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Sandy Steele Adventures
TROUBLED WATERS
* * * * * *
SANDY STEELE ADVENTURES
Black Treasure
Danger at Mormon Crossing
Stormy Voyage
Fire at Red Lake
Secret Mission to Alaska
Troubled Waters
* * * * * *
Sandy Steele Adventures
TROUBLED WATERS
by
ROGER BARLOW
Simon and Schuster
New York, 1959
All Rights Reserved
Including the Right of Reproduction
in Whole or in Part in Any Form
Copyright © 1959 by Simon and Schuster, Inc.
Published by Simon and Schuster, Inc.
Rockefeller Center, 630 Fifth Avenue
New York 20, N. Y.
First Printing
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 59-13882
Manufactured in the United States of America
by H. Wolff Book Mfg. Co., Inc., New York
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
1 An Unusual Gift 9
2 Make Ready to Sail! 20
3 Shakedown Cruise 33
4 The Man with the Gun 51
5 Storm Fears 67
6 Something Lost—Something Found! 75
7 A Million Dollars’ Worth of Trouble 82
8 Double Blackout 87
9 To the Freighter 97
10 Aboard the Floating Prison 108
11 Escape to Danger 120
12 The Race Begins 136
13 A Race of Mistaken Identity 146
14 Slow-Motion Chase 153
15 Turn and Turn Again 160
16 The End of the Race 169
17 Another Discovery 177
18 Homeward Bound 183
[Illustration: CLIFFPORT CALIFORNIA]
[Illustration: SLOOP]
(1) _Mainsail_
(2) _Jib_
(3) _Mast_
(4) _Boom_
(5) _Shrouds_ (_standing rigging_)
(6) _Headstay_ ( ” ” )
(7) _Backstay_ ( ” ” )
(8) _Rudder_
(9) _Tiller_
(10) _Mainsheet_
(11) _Hawk_
(12) _Halyards_
CHAPTER ONE
An Unusual Gift
Sandy Steele slowly put down the phone and pushed his blond cowlick back
from his brow. Excitement and confusion were mixed in equal parts in his
expression as he turned to his father, John Steele, who stood leaning
against his workbench, idly tossing a piece of quartz crystal in the
air.
“Wow!” Sandy said. “Leave it to Uncle Russ to come up with a real
surprise!”
“It certainly seems to be a habit of his,” John Steele smiled. “What do
you think of this particular surprise?”
“I hardly know what to think,” Sandy answered. “The question is, what do
you and Mother think? I mean, is it all right if I go—if I can find
somebody to go with me?”
“Your mother and I discussed this with your Uncle Russ before he called
you,” Sandy’s father said, “so I guess that’s one worry you don’t have
to consider. The only problem you have is finding somebody who knows how
to handle a boat, and who’ll be interested in making this trip with
you.”
Wrinkling his forehead in thought, Sandy swung his gangling six-foot
frame up on to the workbench next to his father. “How about you, Dad?”
he asked. “Do you know anything about sailing a boat?”
His father shook his head. “Sailing is hardly a skill that a government
field geologist needs to develop. My work is with rocks and minerals—the
dryest kind of dry land. What I know about water, you could carve on
granite and put in your watch pocket!”
“Geology didn’t make you into an inventor, a chemist, an electrical
engineer, a carpenter and gosh knows what else,” Sandy answered, waving
around him at the crowded workshop with its confusing mass of equipment.
“I just thought you might have done some reading on this subject, too.”
John Steele smiled. “As the proud but confused owner of a new sailboat,
one of the first things you’ll learn is that there’s a world of
difference between theory and practice. I’ve been out on a boat a few
times; years ago, though. I’ve also read some books on the subject, as
you thought. But all I know is that I don’t know anything.” He put down
the quartz crystal and moved away from the workbench. “No,” he said, “if
you’re going to be able to accept your Uncle Russ’s offer of a sailboat
as a gift, and if you’re going to sail it on a three-day trip down from
Cliffport, you’ll have to find someone with practical knowledge to help
you do it.”
Sandy frowned in concentration. “Finding a sailor in Valley View is
going to be like finding a ski instructor in the Sahara Desert!” he
said. “Why, this town is almost one hundred miles inland from the
ocean!”
“That’s true,” John Steele said; “but it seems to me that I once heard
you and one of your friends talking about sailing. If I’m not mistaken,
it was Jerry James, and it sounded to me at the time as if he knew what
he was talking about.”
“Of course!” Sandy said, slapping his forehead in exasperation. “I don’t
know why I didn’t think of it! Jerry was a Sea Scout in Oceanhead before
his family moved to Valley View. It’s just that he’s become so much a
part of this town that I forget he didn’t grow up here with the rest of
us. I think he was a Sea Scout for about three years, and he had been
sailing before he ever joined up. I’m sure he can do it!”
“Well,” his father said, “you’d better hunt him up fast and find out
whether he can and will. Your uncle expects us to call him back within a
couple of hours to give him an answer, because he’s leaving the country
in two days and he wants to get this settled before he goes.”
He had hardly finished his sentence before Sandy was out of the
workshop, on his bike, and tearing down the tree-shaded street. He was
sure that Jerry would be able to do it! He remembered their conversation
well, now that his father had reminded him of it, and he recalled that
Jerry had said that he practically grew up on boats, and that they were
the only thing that he missed since moving to Valley View. In the close
friendship that had grown up between them in the last couple of years,
Sandy could not think of one time that Jerry had promised something that
he did not deliver. If he said he could do something, he could do it!
