Our illustrations show the smallest
of the knockabouts, the 16 feet L.W.L., 26 feet over
all. The beam is 7 feet 5 inches, so you see she is
not so narrow; the draft, including fin, is 4 feet 6
inches or about three feet to the bottom of the boat
measured from the taffrail. They carry about 1700
pounds of lead ballast in the keel, and of course are
too complicated for youthful carpenters to attempt.
The best way to acquire one is to buy them secondhand
in the fall, when their rich owners are willing to
part with them for a few hundred dollars, having
usually built the boat solely to enter some one-design
races.
The sail area of the boat shown is 330 square feet,
which is a good deal more than double that of the
16-foot catboat just described, and a third larger
than that of the sail skiff. The boom is 19 feet 6
inches; gaff, 18 feet 4 inches; hoist, 10 feet; and
leach, 32 feet. Jib has 18-ft. hoist; 14-ft. luff and
7 ft. 10 in. foot. A spinnaker with 18-foot pole
completes the sail set. A little house or cabin aids
in making her a good weather boat, besides providing a
cruising shelter, of sorts. This boat is primarily for
racing, but modern designers have worked up cruising
knockabouts that are better cruisers than any of the
older designs of cats and sloops.
In the design you will note that the matter of
strength in mounting and staying the mast has received
especial attention. The two weak points in any boat
are the mast step and the shroud anchorages. These,
with the mast itself, constitute a triangular truss
that must withstand the enormous sail pressures. No
ordinary mast step will do; note that the step used in
knockabouts is a heavy oak timber, secured to half a
dozen ribs as well as to the stem for'd. The ribs and
mast partners are braced at the mast sections with
knees, and doubled ribs are put in here to give a
stout anchorage to the chain plates. Note also a new
rope in the rigging that you have not seen before. It
runs from the masthead back to a cleat about amidships
on each side, and is called the backstay preventer (or
rather preventers as there are two of them, to port
and starboard).
One or the other of them is in use when broad
reaching or going dead before the wind with spinnaker
set in both cases. The ordinary drive of the mainsail
is taken care of by the aft pitch of the main shrouds,
but, with the spinnaker added, the pressure would pull
the mast over forward if it were not for the preventer
backstay. The lee preventer is slacked off its cleat
and the weather one belayed as the boat comes about so
there is always one of them working.
While the design of a knockabout looks hard, I
believe that a simplified model, with centerboard (as
many of them are designed), and the planking covered
with canvas, would not be out of the question for four
youths of 18 to 20 years of age to build. I would
suggest a 2 x 12-inch oak keel, steam bent to fit the
lines shown and take the place of the stern hook on
the usual three-piece keel of larger craft. A natural
bent 3 x 6-inch oak stem and a stern knee of 3-inch
stock serve for your main members. Oak stern transom
of 1-1/8 inch stock; planking of 7/8-inch white pine
with No. 00 duck canvas skin. An 8-foot board will be
plenty for this boat, and the bottom of centerboard
trunk logs are rockered to fit the sweep of the keel.
The logs would be of 2 x 12-inch hard pine; upper
boards of 1-1/8-inch yellow pine; centerboard of
1-7/8-inch willow oak.
Both board and trunk are through-bolted with
half-inch iron rods. You would need a skeg and rudder
post, and the boat itself ought to be a foot wider
beam than the dimensions of the one shown with keel,
and the ballast, about 800 pounds of it, in sand bags
in each bilge behind the cockpit seats making 1600
pounds in all. Ribs of 1 x 7/8-inch oak stock, steam
bent. A heavy sawed frame every third rib, gotten out
of 2-inch stock, makes a stiffer boat of her, leaving
the work of pinning the planks firmly together to the
thinner steam-bent ribs.
Our chapter on boat construction in general will
give you details of construction of all minor parts of
a boat of this size, so that it will not be hard to
design in the rest of the boat yourself.
BOAT SAILING
The fine points of boat sailing really deserve a
chapter to themselves but our space in this book is
limited. Indeed whole books have been written on the
sole subject of handling a racing yacht under all
conditions that are likely to occur during the
adventures of the racing skipper. However, for the
youthful beginner, I believe that I will get in here
about all you will need to make a good all-around
skipper, leaving the rest for you to learn in the big
school of experience in actual cruising and
racing.
