Yachting Volume I Part 19

And the next day, let us suppose, is a fine one. Sea and sky are of a rapturous blue, and a pleasant summer breeze is blowing in from the sea. The great yachting question of the morning, 'What shall we do to-day?' is scarcely debated at breakfast at all. It is pre-eminently a day for sailing. The cutter is got ready at once, and you beat out towards the open water. In all probability there are fish to be caught, for you noted a quant.i.ty of birds fishing off the mouth of the bay when you steamed in yesterday--but you really hardly care whether there are fish or not, it is so good simply to be alive and sailing the sea on such a day. The sun warms you through in your shirt sleeves, the steady breeze is balmy to feel, and though it is the coast of Scotland you are vaguely reminded of coral islands and trade winds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Whales.]

As you work out to seaward it becomes evident that you are in a fishy sea, for the foolish confidential little guillemots and razorbills (he that shooteth such knoweth not how to live nor the nature and object of things) are squeaking and croaking and ducking under water all round. And lo! close ahead appear two whales, not mere black fish (whatever they may be), but great fellows looking 40 feet long on a moderately calm computation, spouting and showing their black backs at intervals. You go as close to them as they will let you and watch with breathless fascination their oily movements so full of lazy strength and sensuous enjoyment; and you call them bottle-noses or finbacks or rorquals according to your individual taste and fancy; for the scientific cla.s.sification of whales is in an extraordinarily imperfect state, and even the Encyclopaedia, that settler of disputes and averter of quarrels that no yacht should ever be without, will give you but little a.s.sistance.

But you must tear yourself away from the whales, for half a mile to windward there you sight a cloud of birds fishing furiously, the gannets swooping and soaring, and then suddenly shutting their wings and dropping in quick succession, pop, pop, pop, like bullets into the sea; and a dense ma.s.s of gulls flying and swimming, screaming and squattering, and flapping their wings on the surface of the water. How a gull ever gets a living is a wonder; he seems so dainty and hesitating and afraid to commit himself. A gannet will soar, plunge, dive under water, and swallow half a dozen little fish while a gull is apparently making up his mind whether it is worth while to risk wetting his feet.

As soon as your boat will fetch, you go about and stand straight for the birds, overhauling meanwhile the 'whiffing' or 'railing' lines that are towing astern, to make sure that there is nothing foul, and that there is no seaweed on your silvery spinners. You are all keen, but not too sanguine, for there is never a certainty of catching fish like this. Sometimes you may sail backwards and forwards till you are sick of it through a mob of feeding seabirds, trying every sort of bait and never getting a ghost of a bite. Either it is herring that they are after, or else it is that the unknown big fish who are hunting up the small fry to the birds from below will not take a bait.

You are close now, and there is a noise not unlike that of the parrot-house in the Zoological Gardens. Mackerel is what you hope for; gurnard you will put up with; pollack will not be caught in any numbers so far from the sh.o.r.e. You shake your sails to reduce your pace, and then, filling them again, stand straight in amongst the screaming gulls, and as they reluctantly rise from the water and the little guillemots squatter away and dive, you get a rapid vision of fish shooting about near the top of the water and little tiny silver things rippling its surface and hopping feebly above.

A moment more and the lines tauten: 'Mackerel it is, by Jingo!' and as soon as the lines are out again and no one feels another bite, round goes the boat again, and back through the school. So you go on, sometimes catching them slowly and singly, sometimes two at once as fast as the lines can be got out, until you have several dozen in the bottom of the boat. All of a sudden the fish cease to bite and the birds fly away. They gather again into a new cl.u.s.ter half a mile off, and away you go for it as fast as you can sail, and begin catching fish once more. Once more the fish stop biting, and the birds move off, and you can see no more of them fishing except a very few a long way to windward. It seems a sin to go home on such a day, and it is too early to try for pollack with so bright a sun. But your chart shows you a fishing-bank close to, and you have got a few herrings for bait; so you make for this place, and get the exact spot by the relative bearings of points and islands, and drop your anchor in twenty fathoms.