Sandy smiled, remembering Jerry’s early days in Valley View, his modest
admission that he “could play a little baseball,” and his first day on
the diamond. Jerry had immediately shown himself to be the best high
school catcher in the county. With Sandy as pitcher, they had developed
into an almost unbeatable battery.
As he pedaled toward the drugstore owned by Jerry’s father, Sandy hoped
that they would be able to carry their teamwork on in this new venture.
He could still hardly believe his Uncle Russ’s offer of a sailboat,
provided he could find someone to teach him how to sail. Like most boys,
he had read and enjoyed sea stories, although many of the words used
were strange and meaningless to him. In his reading, he had often
pictured himself at sea, steering a tall ship through white-capped seas.
A confused series of sailing words went through his mind: bow, stern,
helm, topgallant sails, mizzen, poop deck, quarter-deck, galley, batten
the hatches, go aloft....
He was suddenly brought back to land as he narrowly missed running his
bike into Pepper March, who refused to hurry for a mere bike. Putting
the sea dreams firmly out of his mind, he continued more carefully until
he pulled up in front of James’s Drugstore, where he put his bike in the
rack under the green-and-white striped awning and hurried into the cool,
vanilla-smelling store.
Jerry was behind the counter, making up a pineapple ice-cream soda for
Quiz Taylor who, with two empty glasses in front of him, was impatiently
waiting for the third.
Sandy climbed onto the stool next to the stubby Quiz and impatiently
waited until Jerry was through making the soda. When the concoction was
safely delivered into Quiz’s eager hands, Sandy said, “Jerry, I’ve got
some real exciting news! In fact, it’s so exciting that I didn’t want to
tell you while you still had that soda in your hands. I was afraid you’d
toss the whole thing into the air!”
Having firmly secured both his friends’ attention, Sandy told them about
the phone call from his Uncle Russ, the offer of the boat, the need for
instruction and the whole story. When he had finished, Jerry’s
lantern-jawed face was lit up with a 500-watt grin.
“It sounds as if this is going to be the best vacation of my life!” he
said. “A boat! I can hardly wait to get going!”
Sandy sighed with relief. “Then you’re sure you can handle it?” he
asked.
“That’s a good question,” Jerry said, running a hand over his
close-cropped inky hair. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know because
you haven’t told me yet what kind of a boat it is. There are plenty that
I wouldn’t even say I could act as a decent crew member on. Do you know
what kind it is?”
“Why ... why ... it’s a sailboat!” Sandy said. “I mean, that’s all I
know about it. Does it make much difference?”
Jerry laughed. “There are almost as many different kinds of boats as
there are people,” he said. “Nobody but a real Master Mariner would just
answer that he could sail anything. It’s like being an airplane pilot.
If you got your pilot’s license flying a Piper Cub, you wouldn’t be
exactly ready to fly a four-engine jet bomber!”
“Still,” Quiz interrupted thoughtfully, “the principle remains the same
in both. It’s simply a question of creating a high-speed airstream, so
directed as to pass over and under an aerodynamically shaped surface
which, because of the varying degree of arc and the cambered sections
and angle of attack, produces a lift, drag and momentum proportional to
the density of the air, the square of the speed and the area of the wing
or airfoil. It’s simple! What’s more, a sailboat works the same way.”
Looking pleased with himself, Quiz happily returned his attention to the
pineapple soda.
“Why, Quiz!” Sandy said. “I didn’t know you could fly!”
“Fly!” Quiz looked up from his soda with a grimace. “The very thought of
flying makes me sick. If I don’t hold on to the banister, I get dizzy
when I go up to bed at night!”
All three boys laughed, for this side of Quiz’s personality was a
standing joke with them. Quiz, formally known as Clyde Benson Taylor,
was a virtual encyclopedia of obscure information. While he could tell
you vast amounts about nearly every human activity, the very idea of
taking part in an activity usually upset him.
“So much for theory,” Jerry said. “Now, to get back to the practical
realities of sailing a boat—I’d have to know a few things about the kind
of sailboat you have before I’d be willing to give an answer. There are
all kinds of boats, of all different sizes. There are sloops, cats,
cutters, yawls, ketches, schooners and a hundred variations. Did your
Uncle Russ give you any idea of what he has for you?”
“I think he said it was a sloop,” Sandy said. “And he did say that while
it was large enough to sleep on and take out on a cruise, it was a
pretty small boat. He said that anyone who knew how to sail would know
how to handle it.”
“That sounds right to me,” Jerry said. “I didn’t think that he’d want to
start you off with a complicated rig or a big boat. If it’s the kind of
thing I think it is, I’m sure I can sail it, and teach you too.”
“Will I have to learn all about yardarms and fore-topgallant sails and
things like that?” Sandy asked, somewhat doubtfully.
“Not for quite a while,” Jerry laughed. “You’ve been reading too many
books about pirates and whalers in the old days. You only find all those
complicated sail and rigging names on the big square-rigged ships—the
ones with three and four masts. If your boat is a sloop, it only has one
mast, one mainsail, and a choice of maybe three other sails, flown one
at a time with the mainsail. There’s nothing much to learn compared with
the old full-rigged ships with up to four masts.”
“Five,” Quiz said.
“I never heard of one with more than four,” Jerry commented.
