Boating

“ Every one knows, when he looks at one of these long, narrow boats, that as long as the oars are held extended on the water it cannot upset. But, in spite of that knowledge, every one, when he first gets into a shell, endeavors to balance himself by lifting the oars, and, of course, goes over in a jiffy. ”

“ How to Rig and Sail Small Boats
To have the tiller in one's own hands and feel competent, under all ordinary circumstances, to bring a boat safely into port, gives the same zest and excitement to a sail (only in a far greater degree) that the handling of the whip and reins over a lively trotter does to a drive. ”

“ When a boat is once pointing in a required direction, and her true course is for the moment a straight one, the pilot should note some landmark, and endeavour to regulate his bows by aid of it, keeping the mark dead ahead, or so much to the right or to the left as occasion may require. ”

“ The general principles of sailing are as simple as the national game of "one ole cat." That is to say, if the wind always blew moderately and steadily, it would be as easy and as safe to sail a boat as it is to drive a steady old family horse of good and regular habits. ”

“ Make for the nearest port with all speed, and keep a man at the downhaul ready at a moment's notice to lower sail. The moment the wind stops drop the sail and make everything snug, leaving only bare poles. When the thunder-squall strikes you, be it ever so hard, you are now in little danger; and if the wind from the new quarter is not too fresh, you can hoist sail again and make the best of your way to the nearest port, where you can "get in out of the wet." ”

“ In warm climates, where swimming had become a necessity, and the very children from their earliest years had been habituated to the water, the familiarity that breeds contempt of the very danger which at a previous stage acted as a deterrent, would soon encourage attempts to improve, and enlarge, and increase the speed of the rude vessel in common use. ”

“ We sit and wait and shout at intervals, burning the fuel until just about midnight, when we hear the plash of oars, and a dark object glides past; it is a fishing-boat with one mast, with three men in the stern, and two women rowing. ”

“ She can be pliant as a racing yacht and as pig-headed as a mule. And she only obeys him who knows her down to her smallest technicalities.
In this spirit we practised for weeks, round about, above and below water. We studied our boat, and tried not only to become familiar with all her possibilities, but to penetrate into the inner mysteries of this nautical amphibian. And when we returned from the stillness of the bay to the ear-splitting noise of the riveting hammers and the restless hum of the dockyard, we would sit for hours with the constructors and exchange our experiences. ”

“ As we 'reached' out the sea grew weightier. Never before had I known a greater sea in that bay. The ridges seemed to stand up to twice the height of our masts; every peak boiled, and as we rose to the summit of it, the boat was smothered in the foam of her own churning, and in the headlong, giddy, dazzling rush into which she soared, with the whole weight of the gale in her fragment of lug bowing her over and sending her, as you might have believed, gunwale under down the long, indigo slant of the under-running billow. ”

“ But I soon recvoered from this childish fear, and as I learned that the motion of the boat became more lively and gyratory, rocking from side to side, leaping from wave to wave, or sliding down into a trough and then mounting with perfect ease to the crest of a wave, dashing the spray into our faces when we were in rough water, the sound of rapids and the sight of foam and white caps ahead occasioned only pleasant anticipation. Often when the current was strong, the men would rest on their oars and allow the boats to be swept along by the current. ”

“ Our little nutshell, in perpetual motion, is drawn down into the deep valleys of the ocean waves, or tossed upwards on the comb of the following breaker. We are soaked to the skin, and the spray covers us like a silvery veil; our boat as well as ourselves is daubed with a salt crust, our eyes smart and our lips have a briny tang, but to us sailors it's a joy to be the sport of the wild waves, and even those few unfortunates who always suffer from sea-sickness never lose their love of the sea. ”

“ Those fearful noises are loudly re-echoed by all the other men, who strain themselves so vigorously at the oars, that the boat, flying forwards, almost keeps way with the wave, on the back of which it is the object of the steersman to keep her. As she is swept impetuously towards the bar, a person seated in the boat can distinctly feel the sea under him gradually rising under a sheer wave, and lifting the boat up—and up—and up, in a manner exceedingly startling. ”

“ The utmost care and attention are requisite, on the part of every person in the boat, when the lines are running out; fatal consequences having been sometimes produced by the most trifling neglect.—When the line happens to “run foul,” and cannot be cleared on the instant, it sometimes draws the boat under water; on which, if no auxiliary boat, or convenient piece of ice, be at hand, the crew are plunged into the sea, and are obliged to trust to their oars or their skill in swimming, for supporting themselves on the surface. ”

“ Resting upon our oars, or only using them to keep the boat's head to the break of the sea, and to prevent her being swamped—an operation during which they were as often flourished in the air as in the ocean, when we rose on the crest of one vast heaving wave, or sank into the dark vale of water between two—resting thus, we gazed in silence and with aching hearts at the destruction of our home upon the sea. ”

“ After dining, and allowing the boat to drift while rearranging my provisions, I took my place, and, getting the proper bearings astern, bent on the oars.
To those who have rowed only clumsy country-boats, with their awkward row-locks and wretched oars, slimy, dirty, and leaking, trailing behind tags and streamers of pond-weed, or who have only experimented with that most uncivilized style of digging up the water called paddling, the real pleasure of rowing is unknown. ”

“ 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 passage 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. ”

“ When fishermen are out drawing up their nets, he skims so low over the boat that he may be stunned with an oar, and he is so attracted by bright and gaudy colours that he will shoot down recklessly on to the pennants of ships as they flutter in the wind, swinging to and fro with the roll of the vessel. ”

