BALTIC CRUISING
BY E. F. KNIGHT
A few English sailing yachts visit the Baltic every year, but that
wind-swept sea can scarcely be termed one of the favourite cruising
grounds of our pleasure fleet. This is not altogether strange; for the
voyage is a long and rough one round the Skaw into the squally
Cattegat; chilly gales and choppy seas in many summers form the rule
rather than the exception among the Danish Islands, and the principal
seaports of the inland sea are singularly dull and uninteresting.
Nevertheless--and the reader will soon understand that what I am about
to say is in no wise inconsistent with my opening sentence--I am
confident that the yachtsman who undertakes a summer's cruise on the
Baltic in a _small_ vessel will afterwards remember it as one of his
very pleasantest experiences. This is a sea which is often coldly
repelling to the cursory traveller, but it is strangely fascinating to
him who takes the trouble to explore it, and the charm of it increases
with further knowledge.
How interesting, to begin with, is the voyage out! For, with the small
vessel I am speaking of, the yachtsman does not double the stormy
Skaw, but sails in and out along all the winding coasts that were the
cradle of our race, the lands of the Frisians, Saxons, Jutes, Angles,
and Danes. Having waited for a slant in one of our Eastern
ports--Harwich, for example--he crosses the North Sea to a Dutch
harbour, follows the shores of the Zuider Zee, picks his way up the
narrow channels that divide the sandy Frisian Islands from the
mainland, enters the river Eider, and passes up the ship canal to
Kiel.
And that port once reached, what possibilities of glorious cruising
are before him! He has now left behind the discoloured waves of the
North Sea, and his keel is cleaving water so limpid that every stone
and weed is visible fathoms beneath. He can sail up narrow sounds
between park-like glades and forests of pines and magnificent oaks and
beeches; or up long winding fiords which take him beyond the coast
belt of forest and pasture, and past the undulating corn lands, into
the very heart of the Cimbrian peninsula, where the desolate moorlands
of the Ahl, grand in their northern savagery, spread far on either
side of the sinuous creek. There is the long Slie, a succession of
lakes and narrows that leads to old Schleswig; there are the deep
inlets of Flensborg, Apenrade, Veile, and many-islanded Liim; Ise
Fiord, perhaps the fairest of all, with its promontories of noble
forest; the lovely sounds of Svendborg and the Little Belt; and a
score of other straits and lochs that make this in many respects the
finest cruising ground in Europe. I do not know where else, when the
sun shines out between the rain squalls, the sea appears so blue, the
grass and the foliage seem so green and luxuriant, as in this land of
Denmark. It is pleasant to sail, as one often does, suddenly out of
the choppy windy open Baltic into the shelter of these narrows, where
the great trees dip their branches into the smooth water, where one
comes upon scene after scene of tender and restful beauty, and where
the traveller knows, too, that whenever he may choose to land, at some
trim village or opposite some snug old farmhouse, he is sure of a
welcome from the kindly people. Then, if the yachtsman wishes for more
open water, he can sail out of the fiord mouth and steer for one of
the many delightful little islands that stud the Baltic. Remote many
of them are, set in the middle of that treacherous sea, inhabited by a
few primitive fishermen. The advent of a stranger is rare in the
extreme. I spent two summers in these waters, and found that no
British yacht had ever come before to most of the fiords and islets I
explored.
For it happens that nearly all the charms I speak of are lost to him
who sails these waters in a big vessel. It is a coasting voyage in a
small craft I am advocating here. Of the fiords that penetrate the
Cimbrian peninsula and the larger islands, only a few are available
for a yacht of deep draught, and in order to visit some of the most
beautiful of the inland waters one's vessel should not draw more than
two feet. Again, though harbours that will admit coasters of even
light tonnage are far apart on much of the iron-bound coast of the
Baltic, there are to be found everywhere, at short intervals, little
artificial havens that have been built for the accommodation of the
craft of the herring fishermen; while the only shelter afforded by
many of the islets consists of similar havens, frequented solely by
the fishing and ferry boats. At the entrance of most of these
miniature harbours there is a depth of about four feet of water at
high tide.