To begin with the cat rig. She carries necessarily
a hard weather helm, due to the immense driving power
of the mainsail which is unbalanced by any jib. This
necessitates the rudder being always a considerable
bit out of true with the keel and retards her speed,
as you may have often noted in your motor boat in
turning a curve and observing her engine slowing down
and the boat losing headway. There is no help for this
with the cat rig, and she pulls your arm off, nearly,
particularly when you are a boy of only fourteen years
as I was when I sailed the famous cat Peggy owned by
my uncle. To relieve this pull on your arm we used the
ropes for securing the boom in the lazy tongs when in
port. These are short half-inch hemp bent through
rings on the deck, and a turn of the weather rope
around the tiller took the strain off your arm yet
gave you entire control by keeping a hand on the tail
of it. A good hunch for a cat rig of 18-foot boom and
over.
In handling a cat tacking, all beginners learn as a
first instruction to keep her just rap full, that is,
just enough off the wind to prevent the sail luffing
or shivering up near the mast. A good skipper will
follow his wind closely, eating up into it in strong
puffs instead of spilling it by letting go sheet, yet
not sending her up so smart as to kill her headway.
When the wind slackens do not keep her broad away but
hold her reasonably on the course and do your gaining
in the puffs or "catspaws." You can see these come
over the water in black prickles over the waves. Your
only danger when "on the wind," or tacking, is in
getting such a knockdown puff that you cannot let out
sheet because the boom is already fouled in the water.
This causes more upsets than any other thing that
besets amateur sailors.
If in such a fix, loose the peak halyard instantly.
Throwing her sharp up into the wind will help some,
but you really can not do much with either helm or
sheet, and had best use the time you have left, which
is a few seconds, in spilling the peak which will save
her every time. For this reason always have the
halyards belayed with a single turn, crossing over the
cleat once and then under it, the free end of the
halyard in a short loop. The rest of the halyard is
neatly coiled down on deck in a tight rope spiral, and
a pull on the loop frees the halyard and she runs out
without a moment's loss of time in lifting a coil off
the cleat or anything else. It is best to anticipate
what appears to be a knockdown catspaw coming by
shoving her up into the wind and spilling some by
starting the sheet, when you will only get a furious
luffing instead of your boom being driven under
water.
Another cause of upset on the wind is main sheet
made fast. Only sheer carelessness would tolerate this
in a small boat, and in a larger one the sheet is
belayed like a halyard so it can instantly be started.
For a sail canoe the sheet is held always in the hand,
as she is so lively that she responds heavily to the
least change of wind and at no time is the pull of the
sheet very heavy. In small sail batteaux, duckboats,
sail dories and cats, the sheet has a single turn
under the aft horn of the cleat, so it can be easily
shifted to spill wind, yet half of its pull is taken
by the cleat. This also prevents the sail "skying"
under the lifting power of the peak and prevents the
peak itself bagging off to leeward when it lifts the
boom. In cats and knockabouts of 18 to 30 feet over
all the main sheet is rove through one or more boom
blocks and the traveler block and then finally secured
on the main cleat with a loop under the turn. Our
various sail craft drawings each show different ways
of rigging the main sheet.
A final point in sailing on the wind is to know
when you have the right of way and to hold it at all
costs, only yielding to the road hog when it is
absolutely necessary to save your boat -- not his!
Warn him by the hail, "Right of Way!" and then hold
your course. Nowadays, particularly among the newly
rich, one encounters skippers ignorant of the Rules of
the Road at sea, and, as these gentry have an idea
that they own the earth anyway because of their lately
acquired wealth, they are apt to pay small attention
to the rights of others when sailing. You have the
right of way when on the starboard tack; that is, when
the wind is blowing on your face when you look to
starboard. Hold your course; it is up to the other
fellow to keep clear, and if you do not hold your
course he does not know what to do himself. Another
way to remember it is, "When your boom is out to port,
you're on the starboard tack" and vice versa, so when
you are tacking out to a mark and are reaching it on
the starboard tack, and your rival is swooping down on
it on the port tack, keep on your way and round the
mark. If he crosses ahead of you he is taking chances
of being run down, and if he runs into you to port he
must stand all damages to your boat. His best scheme
is to crowd down on you as close as he dares and then
luff up hard, filling in on you to windward when you
come around the mark and lay over on the port tack.