As if he were reading from a book buried deep in his pineapple soda,
Quiz mumbled around the straws, “The steel ship _Preussen_ was the only
five-mast full-rigged ship ever built. It was 408 feet long, had masts
223 feet high, yardarms over 100 feet long and 47 sails totaling 50,000
square feet.”
Even though Sandy was used to this sort of thing from Quiz, he was more
impressed than usual. “How would you like to come with us, Quiz?” he
asked.
“Who, me?” Quiz looked shocked. “I don’t know the first thing about
boats! No, thanks—I’ll stay safe ashore!”
The next half hour was spent in excitedly discussing the trip to come,
the possibilities of sailing, the things Sandy would have to learn, and
the equipment that he and Jerry would have to take along. Finally Sandy
remembered that his Uncle Russ was expecting a phone call, and that
Jerry still had to get his parents’ permission to make the trip. They
agreed to go back to Sandy’s house and let John Steele make the call to
Jerry’s father so that the adults could satisfy themselves about the
wisdom of letting the boys take a three-day cruise for Sandy’s first
trip.
Leaving Quiz in charge of the drugstore’s soda fountain, they quickly
hiked to the Steele home, where Sandy’s father agreed to make the call.
Getting Jerry’s parents’ consent to the trip proved not to be a
difficult task. Mr. and Mrs. James obviously had a good deal of
confidence in Jerry’s ability to handle a sailboat, and both sets of
parents felt that their level-headed sixteen-year-olds could take such a
trip on their own. In short order, all of the details were worked out,
and Sandy was once more on the long-distance phone to speak with his
Uncle Russ in San Francisco.
“It’s okay!” he shouted, as soon as his uncle answered the telephone.
“Jerry James, my best friend, used to be a Sea Scout and knows all about
boats. His parents say he’s a good sailor. We’re ready to start any time
you want!”
He listened for a minute to his uncle, then said, “Swell! We’ll be
ready. And thanks a million for the boat!” Hanging up the phone, he
turned to his father, mother and Jerry with a wide grin.
“Uncle Russ sure doesn’t waste any time,” he said. “He’s leaving now and
expects to be down here tonight. He says that we’d better get all packed
and ready, because he wants to take us up to Cliffport tomorrow morning,
and we’ll have to leave here by six o’clock!”
CHAPTER TWO
Make Ready to Sail!
“There’s one good thing about riding in this little sports car,” Sandy
said, and laughed as he eased his cramped six-foot length out of his
Uncle Russ’s low-slung red racer. “It’s going to make the sailboat seem
as roomy as a yacht in comparison!”
Sandy pushed his cowlick out of his eyes and stretched as his uncle and
his friend Jerry followed him out of the little car.
“Don’t worry about the size of the boat,” Jerry said. “I’ll guarantee
that it’s going to seem pretty big and complicated, no matter how small
it actually is, until you’ve learned how to sail it. In fact, you’re
going to find that a boat is a whole new world, full of all kinds of new
things to get used to. And from what your uncle told us about this one,
it’ll be more than big enough to keep us both busy for a couple of
summers to come.”
“I feel as if we’re in a whole new world already,” Sandy replied, “and
we’re not even on board yet!” He looked about him at the beehive of
activity that was the Cliffport Boat Yard. “I’ve never seen anything
like this before!”
From all sides came the sounds of hammering and sawing, and the thin
whine of electric sanders. The brisk, salty smell of the sea was mingled
with the sharp odors of paint, varnish and turpentine and the peculiar,
half-sweet smell of marine engine fuel.
Boats of every size and description were ranged about them. Towering
high above them, resting in specially built cradles, were long hulls
with deep, weighted keels like giant fins under them. Heavy frames and
timbers held these boats upright, and ladders leaned against them to
where their decks joined their sides, high overhead. Men scrambled up
and down the ladders with tools and equipment, or sat on the scaffolds
and frames, painting.
Smaller craft without keels were braced in cradles or frames on the
ground, or lay bottoms up on racks made of heavy beams that looked like
railroad ties. Some of the boats were having their bottoms scraped, some
were being sanded, others were in the process of painting.
At one nearby boat, Sandy saw men hammering on the bottom of the hull
with big wooden mallets. Jerry explained that these were calking
hammers, and that they were used to drive oakum into the seams between
the planks to make the boats watertight for sailing. When the boats were
put in the water later on, he added, the planks would swell and form
waterproof joints where the planks met.
On both sides, lines of railroad tracks led from the boat yard and the
big sheds straight down to the water’s edge and on into the water. Boats
on wheeled flatcars stood on the rails here and there, ready to be eased
down the tracks into the water for launching. Jerry explained how, when
the flatcars with their cradles had gone down the slope and were under
water, the boats simply floated away from them. Then the launching
device would be hauled back up the tracks for use on another boat.
Sandy looked about him in bewilderment at the variety of boats in the
yard. There were small boats with one mast, larger ones with two, cabin
cruisers with no masts at all, and one sleek, beautiful, black-hulled
boat with three tall masts. He was just beginning to think that he had
found some relationship between the size of the boat and the number of
masts when he spotted what appeared to be one of the largest hulls in
the boat yard, with one immense mast. Next to it was a far smaller boat
with two. Sandy thought to himself that there didn’t appear to be any
simple rules to the business of boat designing. All in all the bustling
Cliffport Boat Yard was a thoroughly confusing sight for Sandy, and a
pretty exciting one, too.