“ To me, accustomed to the scrambling, and shouting, and hauling up above high-water mark, the running of naked-legged boys into the water, and the energetic doings of the crew when a fishing boat comes to land at home, there is something of the comically sublime in the contrast presented by these good Flemings. As one of the old brown tubs rolls towards the shore, looking as if she scarcely had made up her mind which end to send in first, you see a man quietly pitch a small anchor over the bows, and then down come the two sails. ”

“ The first boat that put off found her difficulties at once; she shipped water by the ton, and the men had to improvise bailers. Those who had boots on took them off, and used these; a blanket, held at each corner by a sailor, was also brought into play for the purpose; caps and coats, too—every man doing something to clear the boat of water. For hours they toiled, expecting every minute to be their last. All through the night, till early morning, they drifted whither the waves would take them, and when dawn came they found themselves out of sight of land, with never a ship in view. ”

“ Meanwhile the boat was steadily approaching the doomed vessel, which had struck, and over which the waves dashed; a flash of lightning for an instant revealed one of the men standing in the bows of the boat in the act of throwing a rope to those on board, and another showed that some were being transported from the vessel into the boat; then the rope was seen to be cast off and the men commenced rowing back to shore. Would they ever reach it in safety? ”

“ Ships' boats, from the jolly-boat manned by lads, hurried ashore to seek stray pursers' clerks with their small plunder, or stewards and servants with bundles of washed clothing—to the heavy launch loaded with water casks pushing out or striving to get in—each boat's crew utterly reckless, and under no control, intent only on breaking their own way in or out, so that it was marvellous how any escaped damage. ”

“ The party and all their equipments were carried from the vessel to the ice in three boats, roped together at intervals of twenty-five or thirty feet, the life-boat leading with the party, clothing, provisions, etc. Then came the dinghey, loaded nearly to the water's edge with the dogs, and one man to thrash them and keep some sort of order while they worried each other and raised an outrageous noise, on account of their uncomfortable, tumbled-together condition. And last, the skin boat, flying-light, with only the sleds aboard and one man to steer, the whole making a very extraordinary show. ”

“ So in a boat. I have been nearly roasted on the lake in this boat when I was going before the wind, while it would be comfortably cool on the wind. The motion of the boat kills the breeze. Some boatmen make Hop's blunder, and put on more sail than they can bear; and then it is a dangerous error."
"Haul in on the main-sheet! A pull on the lee jib-sheet!" said Ash, when the Goldwing came to a bend in the river, which made it necessary to brace up the boat a little more. ”

“ This at last answered, and with each shift of our tackle we were able to haul the boat up about six inches, and in little more than an hour we had got her half out of the water, and altogether on rollers, and found that the water that remained in her no longer ran out. So we set to work and bailed her out, and then she was so much lighter that we were able to dispense with our purchase and long levers and use our short ones again, and before another hour was past we had her high and dry on the beach. ”

“ Knowing that inattention to your work will perhaps result in a spill, you will be constantly on the alert, and you will learn that by quick and proper movements of the helm you can control and maneuvre your boat so as to keep her on her bottom at all times.
If you have your boat ready take a day when the wind is light and steady and get somebody to go with you who understands sailing. Let the old hand tend the sheet while you handle the tiller. ”

“ The breeze freshens, and there is a great bubble of leaping surf in the broken water in the angle of the pier; an ordinary boat would speedily be swamped there; but there the life-boat rides on the tumbling seas like a thing of life; every experiment increases the confidence that her crew and the lookers-on feel in the boat. ”

“ As you are being paddled over to the shore after the last violent plunge of the ride, you take a look at the boat, and notice that it is very strongly built—of hickory and oak, the boatman says, and costing over a hundred dollars. It has a long slope upward in the prow, less sharp than a yacht's bow, and thus the danger of getting wet is almost entirely done away with. Each boat has four seats, seating eight people altogether, besides the man who steers. ”

“ Help me, man; I wish to stand. So, so, I see him! there! there! going to leeward still; what a leaping spout!—Hands off from me! The eternal sap runs up in Ahab’s bones again! Set the sail; out oars; the helm!”
It is often the case that when a boat is stove, its crew, being picked up by another boat, help to work that second boat; and the chase is thus continued with what is called double-banked oars. ”

“ When the boat strikes the water, the impetus acquired in the descent causes it to "skim" over the water in a series of bounds, like a stone thrown by a boy in "ducks and drakes," some 300 feet to a landing-stage, where the passengers are disembarked.
But such a brief description doesn't even suggest the fun and the excitement of "shooting the chute." It is a sport where old and young can meet on common ground. ”

“ I glanced at its face by the moonlight, and then burst into tears as I flung it far away into the ocean. It had run down at seven o'clock! We were behind the time of the slack, and the whirl of the Ström was in full fury!
"When a boat is well built, properly trimmed, and not deep laden, the waves in a strong gale, when she is going large, seem always to slip from beneath her—which appears very strange to a landsman; and this is what is called riding, in sea phrase. ”

“ A chap will dive all day for the fun of it and half a stick of tobacco, but you can do most of the diving yourselves and save on the business. There are the diving suits, two of them. Good as when I got them, and the pump’s in the boat there; she’s in that canoe house, it’s a Clarkson, in good order. Say, boys, you’ve no reason to sneeze over this deal. Here’s an island, a living larder, pigs and fowl and taro and fish and fruit for nix, a pearl lagoon not half worked, diving suits and pump and a bit of trade, and all for that frousty old brown boat of yours. ”