Freeboard

“ He simply has to do the best he can and leave the rest to the man with the paddle in the stern. When the latter is an expert with the experience of Captain Armstrong there is little likelihood of serious trouble.
The matter of keeping a lookout is also much more difficult in a small boat. In a craft with only a few inches of freeboard it is obviously out of the question for a steersman to keep his feet through a rapid, as he may do without risk in a batteau or canoe large enough to give him a chance to brace his knees against the sides. ”

“ The boat which I selected was ketch-rigged—much like a yawl, but more comfortable for lying-to in heavy weather, the sail area being more evenly distributed. Her freeboard being only three feet, we replaced her wooden hatches, which were too large for handling patients, by iron ones; and also sheathed her forward along the water-line with greenheart to protect her planking in ice. For running in high seas we put a large square sail forward, tripping the yard along the foremast, much like a spinnaker boom. ”

“ In this way the peculiar dangers attaching to low freeboard, especially when associated with a high centre of gravity, have been pretty fully made known, but the character of the stability which is often to be found associated with very light draught appears to have escaped the attention it demands. Light draught is often as unfavourable to stability as low freeboard, and in some cases more so. ”

“ It is, of course, necessary also to have a good freeboard, but a well-proportioned boat does not require so much freeboard as the commoner type, as with proper sheer and under-water surface she is easy in a seaway. If the gunwale is too high, there is loss of power over the oars, which is serious when for the safety of the boat she is required to be kept head-on to sea, and with a fresh breeze, even in a good boat, this is not always an easy matter. ”

“ The sea did not go on the poop. At the time I speak of, the Alert had about eighteen inches freeboard. By freeboard I mean the distance from the water up to the level of the deck. It has nothing to do with the bulwarks. I still think that forty-four tons of cargo was too much for that vessel to go to sea with. Of course if it had been placed further foreward, it would have been better.
Q.—You appear to think that Captain Mathieson and his crew were a pack of lunatics to go outside with the Alert? A.—I don’t think I ever said so. I said no sane man would send such a ship outside the Heads. ”

“ To make matters worse, while in that critical position we must use our oars to swing the boat and that meant dropping our weathercloths down to the gunwales at the very instant when most of all we needed every inch of freeboard possible to avoid taking over a solid beam sea and foundering out of hand. ”

“ It is true that each type of boat is given a certain "life-saving capacity," which is ascertained by crowding in as many men as practicable with boat in still water and all equipment on board.
These boats, moreover, have a much smaller freeboard than is considered desirable in the merchant navy; but the occupants are all under discipline and in charge of experienced seamen. ”

“ They were considered to be the finest and safest tramps afloat by men who sailed in them. Vessels of two thousand tons deadweight, with only eighteen to twenty-four inches freeboard, would make winter Atlantic passages without losing a rope-yarn, while many of the three-deckers with six or seven feet freeboard never reached their destination. Still the theorists kept up their unreasoning opposition to the Well-deckers, and the Hartlepool men were driven to take the matter up vigorously. ”

“ Here again freeboard comes in. Again, the placing of the scuppers in the forward end of the cockpit and their outboard openings under the bilge is decidedly wrong. In the first place it keeps the water at all times in the forward end of the standing room against the cabin, just where you move about; in the second every drop that goes out through the lee pipe has to force its way against a pressure. This pressure is also [70]
[71] constantly driving the water up and into the boat. The place for the scuppers is aft with the openings under the stern. ”

“ The large figures at the stern seem to point to the bireme of Fig. 74 being about to be used for racing purposes. The man who is going to step on board is in the act of taking leave of a woman, who holds away from him a crown, or prize, for which he may be about to contend. If this view be correct we have, at once, an explanation of the very peculiar structure of this bireme, which, with its open sides and small freeboard, could only have been intended for use in smooth water and, possibly, for racing purposes. ”

“ The tripping power of the wave is exhausted before the rail is brought down, and the boat not receiving a load of water on her lee deck rights so much quicker. A low-sided boat when canted by a beam sea edges her rail under and shovels the water up on her deck as she recovers. For this reason seagoing craft should have their upper freeboard slightly tumbled home. Bulwarks and high rails are bad things, and combings should be kept well inboard, while raised cabin houses if fitted should not be carried too close to the waterways. ”

“ If in a place where the water is generally smooth, the Lark type is an excellent craft to learn in; if where it is rough, get one of those cheap sailing dories. The Rudder Skip is also a good boat, but is somewhat more expensive. Another good boat for a beginner is a 15-foot, half-decked, cat-rigged boat; a boat with considerable freeboard and a water-tight cockpit. Such a boat can be built in first-class style for about $250 or $300. I strongly advise the beginner to use the cat rig, no matter what type of hull he employs.
WIND ABEAM.
Many begin in a rowboat, fitted with a sail. ”

“ A sea would come rolling up out of the south in a great sky-scraping ridge of pea green and heel the yacht to starboard until the mainboom dipped into the water and buckled under the strain like a rod before the first rush of a ten-pound salmon. Then it would pass on, leaving the yacht to tumble off its back and roll her port rail under just in time to dip a deckful out of the next wave. Much of the time the foresail was lowered with the boom hauled amidships, and the mainsail, double-reefed, carried to starboard. ”