As a matter of fact, the entire last two days had been pretty confusing
and exciting, Sandy reflected. Just two days ago, he had started on his
spring vacation from Valley View High School with not a thing to do but
loaf around home. Now, suddenly, he was the owner of a sailboat he had
never seen, and he was preparing to take a two-hundred-mile cruise down
the coast! A two-hundred-mile cruise—and he had never even been on board
a sailboat!
Looking at the maze of masts and rigging around him, Sandy sensed for
the first time some of the complications of handling a boat. Laying a
hand on his friend’s shoulder, he said, “Boy, Jerry, I sure hope you can
sail this boat alone! If what I see around me is a sample, I’m afraid
I’m going to be too confused to do more than just watch you and maybe
ask a few simple-minded questions!”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jerry said with a grin. “It’s not anywhere near
as complicated as it looks at first sight. I learned to handle a boat
fairly well in just a few summers at the shore, plus some instruction in
the Sea Scouts, and I didn’t even have my own boat so that I could sail
regularly. One season of working your own boat will probably turn you
into a first-rate skipper!”
Then Jerry frowned for a minute and ran his hand over his hair.
“Speaking of being a skipper,” he began awkwardly, “you realize, I
guess, that I’ll have to act as skipper of this boat at first? I mean, I
know it’s your boat and all, but....”
Sandy laughed. “You go right ahead and take charge! I’ll be more than
happy to take orders from you. After all, somebody on board has to be in
charge, and it’s a good idea to have it be someone who knows what he’s
in charge of!”
“Fine,” Jerry said, looking relieved. “If you just keep up that kind of
attitude, you’ll be the best kind of a crew member that any skipper
could ask for!”
Sandy’s Uncle Russ had been waiting by his car while the boys had been
talking and taking in the sights, sounds and smells of the Cliffport
Boat Yard. Now he moved over to join them. “The trunk of the car is
open,” he said, “and your sea bags are in there. And that’s as much as I
intend to do about it. I don’t know much about sailors, but if they’re
anything at all like soldiers, they carry their own packs! Now let’s get
going!”
The boys grinned sheepishly and ran to the back of the car to gather
their equipment, and Russell Steele relaxed and dropped his mock
military manner. An ex-general of the United States Army, he often
kidded Sandy and his friends by pretending that they were soldiers in
his command. This time, he reflected, it was very nearly true. In the
same way that a general must feel a responsibility toward the men he
sends out on a mission, Russell Steele felt responsible for Sandy and
Jerry as they were preparing to set out on this trip.
After all, he reminded himself, the trip had been his idea, and the
sailboat had been his present to Sandy. He had been using the boat
during the last few months while doing some research on special
underwater equipment for the government, and now he no longer had any
need for it. As Vice President of World Dynamics Corporation, Russell
Steele was in charge of the New Projects Division. World Dynamics was a
sprawling concern with almost unlimited interests, often in the most
secret kinds of affairs, and his work with it often called him to
different parts of the world. He had found his stay in Cliffport a
pleasant change from some of the remote and often primitive places he
had been forced to settle in in the past. Now, however, he was off
again, to one more secret destination. He wouldn’t be in a position to
use a sailboat again for a long time to come.
Sandy’s Uncle Russ had been brought up on the seacoast of California.
While his brother, Sandy’s father, had become fascinated with the rocks
and geological formations of the nearby mountains and deserts, he had
gone in the other direction to the shores of the Pacific. During nearly
all of his boyhood he had puttered around boats and boat yards.
Although Russell Steele had spent most of his adult life in the Army
(and maybe because of it) he had always had a soft spot in his heart for
the sport of sailing. He had regretted that Sandy, his only nephew,
lived inland in Valley View where he was unable to share in this
enthusiasm. But Valley View was only a couple of hours from the seacoast
and now that Sandy was old enough to drive a car, it would be possible
for him to own and enjoy a sailboat.
Uncle Russ thought of all this, and then he wondered whether it had been
a good idea to suggest that the boys bring the sloop all the way down
from Cliffport on their very first sail. Still, he mused, Jerry seemed
like a responsible lad, and he had said that he knew how to handle a
boat well enough to make such a trip. And Sandy learned fast and was
good with his hands. Well, the General thought to himself, we’ll just
have to give them their heads and let them try it to see how they make
out....
At that moment in his reflections, the boys joined him with their
luggage, and all three started through the boat yard to the waterfront.
As they picked their way through the clutter of boats, scrap lumber,
railroad tracks and equipment, they passed close by the side of a boat
standing on the ways about to be launched. Sandy ran his hand over the
gleaming paintwork of the hull, and found that it was as smooth as
glass. Jerry explained that great care was given to getting a smooth
paint job, because the greatest force working against a boat to slow it
down is the friction created by the water passing over the hull. Good
racing boats, he told Sandy, are hauled out of the water to be cleaned
and painted several times in a season.
Their walk had by now led them down to the water’s edge, where they
walked along a weathered wharf. A light, early-morning haze made the
colors of the sailboats that floated in the bay seem soft and pale. The
water and the sky appeared to be one single surface, with no break or
horizon line to indicate where one stopped and the other began. The
boat-yard flag on its mast atop the main shed fluttered lazily in a mild
breeze, and a gentle ground swell made soft, lapping sounds under the
wharf.
Strolling along, they came to a long, steeply sloping gangway that
descended to a floating dock, to which were tied several small sailboats
that rocked quietly on the smooth swell of Cliffport Bay.
Russell Steele took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed with it. “See
there?” he said. “The third sloop—the one with the white hull and the
green decks and the varnished mast—that’s your new sailboat, Sandy, and
I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.”