Hardly are the lines down before it becomes evident that you are in the right place. Whiting, haddock, and gurnard come up with rapidity, varied by an occasional cod, skate, or bream. You have caught quite a lot before the dog-fish set in. Then it is all over. First comes one, then another, and then nothing else. In vain you despatch them with knives and throw their bleeding corpses back into the sea to terrify the rest. Dogfish have no nerves that you can work upon in this way.

The sight and smell of their murdered relations and friends only whet their appet.i.tes and make them the more greedy. You give it up in despair, haul your anchor up, and get under sail once more.

It is now late in the afternoon. The day has changed for the worse--weather changes quick in these lat.i.tudes--and looks rather wild and windy, with promise of more to come before long. But your port is to leeward, so you need not be anxious, and you make up your minds to fish for pollack round the headlands and the islands at the mouth of the bay; for just before sundown is the best time of all, especially if it is about half flood. You take a reef down in both sails to make the boat slower and easier to handle, for you do not want to have to devote all your attention to keeping her right side up when you are fishing for pollack close in to the rocks. The tack is triced up so as to let the steerer see under it; a crutch is shipped on each side of the boat, and a couple of oars are cleared and made ready for instant use if required. One man stands up in the bows to look out for rocks, and also to attend to the peak halliards when called upon; two others handle the lines on which a red or a white india-rubber sand-eel has been subst.i.tuted 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The swoop of the gannet.]

In this order you coast slowly along about twenty yards from the steep cliffs, running out occasionally to avoid reefs and shoal places, the steerer keeping the speed to something under three knots an hour by slacking the mainsheet and spilling the sail when the wind is abeam, and hauling it right in when it is aft, occasionally dropping the peak as well. Every now and then, generally off a point, you catch a fish, and when you do you go about to see if there are more in the same place. But fish seem scarce, and the sport is rather slow until you sail through a narrow channel between two islands. Then in a moment there is a heavy fish on each line, and no sooner are they hauled on board and the lines thrown out again than the same thing happens. You have struck fish at last in earnest. While the hooks are being disengaged up goes the peak, and you stand back close-hauled through the narrow channel. Backwards and forwards you go, again and again, with varying luck. Now you haul in two at a time, now you give a groan of dismay as a monster gets off as you are in the act of swinging him in. Sometimes the boat will not go fast enough to make the fish bite, and there is agony of mind; sometimes it _will_ go too fast. But on the whole the fishing is fast and furious, and you are all wild with excitement; and then--snap goes a snooding with a particularly big fish, and you must fish with one line till the other is refitted. The wind heads the boat off standing back through the channel this time; the centreboard hits a rock and b.u.mps up into its case; there is no harm done, but alas! the remaining line gets foul of the rock before it can be shortened up, and snaps above the lead, and there is nothing for it but to stand off until the tackle is repaired; the steersman, who has to look on, grinding his teeth with impatience as the precious moments slip away. But, though minutes seem hours, you are soon at work again, and by the time that darkness brings the sport to an end you have caught some four dozen fine pollack, the larger ones 9 lb. or 10 lb. apiece. And you sail home full of that sense of physical well-being and mental contentment that comes of a long day spent in pure air, healthy enjoyment, and freedom from care. And, somehow, it is not on days like these that one looks back with the keenest sense of having wasted time.

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 ma.s.ses 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 sh.o.r.e, 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-sh.o.r.e 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 pa.s.s 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 st.u.r.dy 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 princ.i.p.ally 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 cla.s.s 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-canva.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sage 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 (not to speak of inconvenience in landing), 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 'Black Pearl's' cutter, midship section.]

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 b.u.mpkin, 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 const.i.tutes, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mainsheet on iron horse.]

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sail-plan, 'Black Pearl's' cutter.]

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 'Aline's' cutter (Colonel Gamble).]

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 circ.u.mstances. 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.