You still have the right of way, as the windward boat
must keep clear of the one on his lee.
In broad and close reaching, that is, running
across the wind either with it somewhat astern (broad)
or somewhat ahead (close) you have a fast point of
sailing and little danger, and the sail is let out
until it shows a trifle of quiver in the luff. Do not
try to follow the wind too much, as she is apt to yaw
and broach in the seas, particularly if long and heavy
ones, and the continual drag of the rudder in
rectifying her course will slow her down a lot. It is
much better to anticipate, -- "feel your boat," as it
is called -- a mere flip of the tiller, taken at the
right moment before she begins to yaw and slew,
stopping the tendency without any undue drag. If she
get away from you, let her go and ease her back to the
course gradually. Always aim to land to weather of
your mark, so as to have something to come and go on.
If it is before the wind on the homeward stretch, have
the spinnaker ready to let go, for every second counts
with it after you round the mark. Cut it close and let
go the pole.
Before the wind is, to my mind, the most dangerous
point of sailing to the tyro skipper, particularly in
handling a cat. There are two things to look out for,
jibing and broaching to, also ballooning of the
mainsail. The peak tries to raise the sail up more
than ever, and, as the sheet cannot now hold it down,
it may throw the boom up so that the wind catches
under it. The result is a folding up or ballooning of
the mainsail, a tremendous jibe as the boom falls over
on the other side of the mast, and, most likely, an
upset or a cracked mast. The prevention for such
condition is to slack off the peak halyards quite a
bit, enough to drop a big, inactive bag in the peak,
and, in a high wind, drop the gaff down altogether,
letting it hang behind the mast. These precautions are
necessary with the old-design, broad cat sails
whenever you have a heavy wind astern and high rolling
seas. The modern cat sail, with nearly vertical boom
and battened leach has much less of this tendency to
balloon, as the lifting of the gaff is impossible --
it is cocked up already as high as it can go!
"Broaching to" occurs when a boat is being driven
hard before the wind in a heavy sea and catches the
wave ahead. She at once buries her nose in it, and, as
the rear wave lifts her stern, she slews around
broadside on, with main boom dragging in the water,
and likely, upsets. The old models, with sharp,
straight stems and hard lines for'd, were particularly
apt to this sin, and the cure for it was to carry less
sail, put in a reef, so as to still get the benefit of
the lift of the peak. Another way was to sail slightly
off dead before the wind. Modern boats, with long
overhanging bows lift over such waves when they catch
them, and are far less likely to broach to.
Jibing is a part of the regular game of sailing,
and, if done right is no great storm on a small craft.
When you are dead before the wind the boom has but
little preference as to which side it will go from
your mast, and if you let her yaw or sheer much from
dead before the wind towards the side where your boom
is, the wind will get behind it and throw it around
suddenly and violently, sweeping everything before it,
and, if the wind is strong and the boom large, the
craft will most likely capsize with her own momentum.
Yet if this same jibe is performed intentionally, and
the boom hauled close aboard before throwing her
around with the helm so as to get the wind on the
other side of the sail, it can be done without much
danger and is often done so, in cruising and racing,
when the course changes from dead before the wind to a
broad reach.
Many a time we had to "wear ship" with the old
square-rigged sloop of war Portsmouth, on which I
spent many of my youthful days! When wind and tide
together make it impossible to tack the ship, the
alternative is to let her fall off until dead before
the wind, and then come up on the other tack -- "wear
ship" it is called by seafaring men. It means all
hands on the braces, four of them in a bundle in your
hands, and all the crew pulling and hauling on them
together as the ship wears. In jibing a small boat, if
taken unawares and you find the boom starting in on
her, it can often be headed off and the effects much
diminished by throwing the helm smartly down, that is,
the tiller towards the sail, thus putting her on a
broad reach. If she comes over in spite of you, throw
your weight across the boat so as to lift the boom
high when it gets over on the other side, and grab the
main sheet so as to ease her over. The thing to
prevent is the boat dipping so violently as to bury
the boom in the water, when you no longer have control
over it and are due for a capsize.