Before he had finished his sentence, Sandy and Jerry were down the steep
gangway, racing along the floating dock to where the trim, white sloop
was tied. Russ Steele smiled, replaced his pipe in his mouth, and
followed at a pace almost as fast as the boys’.
“It’s a beauty!” Sandy panted, pushing his hair back from his eyes.
“What slick lines! And look at how roomy the cabin is! And look at the
height of the mast! And all that rigging!”
His grin faded, and a look of bewilderment spread across his face. “Boy,
I can sure say that again! Just look at all that rigging! How am I
supposed to know what to do with what and when to do it, Jerry?”
Jerry laughed, and jumped lightly into the small cockpit. “Come on
board, skipper, and we’ll start your first sailing lesson by showing you
around and telling you the names of things. It’s not half as complicated
as it looks. In fact, this sloop rig is just about the simplest there
is. As soon as you learn what to call things, you’ll have the hardest
part of the lesson over with.”
Sandy followed Jerry into the cockpit, then paused to turn and face his
uncle, who was still standing on the dock. “How about you, Uncle Russ?”
he asked. “Will you stick around for a little while and take the first
sail with us?”
“Thanks for asking, Sandy,” Russell Steele answered, “but much as I’d
like to come along with you, I can’t manage it. I have to be back in my
office this afternoon for an important conference. In fact, I’ll just
about make it if I get started now. But before I get under way, and
before you get carried away with the fine art of sailing, there are a
few things that you’ll need to know.”
He talked rapidly and uninterruptedly for about five minutes and, when
he had finished, Sandy appreciated for the first time how thoroughly
well-organized his Uncle Russ was. His preparations for the boys’ trip
had been complete in every last detail. Russell Steele’s practiced
military mind had reviewed the situation and had missed nothing that
might be needed.
The sailboat had been fully provisioned for more than a week of sailing,
and had been equipped for every possible emergency as well as for a
routine and pleasant cruise. The small cabin contained an alcohol
cookstove and a good supply of canned food. Every locker and storage
place was full, and everything put on board had been chosen with care
and an eye for both comfort and necessity.
A complete tool chest was stowed in its cubby with several boxes of
spare hardware, ship fittings, nuts and bolts, wire and odd tackle. A
drawer under one of the bunks contained a whole assortment of fishing
equipment. Another carried an odd mixture of things that the boys might
want, even including clothespins for drying garments, and a sewing kit.
A specially made bag contained another sewing kit, this one for sails
and canvas repair.
In a narrow, hanging locker in the forward part of the cabin were two
complete foul-weather suits consisting of waterproof pants and jackets
with hoods. Below them were two pairs of sea boots.
Opposite this was the small enclosed “head,” sailor’s word for bathroom.
No bigger than a telephone booth, it still managed to contain a toilet
and a sink, plus a cabinet for medicines and first-aid supplies and
another for towels, soap, toothbrushes and the like.
“The only things that you won’t find on board yet,” Russell Steele
concluded, “are your sleeping bags and your air mattresses. I’ve ordered
special ones that the local store didn’t have in stock, and they’re not
due to arrive until tomorrow. For tonight, you’ll have to plan on
sleeping ashore, but I’ve taken care of that for you, too. I’ve got a
room reserved for you at the Cliffport Hotel. After tomorrow, you can
sleep on board, like sailors.”
He scowled at his pipe for several seconds, as if he hoped to see in it
some hint of anything that he might have forgotten to take care of, and
he mentally checked each item again. Sails okay? Charts and navigating
instruments in place? Food? Tools? Spare lines? Life jackets? Oars for
the dinghy? Cleaning equipment? Sea anchor? Everything checked out. At
last, satisfied that all was in good order, he smiled and clamped the
pipe in his teeth again.
“I think,” he said, “the only thing I’ve forgotten is the seagoing way
to say goodbye!”
He settled for “Ahoy!” and “Smooth sailing!” and, brushing off Sandy’s
thanks, walked briskly up the gangway without turning back.
The boys watched him as he turned the corner of the main shed and walked
out of sight, then they gave all their attention to a close survey of
their new floating home.
CHAPTER THREE
Shakedown Cruise
“Well, Jerry, what do you think of it?” Sandy asked his friend, as he
cast a proud eye along the sleekly shaped length of the little sloop.
“Not ‘it,’” Jerry said. “You should say ‘her.’ You always call boats
‘she’ or ‘her,’ though I’ve never met a sailor who could tell you why.”
Jerry looked critically down the twenty-four-foot length of the sloop.
“She looks really seaworthy,” he said, “and she looks pretty fast, too.
Of course, this is not a racing boat, you know. They use this kind
mostly for day sailing and for short cruises. Even so, she looks as if
she’ll go. Of course, we can’t really tell until we’ve tried her, and I
don’t think we’ll be ready to try anything fast for a little while yet.”
Noticing the flicker of disappointment that crossed Sandy’s face, Jerry
added, “I’d rather have a boat like this than any racing machine ever
built. And I’m not saying that just to make you feel better about not
having a racer. There’s not much difference in actual speed between a
really fast boat and an ordinary good boat of the same size. But there
sure is a lot of difference in comfort. And I like my comfort when I go
for a cruise.”
“Why should a racing boat be uncomfortable?” Sandy asked.