Now bad weather springs up frequently and with wonderful suddenness in
the Baltic, and a dangerous sea soon rises on those shallow waters. It
is therefore of great advantage to have a boat of so light a draught
as to be able to run for refuge into any of these little havens. Such
a craft has nearly always a snug port not far under her lee while
coasting here; whereas a larger craft can find no harbour for many
leagues, and has to make the best she can of it on the open sea. The
shallow boat is the safest for such a cruise, besides being the only
one with which the most interesting inlets and islets can be visited.
She must be small, but at the same time she must be as good a sea-boat
as is possible for her size; for she is not likely to escape bad
weather altogether on the Baltic.
[Illustration: Danske fishing-boat and anchor.]
To some it may appear foolhardy to go so far on a small yacht like the
one I am speaking of; but as a matter of fact it will be found that it
is nearly always the cautious sailor and not the reckless one who
succeeds in sailing his little vessel to distant shores. The imprudent
and thoughtless man soon encounters such experiences, soon gets into
such scrapes, on attempting a foreign cruise as will keep him for the
future in the home waters he happens to know something about.
A voyage from England to the uttermost ends of the Baltic does not
necessitate any really long runs for a yacht of small draught, and it
is seldom that one need remain out at sea at night. It is well that it
is so; for these are surely the most wind-vexed waters of Europe;
violent north-westers rise in the most unexpected manner, and the
stillest of summer mornings will as likely as not be succeeded by a
howling wintry afternoon. It behoves the skipper of the small yacht to
watch his weather very carefully in this treacherous region. Whenever
a run of some distance is before him, from isle to isle, or along some
portion of the coast where the havens of refuge are rare, he must
patiently wait for a slant, and the advice of the aneroid in the cabin
must be implicitly followed.
It is this last precaution that makes what otherwise would certainly
be a dangerous cruise for a small craft an amusement less risky than
are the majority of sports. It ought to be unnecessary to repeat such
trite admonition as this; but in my experience it is the skipper of
the small vessel who pays the least attention to his glass; and in all
cases that have come under my notice when small yachts that have
started to cross the North Sea or the Channel, or to make some other
run of a dozen hours or so, have come to grief in any way in
consequence of having encountered weather dangerously heavy for them,
it is for the one reason that the skipper, possibly an excellent
sailor in other respects, has neglected his aneroid. One may indeed
make occasional runs in this blind fashion, trusting to the appearance
of the sky alone, and yet no harm come of it; but on the sort of
Baltic cruise I am describing there will, of course, be a number of
such short runs; short, but quite long enough to make disaster a
probability sooner or later if proper precautions be not taken, and it
may be found that the pitcher has gone to the well once too often.
The life of the man who undertakes long coasting voyages in small
craft depends more on his knowledge of the use of the barometer, and
on his close observation of it, than it does on his good seamanship. A
man I know had his dinghy carried away, and nearly lost his little
yacht and his life, on a run from Ryde to Havre. The longshore
wiseacres shook their heads when they heard of it, and spoke of the
foolhardiness of sailing across Channel in so tiny a vessel. In this I
maintain the wiseacres were wrong; the foolhardiness lay in the
skipper's blinking at the heavens to windward and lee, and putting
absolute faith in their deceptive appearance, while he entirely
omitted to see what the glass was doing before he tripped his anchor.
It is possible to practically insure for oneself fine weather, or at
any rate the absence of dangerously bad weather, for a run of say a
day and night, provided one have the patience to wait for it.
[Illustration: Roskilde from the Fiord.]
