sails,
and it took two days to do it. Wax your twine
religiously if you expect it to last.
With the bolt rope on, the sails began to take on a
real seamanlike appearance, and my next job was to lay
them out on the floor of the room and mark out the
reef points. One must go in every seam, but do not put
them in the plain body of the sail unless you
reinforce the spot with a little square of canvas. As
I did not have but a few gores in my sail I had to put
in these little squares, every one of them hand
stitched. The reef point hole itself can either have a
small 1/4-inch grommet or a worked eyelet. The latter
take longer but are stronger, and, as I had all the
time in the world, I eyeletted them all, two rows of
reef points, two feet apart vertically for the
mainsail, and one row for the jib. To put in the reef
points you cut pieces of white cotton rope (the
1/8-inch size for this small sail) two feet long.
Stick it through the eyelet hole a foot, and tie a
knot. Put another knot on the other side of the sail
and your reef point is secure. Both ends of it are
next to be lashed with waxed twine, for no seaman
would tolerate a knot or a crown on the end of a reef
point.
By this time I was allowed at large, as the mumps
were about over, but had not returned to school, and
my first excursion was to the shipyards where the
incessant clicking of the caulking mallets had been
calling to me through the open windows of my room. It
was late in March, and the tall-sparred three-masted
schooners were riding high in the dry docks, their
bulging sides covered with busy men driving in the
oakum that was to make them tight and sound for the
season. Oh, the Time of the Caulking Mallets! It comes
along about Lent (and tops and marbles for the small
boys), but for us seafaring youths it meant boat work
in the balmy spring sunshine and good times to come! I
headed for a soaking pool filled with spruce spars of
every conceivable length, all with the bark on and all
as straight as so many lances. They are sold at
twenty-five cents an inch across the butt, and I was
not long in picking out a 2-1/4 inch stick 14 ft. 6
in. long that was to be my future mainmast. Back to
the house, where with plane and spokeshave the bark
was peeled off and the mast got ready for slushing
with beef tallow. This is rubbed in by hand -- a
seaman's delight -- three or four times until enough
is absorbed by the spruce to make the mast rings slide
freely.
My friend the wheelwright supplied the boom and
gaff -- two 1-1/2-inch square spruce strips, entirely
free from knots, -- and these I worked down to a round
with plane, spokeshave and sandpaper, tapering them to
an inch for the gaff and 11/4 inch for the boom. The
stock cost 30 cents in the rough. Any lumber mill
nowadays can furnish you these spruce sticks already
round and only requiring tapering, any diameter you
prefer, so all three spars can now be had anywhere
just as easily as if a shipyard were handy.
And now to bend on the sails! First the galvanized
mast rings, six of them, were lashed to the luff of
the sail at each point where a brass grommet marked
the end of a seam. Next the mast was erected alongside
the back porch, and the rings with sail attached
slipped over it. Then gaff and boom were tapered with
a sharp flat cut where the jaws were to go and the
latter sawn out of inch oak and whittled and
sandpapered smooth. Most boys get these jaws too wide
and clumsy so that when put on they do not hug the
mast closely. The way to cut them is with the back of
the jaw along the grain and a quarter circle of the
radius of the mast struck, after allowing not over an
inch for the thickness of the horn of the jaw. Then a
taper is struck from the heel of the jaw to its aft
end and you have a narrow, thin, strong jaw of oak,
which, when bolted to boom and gaff, will lie close to
the mast.
These went on as described, also a hole bored
through the boom and gaff near the meeting point of
the jaws, through which was rove the 1/8-inch cotton
rope which was to lash head and foot of sail to the
spars. A double crown knot of this rope stopped it
from pulling through the hole, and then the foot of
the sail was lashed to the boom by running this rope
around and around the boom, taking in a grommet along
the foot at each turn. The two lower corners of the
sail are called the tack and clew; the clew being the
corner at the aft end of boom. To secure the tack, the
lash rope must take one turn through the tack grommet
before running out along the boom. To secure the clew
the sail is pulled out tight, seeing that all lashing
is taken up snug, and then she is belayed with a turn
through clew grommet and a double half hitch around
the boom. The boom ought to be about a foot longer
than the sail, to allow for stretching, also the lash
rope must be about three feet longer because when you
come to reef you will need the end of this rope to
belay the cringle, which is the last grommet at the
end of the line of reef points, in the hem of the
leach. All of which I attended to in a seamanlike
manner and did the same by the gaff. The two upper
corners of the sail along the gaff are called the
throat and peak.
The next thing was to bend on the running rigging.
The throat halyard for so small a sail as this is
simply tied to a screw eye driven into the gaff near
the meeting point of the jaws. The peak halyard
requires a block, and the location of this block on
the gaff takes some experiment. If too far in it will
tend to draw too hard on the throat of the sail, if
too far out will hoist the peak too hard. A little
trial will give about the right place.