“It’s not uncomfortable for racing, or for day sailing,” Jerry answered,
“but a racing boat of this size wouldn’t be fitted out for cruising at
all. You see, to get the most speed out of a boat, designers make sure
that the hull is kept as light as possible and as streamlined as
possible, too. A light hull will ride with less of its surface in the
water, and that cuts down on the amount of friction. You remember what I
told you about friction before?”
Sandy nodded, and Jerry went on. “Streamlining the hull shape helps it
to cut through the water without making a lot of waves at the bow to
hold it back. Not only that, but to make the boat really as fast as
possible, most designers want to streamline the decks, too. That way,
even the air resistance is lowered. Well, when you streamline the hull,
you make less cabin space below. Then when you streamline the decks, you
have to lower the cabin roof so that it’s level with the decks. You can
see that in a small boat like this, you wind up with no cabin at all.”
“I see,” Sandy said. “But how does the lightness of the hull affect
comfort? I’m not so sure I understand that.”
“When you have a light hull,” Jerry replied, “it’s a good idea to keep
it light. If you overload it, you lose the advantage you built into it
in the first place. That means that you can’t carry all the stuff we
have on board to make for comfortable, safe cruising. Our bunks, the
galley, the head, the spare anchor, all the tools and supplies—it adds
up to a lot of weight. If you want a really fast boat, you have to leave
all that stuff behind.”
“Then if this were a racing boat,” Sandy said, “we wouldn’t have
anything more than a small cockpit and a lot of deck, with a little
storage space! No wonder you said you’d rather have a boat like this!
But there’s one thing I’d still like to know. You said that there wasn’t
much difference in real speed between a racing boat and an ordinary good
boat. How much is ‘not much’?”
Jerry thought for a minute. “Well—” he said, at length—“I’d have to know
a lot more about boat design than I know to give you an accurate answer,
but I can give you a rough idea. This is a twenty-four-foot boat. If it
were a racing hull, you might get eight and a half or maybe even nine
knots out of it under ideal conditions. For practical purposes, you can
figure eight or less. A knot, by the way, is a nautical mile, and it’s a
little more than a regular mile. When you say eight knots, you mean
eight nautical miles an hour.”
“But that’s not fast!” Sandy objected. “You said that’s what a fast
racing boat would do!”
Jerry smiled. “Believe me, Sandy,” he said, “when your boat is heeling
way over and your decks are awash and your sails are straining full of
wind, it seems like an awful lot of speed! You’ll see when we get out
today. Besides, speed is all relative. A really dangerous speed on a
bike would seem like a slow crawl in a car.”
“I guess you’re right,” Sandy answered. “But you didn’t tell me how fast
this boat will go, compared to a racer.”
“I think we’ll get five or six knots out of her,” Jerry replied
thoughtfully. “That’s not fast, but it’s only a couple of knots slower
than the fastest. You see now what I mean?”
Sandy nodded, then said, “I’m with you, Jerry. Now that I know a little
bit about it, I sure think you’re right. I’d much rather have a boat we
can sleep on and take on trips up and down the coast than a racer that
doesn’t even go so fast! Besides, I’d be pretty foolish to think about
any other kind of boat at all, wouldn’t I? I don’t even have the least
idea of how to sail this one yet! Come on, Jerry, start showing me!”
As Jerry carefully explained the different parts of the rigging, the
complicated-looking series of wires and ropes around the mast began to
look a whole lot simpler to Sandy. The first thing he learned was that
not much of the rigging moved or was used for actual sailing of the
boat. The parts that didn’t move were called “standing rigging,” and if
you eliminated them from your thoughts, it made the “running rigging”
comparatively easy to understand.
“You have to learn about the rigging first,” Jerry said. “The idea is
simple enough. The standing rigging is used to support the mast and keep
it from bending to either side or to the front or back when the sails
start to put pressure on it. The standing rigging is every line or cable
you see that comes from the top of the mast or near it down to the outer
edge of the deck or to the bow or stern.”
Sandy looked about the little sloop, and noticed that this seemed to
take care of more than half of what he saw.
“The running rigging,” Jerry went on, “is used to raise and lower the
sails and to control their position to catch the wind when you’re
sailing. The lines that are used to raise and lower the sails on the
mast are called halyards. They work just like the ropes on a flagpole.
The other kind of running rigging—the lines used to control the way the
sails set—are called sheets. You’d think that a sheet was a sail,
wouldn’t you? It isn’t, though. It’s the line that controls a sail.”
“I think I understand so far,” Sandy said, “but don’t you think it would
be easier for me to learn if we went out for a sail and I could see
everything working?”
“Right,” Jerry said. “That’s just what I was going to say next. Telling
you this way makes me feel too much like a schoolteacher!”
Jerry decided that it would not be a good idea to try to sail away from
the dock, because the part of the harbor they were in was so crowded.
There would be little room to maneuver with only the light morning winds
to help them. The best thing to do, he concluded, was to move the boat
to a less crowded part of the harbor. At the same time, he would teach
Sandy the way to get away from a mooring. In order to do all this, Jerry
explained, they would row out in the dinghy, towing the sloop behind
them. Once out in open water, they would tie the dinghy behind them and
pull it along as they sailed.
Together they unlashed the dinghy, which was resting on chocks on the
cabin roof. Light and easy to handle, the dinghy was no trouble at all
to launch, and in a minute it was floating alongside, looking like a
cross between a canoe and a light-weight bathtub.