I cannot recall an instance of having experienced really bad weather
when my reading of the barometer had told me that it would be fine;
but I have seen the weather-wisdom of many an old sea-dog at fault. In
the Baltic the fishermen fail signally to read the signs of their own
skies, as the following incident will show. I had sailed into a
fishing-haven on Zeeland called Gillelie. I found a fête in progress
which had detained the fishermen who would otherwise have sailed on
that day to the distant island of Anholt for the autumn herring
fishery. 'But we will all be off to-morrow,' said one to me. 'I do not
think any of you will sail to-morrow or the day after; it will be
blowing a gale of wind from the north-west,' I remarked, for my glass
had been falling in most ominous fashion for some days. But my friends
thought they knew better. 'You are a stranger here,' said they; 'we
fishing-folk know the signs of the sky in our country. The wind is
south-west, and it will remain fine. The barometer is not to be
trusted in the Baltic.' Well, at midnight the wind had shifted to
north-west, and was howling through the bending pines; by dawn the
gale had burst upon us, for two days it blew a very hurricane, and
there was much loss of life and shipping on the Cattegat. Had it not
been for the fête the fishermen would have put to sea, and few would
ever have been seen again. I converted the fishermen of Gillelie to a
belief in the barometer, and I believe that they forthwith applied to
the Danish Government for one of those glasses which it supplies to
seaports for the public use.
Having given my reasons for recommending a small vessel of light
draught for Baltic cruising, I will now explain what I consider that
vessel should be like. I am about to preach rank heresy, but I should
certainly act up to my preaching were I ever again to make
preparations for a similar voyage.
The craft that last carried me about those seas was an old teak P. &
O. lifeboat, 29 feet in length, which had been decked, rigged as a
ketch, provided with six inches of false keel, and so converted into a
yacht of three tons register. A boat something like this one appears
to me to be the best adapted for the purpose in question--a boat with
pointed stern and considerable sheer, such as my lifeboat was, and
such, too, as are the herring fishing boats of the Cattegat. Her beam
should be about one-quarter of her length, her draught should not
exceed 2 ft. 6 in., and she should have less ballast by a good deal
than is generally put into a boat of her tonnage; for she must be
comfortable when in rough water, be light and lively, and leap over
the steep seas of the Baltic instead of driving herself through them.
My old lifeboat was the best sea-boat of her size I have ever come
across. Once I was caught with her in a north-wester in the Gulf of
Heligoland, and had to run to Cuxhaven before a really heavy sea. That
little boat acquitted herself in a way that astonished us; presenting
as she did a sharp stern to the steep following seas, she showed no
tendency to broach to, but steered with beautiful ease, rising like a
duck to every roller. Why more of our little cruisers are not
constructed with these lifeboat sterns I could never understand.
Anyone who has run before a high breaking sea in both styles of craft
will appreciate the enormous difference between the behaviour of the
long-countered vessel and the one with the pointed stern. The latter
is undoubtedly the boat for comfort and safety in a sea-way.
[Illustration: A Danske craft.]
In such a boat as I am describing one could sail, single-handed, if
one was so minded, to Finland or to the furthest depths of the Gulf of
Bothnia, and run less risk than one would in most vessels four times
her size.
We have now got a good sea-boat almost as safe as a lifeboat--but the
next question is, how will she sail? A double-ended craft like the one
I am speaking of will run or reach as well as anything of her size;
but, being of such light draught, though she will turn to windward
well enough, maybe, in smooth water, she will be a very slow boat,
making scarcely any headway, but considerable leeway, when she
encounters the tumbling waters of the Zuider Zee or Baltic on a breezy
day. This, of course, must be remedied by some means; for we cannot
always have fair winds and smooth waters. And now I am coming to my
greatest heresy--I would not make a hole in the bottom of my boat and
pass the orthodox centreboard through it; but I should sling on either
side of her the heterodox leeboard.
In this country we are not accustomed to see leeboards on pleasure
craft, and they are considered to be ugly. In Holland, where they also
know something about small yachts, elegant polished oak brass-bound
leeboards are invariably attached to the brightly polished little
oaken vessel. One soon comes to consider a leeboard as an ornament.