With jib and mainsail the young skipper's problems
are much increased, but his rewards are greater in a
perfectly balanced rig. The tendency of the jib is to
pull the bow away from the wind; that of the mainsail
to drive her up into the wind. The latter should
always have the greater force; too big a jib is very
dangerous, for, in a hard catspaw, it will not let her
come up when you spill wind out of the mainsail but
sets her further abeam all the time. The only
salvation then is to let fly the jib sheet quick. But,
with the jib and mainsail properly balanced, if you
spill your wind and shove the helm down she will come
up into the wind and luff the jib also, and you are
perfectly safe.
Ballast also has a great deal to do with it, so
that if you find your jib giving her a lee helm, shift
the ballast further forward until you get her well
balanced with a slight weather helm, that is, a slight
tendency to come up into the wind, when both mainsail
and jib are sheeted home close hauled. My boat, the
Margaret, was so perfectly balanced that she would
sail with the skipper's shinbone against the tiller, a
mere turn of the leg correcting the helm. Moreover, in
a light wind she would sail herself, with jib and
mainsail properly set. She would come up, hang in
stays, fall off, come up again and this time go about
on the other tack, and keep this up indefinitely, with
her skipper lying indolently in the bottom of the
boat. I was once boarded by some anxious fishermen who
thought the boat gone adrift and sailing herself, with
her youthful skipper drowned somewhere!
In coming about with a sloop rig, after the
familiar hail, "Hard a-lee!" is given by the skipper,
the helm is put down hard and jib sheet slacked off.
The boat goes in stays with both jib and mainsail
luffing, and the jib sheet is still held on cleat
while the jib fills on the other side, thus throwing
the bow around. As soon as the mainsail fills and is
sheeted home, the weather jib sheet is slacked off and
the lee sheet snugged home and cleated, and you are
"all standing" on the other tack. A good sloop ought
to get about in seven seconds. Always remember that
the jib is the last sail set and the first sail down,
for, if the mainsail comes down first, the jib will
play "Charley Horse" with you until you get it down
and furled, for with it up alone you have no control
of the boat whatever. Get the driving power of the
mainsail on her first, and then up with your jib. The
only time this rule is broken is when running dead
before the wind in such a heavy blow that not even a
rag of the mainsail can be set. Sometimes I have
scudded before a storm with only the jib set, and made
excellent time at it too!
In going dead before the wind the jib might just as
well come down, as the mainsail and spinnaker rob it
of all the wind. The boy's simplest rig for a
spinnaker that I can suggest would be: spinnaker boom
rigged with slippery jim like a sprit, put on the mast
just above the first mast ring. Boom has spinnaker
sheet block on outer end. Use topping lift for
spinnaker halyard and start out in the race with the
spinnaker up and in fine twine stops along the mast,
and spinnaker sheet already rove through pole block.
The pole is carried lashed alongside of mast, upright.
Now then; when you round that outer buoy, every second
counts in getting the spinnaker set, for she will jump
ahead as soon as she feels it, and if the other fellow
gets his set first he will catch you. A boy at the
spinnaker boom sets its end in the slippery jim, with
guy led aft and sheet led around mast to leeward, and
at the hail "Let go spinnaker!" he drops pole out,
yanks on spinnaker sheet to break the stop threads,
and hauls it out flat on the boom, while the skipper
is belaying the spinnaker guy on a cleat at the stern.
Set it flat or ballooned out, according to the wind,
by hauling in or paying out on the spinnaker sheet. If
you have a balloon jib set also, it will pay to
balloon the spinnaker out a bit, so that the wind
spilled from the spinnaker will tumble into the
balloon jib, giving that sail a little pull also.
Finally,
the art of setting sails. A sail set dead flat will
not be worth much. Shakespeare proved himself an able
seaman when he made the line, "The wind sits in the
shoulder of your sail." The ideal sail set is the
curve of a bird's wing, or an aeroplane. It needs a
full bag up near the luff, and then a nice flat plane
aft, so that the wind, having done its work in the
shoulder of your sail, can be passed out aft, dead,
without any bags or pockets to retain it. For this
reason a ''nigger heel" jib and ditto clew and peak
for the mainsail are always slow. The wind gets in
that pointed bag in the sail and stays there, and that
much of the sail might just as well be cut off with
the scissors, for all the good it does!