Getting into the dinghy carefully, so as not to upset its delicate
balance, they untied the sloop from the dock. Then they fastened the bow
line of the sloop to a ring on the stern of the dinghy, got out the
stubby oars and started to row.
At first, it took some strong pulling at the oars to start the sailboat
moving away from the dock, and Sandy feared that they would tip over the
frail cockleshell of the dinghy. But once the sloop started to move,
Sandy found that it took surprisingly little effort to tow it along. It
glided easily behind them, its tall mast swaying overhead, as they rowed
slowly out into the waters of Cliffport Bay.
“We’ll find an empty mooring, and tie up for a few minutes,” Jerry said.
“I don’t think that anyone will mind. I want to show you the method
we’ll use most of the time for getting under way.” He pointed to the
anchorage area, or “holding ground,” as it was called, and Sandy noticed
several blocks of painted wood floating about. They had numbers, and
some had small flags on them. “Those are moorings,” Jerry explained.
“They’re just permanent anchors, with floats to mark the spot and to
hold up the end of the mooring line. Every boat owner has his own
mooring to come in to. The people who own these empty moorings are
probably out sailing for the day, and we won’t interfere if we use one
for a while.”
Easing back on the oars, they let the sloop lose momentum and came to a
natural stop near one of the moorings. They transferred the bow line
from the dinghy to the mooring and made the sloop fast in its temporary
berth. Then they climbed back on board and tied the dinghy behind them.
Jerry explained that a long enough scope of line should be left for the
dinghy so as to keep it from riding up and overtaking the sloop, as
accidents of this sort have been known to damage the bow of a fragile
dinghy.
This done, Jerry busied himself by unlashing the boom and the rudder to
get them ready to use, while Sandy went below for the sail bags. These
were neatly stacked in a forward locker, each one marked with the name
of the type of sail it contained. He selected the ones marked “main” and
“jib,” as Jerry had asked him to, and brought them out into the cockpit.
Making the mainsail ready to hoist, Sandy quickly got the knack of
threading the sail slides onto the tracks on the mast and the boom. He
worked at this while Jerry made the necessary adjustments to the
halyards and fastened them to the heads of the sails. When this job was
done, Sandy slid the foot of the sail aft along the boom, and Jerry made
it fast with a block-and-tackle arrangement which was called the “clew
outhaul.”
“Now,” Jerry said, when they had finished, “it’s time to hoist the
mainsail!”
“What about the mooring?” Sandy asked. “Don’t you want me to untie the
boat from it first?”
“Not yet,” Jerry answered. “We won’t do that until we’re ready to go.”
“But won’t we start going as soon as we pull up the mainsail?” said
Sandy, puzzled.
“No,” Jerry said. “Nothing will happen when we hoist the sail. It’s like
raising a flag. The flag doesn’t fill with wind and pull at the flagpole
like a sail, does it? It just points into the wind and flutters. That’s
just what the mainsail will do. You see, the boat is already pointing
into the wind, because the wind has swung us around on the mooring. You
look around and you’ll see that all the boats out here are heading in
the exact same direction, toward the wind. When we hoist the sail, it’ll
act just like a flag, and flap around until we’re ready to use it. Then
we’ll make it do what we want it to by using the jib and controlling its
position with the sheets. Look.”
Jerry hauled on the main halyard, and the sail slid up its tracks on the
mast, squeaking and grating. As it reached the masthead, it fluttered
and bellied loosely in the wind, doing nothing to make the boat move in
any direction. Motioning to Sandy to take his place tugging at the
halyard, Jerry jumped down into the cockpit.
The halyard ran from the pointed head of the sail up through a pulley at
the top of the mast, then down to where Sandy was hauling on it. Below
his hands, it passed through another pulley near Sandy’s feet, then back
along the cabin roof. Jerry, from his position in the cockpit, grabbed
the end of the halyard and hauled tight, taking the strain from Sandy.
Then he tied it down to a wing-shaped cleat on the cabin roof near the
cockpit.
This was done with a few expert flips of the wrist. The mainsail was up,
and tightly secured.
“There,” Jerry said. “Now we’re almost ready. We won’t move at all until
we get the jib up, and even then we won’t move unless we want to. When
we want to, we’ll untie from the mooring and get away as neat as you
please.”
They then took the jib out of its sail bag and made ready to hoist it.
Instead of securing to the mast with slides on a track the way the
mainsail had, the jib had a series of snaps stitched to its forward
edge. These were snapped around the steel wire forestay, a part of the
standing rigging that ran from the bow of the boat to a position high up
on the mast. The jib halyard was fastened to the head of the jib, the
snaps were put in place, and a few seconds of work saw the jib hanging
in place, flapping before the mast. Then Jerry asked Sandy to pick up
the mooring that they had tied to, and to walk aft with it.
“When you walk aft with the mooring,” Jerry explained, “you actually put
some forward motion on the boat. Then, when you get aft and I tell you
to throw the mooring over, you put the bow a little off the wind by
doing it.”
Sandy untied the bow line from the mooring, and walked to the stern of
the boat, holding the mooring float as he had been told. Then, when
Jerry said “Now!” he threw the mooring over with a splash.
“With the jib flying and the boat free from the mooring and no longer
pointing directly into the wind,” Jerry said, “the wind will catch the
jib and blow our bow even further off. At the same time, I’ll steer to
the side instead of straight ahead. As soon as our bow is pointing
enough away from the wind, the breeze will strike our sails from one
side, and they’ll start to fill. When the sails have caught the wind
right, I’ll ease off on the rudder, and we’ll be moving ahead.”