The mast needs a galvanized iron withe with four
rings standing out from it. To the aft ring is lashed
the galvanized double pulley block which takes throat
and peak halyards; to the forward ring the wire rope
jib stay; and to the two side rings the wire rope
shrouds. I whittled a shallow collar on the mast head
and fitted the withe over it tight. Then I had a
perfectly lovely tarry half hour "serving" the ends of
those wire ropes with marline. This is a tarry hemp
cord which fairly reeks of ships and shipping, and to
this day I keep a wad of it in my pocket so that if I
see too many gardens I can take a sniff of it and feel
all right again! Wire rope cannot be tied without
making a landlubberly job of it, so the end is passed
through the ring on your mast withe, bent over in an
eye and the end lashed to the standing part with
marline. This is called serving it, and you have a
little serving mallet over which a couple of turns of
the marline are taken and then this is passed around
and around the wire by its handle. The pressure
exerted by it is so great that it makes the marline
lie flat and sweat tar so as to make a neat smooth job
of your lashing. The wire rope for my boat was the
smallest obtainable, 3/16-inch diameter.
Finally the peak and throat halyards were rove, and
up went my new sail for the first time! She set nice
and flat after taking up here and there, and the next
thing to do was to put a draw in it. The "set" of
sails explains all the reason why one boat will beat
another with identically the same hull and rig and
sailed equally well. Too flat a sail means a slow
boat; too loose, a poor pointer. The ideal shape is a
sail, nice and flat aft, and full along the luff, the
shape of an aeroplane wing or bird's wing. The wind
shoots into such a sail, expends its energy and is
slid out along the flat leach. If the latter is baggy,
the wind will get trapped in it and hold back the
boat, hence, for large sails, the necessity for
battens in the leach. My sail was too small for that.
By setting up hard on the peak so as to throw a
quantity of wrinkles into the luff, the fullness
desired is in a way attained. I helped it by letting
out a trifle of lashing rope along head and foot just
aft of throat and tack.
WHISTLING
FOR A BREEZE
Then I went down to the shore where I found Cap'n
Jack already started on my boat. He had gotten out a
centerboard log of 1-1/2 x 5-inch clear white pine and
had slotted it for a 24-inch board. Maybe I didn't
camp out on a saw horse for the rest of the afternoon
and watch him make that board! First went in two 2 x
1-inch uprights a foot high and were securely spiked
with galvanized nails into each end of the slot. To
these were nailed the two trunk sides of 7/8 x 14-inch
clear white pine stock, 28 inches long. These were
caulked where they abutted on the log and were white
leaded along the uprights and log before nailing fast
up through the bottom of the latter.
Next, the board itself was made, of a single
7/8-inch plank of hard yellow pine, with a couple of
iron rods driven through it to prevent warping. These
were upset at the ends and then the board was put in
the trunk in position and an inch hole drilled through
both sides of the trunk and the board down in the
for'd lower corner where the pivot pin was to go. This
was next put in, a simple pin whittled of white pine
and driven through. Then Cap'n Jack laid out, on the
keel of my precious boat, a centerboard slot, drilled
an inch hole through keel, bottom boards and keelson
at each end of the slot and joined the holes by two
long saw cuts. The bottom boards were then caulked and
painted where they crossed the keelson and finally
some wicking soaked in white lead was laid around the
edges of the slot and the centerboard trunk screwed
fast. At last I had a board!
Next day he began with the washboards and bow deck.
Two white pine planks we held in the position they
were to go, along the sides, and the line of the
gunwale was scribed on the plank from below. A line
parallel to this and six inches inside was next
struck, and the Cap'n labored with his rip saw until
he had the two washboards cut out and ready to fit.
They were then nailed down through the top into the
gunwales and an inch half-round strip run along the
gunwale to cover the crack.
Along the inner edge went the coaming, a piece of
3/4-inch by 3-inch yellow pine board, with a strip of
cove molding in the corners. The coaming ended with a
square fit about six inches aft of the mast. Next
Cap'n Jack put in oak deck carlines every foot, sawed
to give about two inches crown to the deck, and then
ran the mast plank from coaming forward over the stem.
This plank was six inches wide and the ends of the
washboards or "plank sheer" as they are called in
boatbuilding butted against it. The space left was
then filled with small deck strips, two inches wide,
so accurately laid together that not a crack between
them could be discerned. But of course this would
never do for sea service, they would leak -- all these
deck cracks -- with the first sea that came over the
bows, so the Cap'n began caulking all the seams just
as if they were in the bottom of the boat! Even I was
not prepared for such thoroughness as that, but, let
me tell you, that is what you have to have in an able
sea boat! Then the seams were all payed with paint and
puttied, and then the first coat of paint went on.
