Men frequently come to me, and ask, "What sort of a boat would you
recommend me to have?" My reply always is, "What for?" In that small
phrase is contained the kernel of selection--what for? Do you want to
cruise, go day-sailing, or race? Do you want it to go alone, or with a
crew? Do you want to sail in rough or smooth water?
A boat that is suitable for cruising is not the thing for racing or
day-sailing; a boat that would fill the bill if used on land-locked
waters would make a poor showing on an open sea or in rough stretches
of tide-swept channel.
Let us first consider the racing craft. Racing, as I have often told
you, is a business, not a pastime. If you want to win, and those who
race usually do, you must subordinate everything to that want. If you
don't, you will never be a successful mug hunter. A racing boat must
be built as lightly as the law allows. This not only means that her
frame and planking must be kept down to eights, but she must be looted
of everything that the rules will permit you to remove. She must have
large, well-made and consequently expensive sails. Her gear must be of
the finest and strongest make, and it must be kept up to the top notch
of perfection by constant supervision and repair.
[Illustration: KNOCKABOUT]
Then you must give up all below comforts and consent to live on bare
necessities. You must forego all other pleasures and concentrate all
your faculties on one thing--your boat. If you are willing to do this,
and have the racing skipper eye and hand, you may pull out all right on
top.
If, instead of racing, you just want a boat to knock round in during
the day, your craft is far more easily chosen and secured. You won't
have to read up several volumes of restrictions and rules, you won't
have to nose through half a dozen classes to find the one in which the
easiest-to-beat crowd harbor, before making up your mind and giving out
your order. You can just suit yourself as to how long, how wide and how
deep your craft is to be.
[Illustration: CAPE CAT]
A boat for day-sailing wants to be of strong and reasonable light
construction. She needs much more cockpit than cabin, and if the
latter is of the summer variety it will be far more comfortable and
convenient. All boats should have some sort of a cuddy or cabin,
especially if they are to be used to take out women and children.
A day-sailing boat, if to be used for taking out shore people, should
be absolutely uncapsizable and, if possible, fitted with tanks of
sufficient power to float the ballast. Her rig should be simple, and
her canvas of moderate expanse. The less gear and gewgaws she has
about her the better, as it means a saving of work at all times, and
especially in getting underway and coming to anchor.
The two best rigs for this class of boat are the cat and knockabout.
Both these rigs are quick and easy to handle, and having no bowsprit,
they can be brought up to a landing anywhere where there is water
enough to float them.
There is no better day-sailing boat in the world than the cat that
is used along our Eastern seaboard to take out fishing and sailing
parties. I don't mean the over-canvased brute that is frequently met--a
vessel that takes all hands to steer, and a double watch to shorten
down, but the properly sparred and balanced boat. I have handled many
of these boats, and under our ordinary summer conditions have found
them to do what was expected of them in a boatly manner. In skillful
hands they are as near being absolutely safe as it is possible for any
water-borne fabric to be. One of their chief advantages is that they
can be got under sail or be relieved of it quicker than any other type.
They have but one sheet and two halliards to look after, and all these
can be tended by one hand without leaving the cockpit.
[Illustration: RACING POLE-MAST SLOOP]
The knockabout has many of the cat's good qualities, and is in some
respects a better rig, but the jib is apt to be a nuisance at times.
The disadvantage of the knockabout is that, being a narrower model
than the cat, you are cramped for room where it is most needed--aft.
Owing to this latter rig being in fashion, the cat has fallen out of
favor, but there is no better boat for the young sailor to begin his
studies in. An open cat--that is, one half-decked, say of sixteen feet
length--is just the thing for a boy to learn the sailor's trade in.
Now for the cruiser, and its name is legion. But out of the lot there
are more bad than good ones to be picked. A cruiser, in the first
place, is a house--a home for days, and perhaps weeks and months.
Therefore, she must furnish sleeping and eating accommodations. This
means room to stretch and stand, or at least sit upright. A cruiser in
which a man cannot live in comfort is no cruiser.
Then first, in selecting a cruiser, the accommodation must be looked
to; that is why when a man who knows anything starts to buy one he
invariably puts the question, "What is her head room?" The answer
generally tells the whole story. The next important query is, "What is
her draught?" the third, "What is her rig?"
Unless you can sit up and lie down comfortably the boat is no cruiser;
you can at once make up your mind to that. While no man expects to
spend the greater part of his time below, the time he does spend below
is that in which he seeks rest, and must get it; this is impossible in
cramped quarters.
The importance of the draught depends largely upon where you want to
sail and harbor. Your draft should never exceed the low-water depth of
the channel you have to pass through in order to reach your anchorage.
In our northern waters three feet is the minimum draught required; in
southern waters less is almost necessary. In some localities three feet
is the maximum draught. Short draught has the disadvantage of forcing
the bulk of the boat above the water line, and the making of high
houses, in order to get head room. This produces a boat that offers
considerable resistance to the wind, and consequently makes excessive
leeway. They are also unsteady at anchor, and hard on the ground tackle.
Deep draught cuts you out from many harbors and sheltering places, and
in getting from port to port along shore frequently obliges you to take
the longest way round, but it has the advantage of giving a firm hold
on the water and of keeping the weights and windages down low. But, as
in everything, there is a happy medium--a betwixt and between.