A slight out-curve or fullness to the leach of the
mainsail corrects the "nigger heel" tendency, and the
same thing on the jib is done by cutting the foot, not
on a straight line, but with a downward curve as you
will notice in all the jibs shown in these
illustrations. To get that desirable fullness in the
luff, the young skipper will be careful to set up his
gaff so high as to throw some wrinkles in the luff
before starting, and also the lacing around the boom
and gaff are eased off up near the luff and drawn taut
aft. Finally, see that the peak halyard has a good
grip, far out towards the upper end of the gaff.
Otherwise it will sag off to leeward and you lose a
lot of driving power.
In two-sail craft like sharpies and decked sailing
canoes, a certain balance is again obtained by the
proportions of the two sails. In this case the small
sail astern, the mizzen, becomes the driver and is
your "safety sail." It should go up first instead of
the mainsail, for the tendency of the mizzen is always
to drive the bow of the boat or canoe up into the wind
-- the point of safety. Every time you spill wind from
the mainsail, your mizzen drives her up into the wind;
without it you would most likely fall off the wind, as
the mainsail is stepped so far forward, and you would
be in a bad way indeed! So, set the mizzen and keep it
trimmed a trifle closer than you are handling the
mainsail, thus giving her a weather helm. In this way
your rudder has a better hold on her, aided by the
sails, and she will come about nicely, even though the
boat is long and narrow with a long, rather deep keel.
In coming about, throw her up into the wind and, after
going in stays, back the mizzen, that is, reach around
and hold its boom up to windward, thus using it to
slew the stern quickly around and allowing the
mainsail to fill off on the other tack.
And, do not douse the mizzen in a canoe when
paddling with the double blade paddle. Theoretically
leaving the mizzen up would drag you astern because of
the constant luffing; practically, the wind is
constantly shifting a trifle, filling the mizzen first
on one side and then the other, and you can actually
feel the drive of it. And, all the time, it is holding
her head up into the wind so that you are not
continually paddling on one side or another to bring
her back into the wind, as you have to when having no
sail up and paddling into a head wind.
KNOTS
While you will use but three knots constantly, the
clove hitch (double half hitch), bowline knot and
square (or reef) knot, there are about 20 others that
you occasionally have use for aboard ship. The list of
them is given below and the drawings for which I am
indebted to Messrs. Chas. Durkee are given,
loose-tied.
KNOTS
AND BENDS USED IN SEAMANSHIP
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1. Bight of a rope
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16. Flemish loop.
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2. Simple or overhand knot.
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17. Chain knot with toggle.
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3. Figure 8 knot.
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18. Half-hitch.
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4. Double knot.
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19. Timber-hitch.
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5. Boat knot.
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20. Clove-hitch.
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6. Bowline, first step.
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21. Rolling-hitch.
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7. Bowline, second step.
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22. Timber-hitch and half-hitch.
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8. Bowline, completed.
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23. Blackwall-hitch.
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9. Square or reef knot.
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24. Fisherman's bend.
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10. Sheet bend or weaver's knot.
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25. Round turn and half-hitch.
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11. Sheet bend with toggle.
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26. Wall knot commenced.
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12. Carrick bend.
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27. Wall knot completed.
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13. Stevedore knot complete.
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28. Wall knot crown commenced
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14. Stevedore knot commenced.
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29. Wall knot crown completed
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15. Slip knot.
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1. Bight of a rope 16. Flemish loop.
2. Simple or overhand knot. 17. Chain knot
with toggle.
3. Figure 8 knot. 18. Half-hitch.
4. Double knot. 19. Timber-hitch.
5. Boat knot. 20. Clove-hitch.
6. Bowline, first step. 21.
Rolling-hitch.
7. Bowline, second step. 22. Timber-hitch and
half-hitch.
8. Bowline, completed. 23.
Blackwall-hitch.
9. Square or reef knot. 24. Fisherman's
bend.
10. Sheet bend or weaver's knot. 25. Round
turn and half-hitch.
11. Sheet bend with toggle. 26. Wall knot
commenced.
12. Carrick bend. 27. Wall knot
completed.
13. Stevedore knot complete. 28. Wall knot
crown commenced
14. Stevedore knot commenced. 29. Wall knot
crown completed
15. Slip knot.
More
...
..
© 2002 Craig
O'Donnell, editor &
general factotum.
May not be reproduced without my permission. Go scan
your own damn stuff.