The appearance of a long double-ended boat is distinctly improved by
these wing-like appendages. Finding that my lifeboat was so
unsatisfactory on a wind, I got a Dutch shipwright at Harlingen to fit
two shapely oaken leeboards upon her, which suited her well, for she
herself was of polished teak. I remember that when her leeboards were
once temporarily removed we felt quite ashamed of her, so lank and
naked did she appear in our eyes. But the leeboards were still more
useful than they were beautiful. When I put out with them into the
choppy Zuider Zee I was astounded at the success of my plan. The
vessel turned to windward as she had never done before, and I soon
came to the conclusion that I had almost arrived at the ideal of a
shallow-water cruiser.
Leeboards have many undoubted advantages over centreboards. To make a
long hole through the bottom of a boat cannot but weaken her. The
trunk of a centreboard is ever in the way in a small cabin. In rough
water a centreboard must strain a boat more than a leeboard does. On a
little vessel like the one in question the leeboards are not
cumbersome, but can be readily unshipped and stowed on deck or below
when there is a leading wind, or when one is hove-to in bad weather,
or rolling about at anchor. And, most important of all, if the boat
runs ashore, the leeboards will come gently up, whereas a centre-plate
may become jammed, and so bend or break. A leeboard never refuses to
be hauled up or dropped down.
[Illustration: A good craft for the Baltic.]
In many of the shallow Baltic fiords one is apt to run ashore pretty
frequently, and sometimes on rough ground that would subject a boat to
severe strain unless the centreboard were pulled up very smartly.
Again, some portions of these fiords in summer present the appearance
of green fields, so thickly are they overgrown with weeds whose
branches float on the surface of the brackish water. It is impossible
to bring a centreboard boat into this tangle. The weeds gather round
the plate, choke the trunk, and cannot be cleared in many cases until
the boat has been hauled up on dry land. But leeboards can be lifted
and cleared in a moment, and the boat provided with them can sail over
meadows of aquatic growth that would effectually bar the approach of
the orthodox yacht. To reach the inland _brednings_ or 'broads' of the
Baltic, far larger and as fair as those of Norfolk, one must often
pass through these weedy passages, and this is not one of the least of
my reasons for advocating the leeboard.
I should like to see leeboards more employed in this country. I
remember as a small boy coming into possession of my first boat, some
old ship's dinghy. I put sails in her, but, to my disgust, not a bit
would she turn to windward. I tried to fix a false keel on her, but my
appliances were few, and I was unsuccessful. Now, had I known of the
simple expedient of the leeboard, limited as was my carpentering
skill, I should have had no trouble in making my boat tack. The
pleasure of sailing was thus denied to me for several years
afterwards, and all through my ignorance of the leeboard. There must
be plenty of boys at the present time in similar plight, in parts of
the Far West for instance, where, as I discovered the other day, the
very name of leeboard is unknown. In an hour or so anyone can convert
almost anything that will float into something that will sail by means
of leeboards; and this is a fact well worth knowing when one finds
oneself in some wild corner of the earth and wishes to extemporise a
sailing-craft. I have done something of the sort on more than one
occasion. Once I was living by the shores of a lake in Florida. I
started at short notice for a fortnight's cruise inside the keys that
line the coast of the Gulf of Mexico above Tampa. Nothing else being
procurable, I borrowed one of the canoes of the country, a
flat-bottomed punt with no more lines than a horse-trough. I
manufactured a sail, and one leeboard which I could throw over from
one side to the other according to the tack I was on; and away I went
with rod and gun down the shallow passes, up winding bayous and
across broad lakes; a delightful little cruise; and my strange craft,
to the astonishment of the crackers, sailed like a witch. It was the
very coast for a leeboard; for the channels between the keys and the
mainland are often very shallow--so shallow, indeed, that when the
tempestuous north wind blew and the rising waves poured into my
vessel, so that she would soon have filled and settled to the bottom,
I was sometimes enabled to lighten her, and so save her, by stepping
overboard; and then I would walk ahead of her, painter in hand, and
tow her against wind and sea until the weather moderated--a manoeuvre
that can be recommended under such circumstances.