The Cap'n next began pottering about with a stick
of spruce, carrying the while a quizzical smile on his
grizzled features, and suddenly I realized with a jump
of joy that he was making my bowsprit! A husky stick
it was, six feet long, 2 inches square at the butt,
and fined to an octagon after it stood out over the
stem. He bolted it through the deck carlines, put on a
two-ring withe and ran an iron rod down to her stem
from the bowsprit end.
"Thar, sonny, ye kin set up on yer jib
stay till ye bend the mast out'n her before ever
thet bowsprit will lift!" Indeed you could pick up
the whole boat by her bowsprit, as I did many times
afterward.
The Cap'n still had a little time left in his day,
and so he examined my rudder with a sardonic grin.
"Looks like a potato paddle, and is hung
like a barn door!"
vouchsafed he.
A little rummaging in the shop brought forth some
more white pine and soon he had sawn the rudder as
shown in our drawings, reinforced with a strip along
the bottom to prevent it warping, and then the Cap'n
made me put on the rudder irons and do it right. My
carpentry was of the let-it-go-at-that kind, but the
Cap'n soon made me realize that sea carpentry is "do
it right or don't do it at all!"
Next day I brought down the sails and put in a
joyful day rigging her, while all the weatherbeaten
Cap'ns alongshore hee-hawed and admired the diminutive
yacht. I first tried to hold the shrouds with screw
eyes but they pulled right out, so I dug up 60 cents
and bought the smallest galvanized iron chain plates,
5 inches long, and these were screwed to the sides of
the boat about eight inches aft of the mast step. An
eye was next put in the shroud wire and the shrouds
hove up tight, with three or four turns of marline
running from the chain plate eye to the shroud eye.
Then the jib stay was run from the masthead withe with
a set of iron rings for the jib luff grommets to tie
to.
In a larger boat you would use jib hanks, which can
be snapped over the stay, but they do not come small
enough for a diminutive yacht of 13 feet LWL, so I
used inch galvanized iron rings instead. This jib stay
up, the double block for throat and peak halyard was
next secured to the after masthead withe eye with a
few turns of marline and the same was done to the jib
halyard block at the forward eye.
Then a jib downhaul block at the bowsprit tip, and
I was ready for the running rigging. This was all
l/4-inch white cotton rope, and after being rove
through the proper blocks and secured to the spars I
put on the cleats to which each was attached. You want
these in galvanized iron, about the six-inch size, one
each, for throat and peak mainsail halyards, jib
halyard, jib downhaul, port and starboard jib sheets,
and one for the main sheet on the stern transom under
the tiller. For a sail of this size the main sheet can
be just a 1/4 inch hemp rope, single, no blocks being
needed. A topping lift for the main boom will also be
wanted to prevent the boom dropping in the water, when
the sail is let down and the boom happens to be
outboard, and this I put on next, securing at the aft
masthead eye and tying with a double half hitch at the
aft boom end to give the right topping of the boom
about two feet above the deck.
She was now ready to spread her wings. I ran the
boat ashore on a convenient sand beach where she could
face the wind, for it is better to make the first try
with your rigging when the boat is on something solid
or she will go all over the lot and maybe upset while
you are tuning up this and that. Next I hauled away on
throat and peak mainsail halyards and up went the
snowy white sail!
Aye, but that was a joyful sight! Then the jib, and
now they were both flapping in the wind, everything
drawing well and it was time to be off for a trial
spin. I shoved her off, let down the board and
gathered in the main sheet, and presently she filled
and was away! Speed ! -- you bet! She made all her
previous time look like racing a dock. And now for the
first time I had to hike well over the side in the
puffs, and now and then had to spill wind when it
drove her lee washboards under and water came over the
side. But I was satisfied -- she made the lighthouse a
mile down the harbor in a little less than no time, it
seemed to me!
Mainsail was a bit too flat, but I soon remedied
that by heaving to and hauling on the peak halyard so
as to throw a mass of wrinkles in along the luff. At
first the jib got away with me, as I had never had so
large a jib to manage. Never have the jib up without
the mainsail first, for its tendency is to haul the
bow of the boat away from the wind and you have no
steering control over her at all. In coming up into
the wind the jib is a great help in going about
quickly if you hold the weather sheet fast until the
wind has had a chance to get on the other side of the
jib thus throwing her bow around.
NAUTICAL
NAMES ABOUT A BOAT
Click
here for a larger image.
But all these points of handling sails must be left
for another chapter; suffice to conclude with the
reflection that I now had a fine, fast, able little
racer and cruiser that I could go anywhere in, sleep
in at night, sail ten miles or fifty, or just knock
about the bay in, and the whole cost of changing her
from a plain batteau to practically a small skipjack
yacht was not over fourteen dollars. How I handled
her, raced her and cruised her, and how to build such
a batteau from the planks up will be told in
succeeding chapters.
 More
...
..
© 2002 Craig
O'Donnell, editor &
general factotum.
May not be reproduced without my permission. Go scan
your own damn stuff.
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