By this time, the morning haze had “burned off” and the light breeze had
freshened into a crisp, steady wind. As the head of the little sloop
“fell away” from the direction from which the wind was coming, the sails
swelled, the boat leaned slightly to one side, and a ripple of waves
splashed alongside the hull. Sandy looked back and saw that the bow of
the dinghy, trailing behind them, was beginning to cut a small white
wave through the water.
“We’re under way!” Jerry cried. “Come on over here, skipper! You take
the tiller and learn how to steer your boat while I handle the sails and
show you what to do!”
Sandy slid over on the stern seat to take Jerry’s place, and held the
tiller in the position he had been shown, while Jerry explained how to
trim the sails and how to go where you wanted to go instead of where the
wind wanted to take you.
“I’ll take care of the sail trimming,” Jerry said. “All you have to do
is keep the boat heading on the course she’s sailing now. The wind is
pretty much at our backs and off to the starboard side. You have to keep
it that way, and especially keep the stern from swinging around to face
the wind directly. It’s not hard to do. Just pick a landmark and steer
toward it.”
He looked ahead to where a point of land jutted out some miles off the
mainland. A lighthouse tower made an exclamation mark against the sky.
“Just steer a little to the right of that,” he said, “and we can’t go
wrong.”
“What if the wind shifts?” Sandy asked. “How can we tell?”
Jerry pointed to the masthead, where a small triangular metal flag
swung. “Just keep an eye on that,” he said. “It’s called a hawk, and
it’s a sailor’s weathervane.”
“With one eye on the lighthouse and one eye on the masthead,” Sandy
laughed, “I’m going to look awfully silly!”
He leaned back in the stern seat with the tiller tucked under his arm.
The little sloop headed steadily for the lighthouse, steering easily.
Every few seconds, Sandy glanced at the hawk to check the wind. He
grinned and relaxed. He was steering his own boat! The sail towered tall
and white against the blue sky above him and the water gurgled alongside
and in the wake behind where the dinghy bobbed along like a faithful
puppy.
“This is the life!” he sighed.
Jerry pointed out a handsome, white-hulled, two-masted boat approaching
them. “Isn’t that a beauty?” he said. “It’s a ketch. On a ketch, the
mainmast is taller than the mizzen. That’s how you tell the difference.”
“How do you tell the difference between the mainmast and the mizzen?”
Sandy asked. “You’re going to have to start with the simplest stuff with
me.”
“The mainmast is always the one in front, and the mizzen is always the
one aft,” Jerry explained. “A ketch has a taller main; a schooner has a
taller mizzen; a yawl is the same as a ketch, except that the mizzen is
set aft of the tiller. Got it?”
Sandy shook his head and wondered if he would ever get all of this
straight in his head. It was enough trying to learn the names of things
on his own boat without worrying about the names of everything on other
boats in the bay.
As the ketch sailed by, the man at her tiller waved a friendly greeting.
The boys waved back and Sandy watched the big ketch go smoothly past,
wondering how much harder it might be to sail a two-masted boat of that
size than it was to sail a relatively small sloop such as his own.
Certainly it could not be as simple as the sloop, he thought. Why this
little sailboat was a whole lot easier than it had seemed to be at
first. As a matter of fact....
“Duck your head!” Jerry yelled.
Not even stopping to think, Sandy dropped his head just in time to avoid
being hit by the boom, which whizzed past barely a few inches above him!
With a sharp crack of ropes and canvas, the sail filled with wind on the
opposite side of the boat from where it had been a moment before, and
the sloop heeled violently in the same direction. Jerry grabbed at the
tiller, hauled in rapidly on the mainsheet, and set a new course. Then,
calming down, he explained to Sandy what had happened.
“We jibed,” he said. “That means that you let the wind get directly
behind us and then on the wrong side of us. The mainsail got the wind on
the back of it, and the wind took it around to the other side of the
boat. Because the sheets were let out all the way, there was nothing to
restrain the sail from moving, and by the time it got over, it was going
at a pretty fast clip. You saw the results!”
Jerry adjusted the mainsail to a better position relative to the wind,
trimming it carefully to keep it from bagging, then he went on to
explain. “A jibe can only happen when you’ve got the wind at your back.
That’s called sailing downwind, or sailing before the wind, or running
free. It’s the most dangerous point of sail, because of the chance of
jibing. When the wind is strong, an uncontrolled jibe like the one we
just took can split your sails, or ruin your rigging, or even snap your
boom or your mast. Not to mention giving you a real bad headache if
you’re in the way of that boom!”
“I can just imagine,” Sandy said, thinking of the force with which the
boom had whizzed by. Then he added, “You said something about an
‘uncontrolled jibe,’ I think. Does that mean that there’s some way to
control it?”
“I should have said an accidental jibe instead of an uncontrolled one,”
Jerry said. “A deliberate or planned jibe is always controlled, and it’s
a perfectly safe and easy maneuver. All you have to do is to haul in on
the sheet, so that the boom won’t have any room for free swinging. Then
you change your course to the new tack, let out the sail, and you’re off
with no trouble.”
Sandy grinned. “I’m afraid that description went over my head as fast as
the boom did—only a whole lot higher up!”
“Things always sound complicated when you describe them,” Jerry said,
“but we’ll do a couple later, and you’ll see how it works.”
“Fine,” Sandy agreed. “But until we do, how can I keep from doing any
more of the accidental variety?”