[Illustration: Towing head to wind.]
To return to our little Baltic cruiser--I have only given the broad
features of what I consider to be the most fitting craft. As for the
details of rig, cabin arrangements, and so forth, each man knows best
what he requires. But were I having such a boat made ready for myself,
she should be built of oak. Her sides and leeboard should not be
painted, but be varnished and kept brightly polished after the Dutch
fashion--boiled oil and rosin is the mixture for the purpose. She
should have a small well. There should be the usual hatch on the
cabin-roof to slide back and facilitate entrance to the cabin; but,
instead of the usual cabin-doors, I should have a water-tight
bulkhead between the well and cabin, with only a small square opening
at the top, which could be closed with a sliding shutter when
necessary. The cabin would then be kept snug and dry.
It is, of course, the right thing for the skipper of a small vessel to
run for a port when bad weather is coming on; but this cannot always
be done, and it is by far the wiser policy to remain on the open sea
and make the best of it than to rush blindly before the gale towards a
harbour whose dangers and difficulties are unknown to one. I remember
once being with some men who, because the sea was rather ugly, were
very anxious to run into a most dangerous river mouth, to the almost
certain perdition of our vessel. This was the suggestion of panic, but
they called it prudence. Some small vessels, even though they be
rather shallow, like the one I am speaking of, can claw off a lee
shore in pretty heavy weather. Unless one have the misfortune to be
embayed, there is generally one tack on which the boat can keep off
the land--despite the leeway--well snugged down, with as little
head-sail as possible on her, and forging slowly ahead all the time.
But on such occasions there must be a good man at the tiller. Mr.
----, the most skilful sailor of small craft we have ever had, who
used to knock about single-handed in all sorts of weather, and who, it
will be remembered, at last died alone of heart-disease on his vessel
in mid-channel--a fitting death for such a man--made it a rule to beat
to sea instead of running for a port on the appearance of bad weather.
He proved what can be done with a tiny yacht properly handled. But
then he was a consummate seaman--so much so, indeed, that those who
knew him affirm that no other man than he could have performed some of
his exploits.
A little vessel may be blown away from the land, or have plenty of
sea-room to leeward when the storm attacks her. Then it is not so
difficult to know and to do the right thing. If the craft be such as I
am imagining her to be, she should be able to ride out almost any
weather with drogue out, and possibly a bit of trysail or mizzen set,
sheeted well amidships. Every small yacht should be provided with one
of these drogues or sea-anchors when a long cruise is to be
undertaken. I have never seen one employed; but I was in the habit of
carrying one, which consisted of an iron ring some 3 feet broad, to
which was bent a stout canvas bag with a pointed end. A bridle was
attached to the ring by which it could be made fast to a 20-fathom
grass-rope. A very good drogue, which serves as a breakwater as well,
can be extemporised with a spar. If one side of a small strong jib be
bent on the spar, and a weight be attached to the lower corner of the
jib, this ought to form a very efficient drag.
[Illustration: Sketch.]
To sum up--for cruising on the charming inland waters of the Baltic,
and for getting about from one part of that sea to another, the most
fitting craft is, I believe, such a one as I have sketched out,
sharp-sterned, with ample freeboard, with good sheer, of shallow
draught, lightly ballasted, and provided with leeboards. With a boat
constructed on these lines, a man who neglects not his aneroid should
be able to make a very delightful voyage along the coasts of our
Viking ancestors, and very much further from home, too, if he wishes
it; while she would also be found a capital craft for sailing about
the mouth of the Thames, the Norfolk Broads, and Dutch waters. But at
Cowes they might stare at her with the eye of prejudice.