It may be stated that for all reasonable purposes on a cruising boat of
40 feet and under to be used on our coast, a draught of five feet is
sufficient. All over that will prove a cause of worry and a hindrance
to pleasant voyaging. With this draught you can pass into nearly all
our bar harbors and navigate with safety among the shoals in our sounds
and channels. I prefer to limit my draught to three feet, but then it
is my peculiar pleasure to sail where other men seldom venture.
[Illustration: CUTTER RIG]
It is difficult to get a weatherly keel boat on four or even five
feet draught. A boat to be good to windward must have a deep plane
of resistance. This makes it almost impossible to dispense with the
centerboard in small boats. But as soon as you admit this contrivance
into your plans you partly spoil your accommodations. Many designers
have tried to get round this by combining the two forms. Putting in a
half board that houses in the keel and does not come above the floor.
Such of these as I have seen have proved to be poor makeshifts, and the
result is the spoiling of what would have been a good keel boat.
While fully aware of its disadvantages, I am a firm believer in the
centerboard for small cruising boats. That it weakens a vessel there
is no doubt, but with the modern method of building the trunk the
injury to the fabric is very slight. The saying that "A centerboard
boat always leaks" is more fact than fiction, but in several modern
yachts that I have cruised in this is not so, the trunk having been
constructed in such a way as to resist the strains which are the cause
of leakage.
Now to return to the subject of accommodations. A cruising boat should
be of such shape as will give the largest interior possible in a given
length. In this the older type of yacht was far superior to the modern.
In the boats of to-day a man pays for a great deal of hull that is of
no use to him, except for looks and speed. The long overhangs provide
plenty of deck room, but they add nothing to the cabin and but little
to the storage space. In an up-to-date boat all that is habitable is
the middle third. In such a craft, 30 feet over all, you can get but
10 feet for cabin. I have seen a 40-foot boat, which was advertised as
a good cruiser, in which there was sleeping room for two. Compare this
with the accommodations furnished by an old-fashioned plumb-ender, or
with a Cape cat. One of these latter of 20 feet has more room than a
modern 30-footer of the up-to-date model.
The extreme overhangs are all right in racing craft, but they are a
detriment and a danger in cruising craft. The same may be said of the
extreme full bow. There never was, and probably never will be, a set of
ends better adapted for all-around work than those carried by the boats
of twenty years ago, as shown in Minerva and yachts of her day. This
is what is known as the half-clipper or schooner bow.
In boats of this type there is sufficient overhang to prevent their
diving and to give them sufficient buoyancy to lift easily over a sea,
at the same time the ends are not long enough to trip the vessel if
running in large water. Again, the entrance and run are sharp enough
to fall without pounding--a disagreeable habit that full modern boats
are possessed of. The most serious objection to the modern boat with
full and long overhangs is that it will not lay-to in heavy water
bow-on. Just as soon as you put it to the wind and check its headway
it will fall off in a trough and work around stern to the sea, a very
dangerous proceeding. It is a splendid runner, and remarkably dry when
so engaged; in fact, it seldom ships solid water when going either on
or off the wind, and is less liable to pooping than the older types,
but when brought to face a sea it pounds and sags and is exceedingly
uncomfortable. To one who has never experienced the sensation it is
impossible to picture the punishment these full-bowed vessels receive
when driven against a head sea. This pounding brings a terrible strain
on the spars and rigging and is very wearying to the crew. I have
known a sea striking under the stern of one of these boats to throw
the crew off their feet, badly injuring one man. The mate of a large
English yacht who had crossed the Bay of Biscay in her on the way to
Gibraltar told me that he had never in all his sea experience had such
a terrible knocking about. Every man on board was a mass of bruises
when the vessel made port, and the copper was torn off her bows back
for eight or ten feet. Yet this boat's bow was nothing like so full as
that of many of our yachts of to-day.
[Illustration: JIB AND MAINSAIL CRUISING BOAT]
If you go to the other extreme, and cut all end off a boat, giving
her a straight up and down stem, she is a bad runner and very, very
wet. The cutters of this type were most uncomfortable sea boats, being
constantly deluged, but they would eat out to windward in heavy weather
and lie-to a sea like birds. Between these two there is the end which
is the one for the cruiser to use.
The ideal end is one that will lift and lower slowly, allowing the
vessel to fall and rise without jarring or jerking. This sort of end
will, when falling, bring a vessel slowly to when the extreme point
of the fall is reached. With the plumb stem a vessel is apt to go too
far, deluging the decks, and in one with the full long bow, not far
enough, jarring the whole fabric by suddenly checking the motion. It
is of course impossible to have absolutely perfect ends on a vessel,
as concessions have to be made to other purposes, but the ends of the
majority of our modern yachts are decidedly bad for rough-water work.
Another serious defect in many cruising boats is want of freeboard.
There is no excuse for this. A low-sided boat is wet and uncomfortable,
both inside and out. You see many boats of this description with scant
freeboard and excessively high houses. The only object to be gained
by keeping the freeboard down is to reduce the windage and weight,
important items in racing craft, but of little matter in a cruiser.
Farther on, in speaking of handling in rough water, I shall explain the
advantages of freeboard.
_ON ONE-MAN BOATS_
"_Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea!_"