“ For the last two or three hundred yards the yacht had backed in a course which lacked but a few degrees of being parallel to the sea-wall, so that the anchors were but little further from the shore than the schooner herself. "Hauling off," therefore, was a tedious and not entirely simple proceeding. We first hove short on the starboard anchor, broke it out and brought it just awash. Several lashings were then passed through its ring and round and round the port life-boat, just aft of the beam, after which a line from the yacht was made fast to the anchor and the shackle knocked off. ”

“ The boatman refused to entertain my proposition for a moment, not even when I offered to deposit the value of the skiff in question. "I don't care if you reckon you can swim out of one of them rapids," he said with finality. "My boat can't swim, and a boat earns its value three times over in a good season." He was a practical chap, that one. Why, indeed, shouldn't it worry him more to have his boat go over the Falls than it would to have me do it?
Walking down from the Lake to the Canyon I used the road only where it ran close to the river. ”

“ An instant later the Commodore, dashing wildly aft, cleared the cockpit rail at a bound, and, knocking the surprised Perkins backward with his shoulder, began climbing up the spokes of the wheel like a monkey as he threw it hard down. The yacht wavered for an instant, as though confused by the unwonted treatment, and then, [211] with a slatting of canvas and banging of blocks, came up into the wind and paid off on the other tack just in time to avoid the thrust of a jutting point of coral. We felt fully justified in setting aside our volunteer pilot and finding our own anchorage after that. ”

“ Being straight, this channel is not very risky to run, even with a small boat—provided one keeps to it. A wild tumble of rollers just to the left of the head must be avoided, however, even by a raft. That was why we had the motor-boat—to be sure of “hitting the intake right,” as Ike put it. And the motor-boat ought to be able to handle the job without help. He had been working hard ever since we started on a gigantic stern-sweep, but that was for Hell Gate and Box Canyon. Here, with her nose once in right, she should do it on her own. ”

“ Every roller meant a slam, and every slam meant a shower-bath; but withal, it was mostly spray that came over her bows—nothing really to bother about. And so Imshallah would have run it right through—had not a sharp dig I gave with my left oar jerked the latter out of that “open-faced” Boat Encampment mascot lock and sent me keeling over backwards. The next moment she was wallowing, beam-on, into the troughs and over the crests of the combers, dipping green water at every roll. ”

“ A half dozen times we ran free for an hour or two when a favourable slant of wind offered, but oftener it was "full-and-by," or "by-the-wind," with the booms almost amidships in an endeavour to steal the last fraction of a point from the obstinate turncoat of a wind. Most of the time the yacht was too close to the wind to admit of the advantageous use of the main topmast staysail, but either our large or small sail of that class, as well as the club and jib topsails, were used whenever opportunity offered. ”

“ Why, hang me! it's a dead body! But why on earth are they landing it on our wharf? They must have known you were coming, doctor."
As the launch swept alongside the wharf, the captain sprang up lightly and approached the group gathered round the body. "What's this?" he asked. "Why have they brought this thing here?"
The master of the trawler, who had superintended the landing, proceeded to explain.
"It's one of your men, sir," said he. "We saw the body lying on the edge of the South Shingles Sand, close to the beacon, as we passed at low water, so we put off the boat and fetched it aboard. ”

“ Both of us were in difficulties, but his round-armed thumping stroke seemed rather more true to form than the shattered remnants of my fine straight-armed slide-and-recover, with its dainty surface-skimming “feather.” Nothing but the sharpest of dabs with the tip of an oar can get any hold in a current of fifteen to twenty miles an hour, and the short, wristy pull (which is all there is time for) doesn’t impart a lot of impulse to a thirty-foot boat. ”

“ I swept the things back into the mug, which I returned to the locker, and having cut myself another thick slice of bread, proceeded with the largest breakfast that I have ever eaten.
The skipper's forebodings were justified by the course of events. When I came on deck the breeze had died down to a mere faint breath, hardly sufficient to keep the big red main-sail asleep—as the pretty old nautical phrase has it. The skipper was still at the wheel and Abel was anxiously taking soundings with a hand-lead. ”

“ Poising an instant on the middle of a forward thwart of the canoe, he sprang to the rail, clambered smartly to the top strand of the barbed wire, and swung lightly down to the deck on the main backstay.
It was at this juncture that I went through the feeble motions of trying to act the part of a man myself. I pointed out to Bell that I had knocked about on yachts a good deal, and, while I couldn't claim to be much of a hand with niggers, was probably as good a navigator [pg 78] as Allen was. ”

“ Time and again the helmsman, grinding the wheel hard up to keep her before the wind, would glance with the tail of his eye at a foam-splotched wall of green that blotted out the sky astern, to hunch his shoulders and grip his spokes the tighter, waiting with tensed muscles and set face the blow that menaced from above; time [292] and again, yawing desperately as the tail of a galloping sea gave her nose a tweak, the yacht would seem on the point of broaching right under the hollow wall of the comber next in line ”

“ Then, unless the yacht gets a stern-board, which has been explained elsewhere, she is helped round by pushing the main-boom—which is made fast by its sheet, and works itself—out over the starboard quarter. When the yacht is just about to pass the direction of the wind, and is nearly upon the other tack, give the order to "trim down on the port jib-sheet,"—the same sheet as has just been cast off; and the outer surface of the sail will act as a lever to push the head of the yacht off till the wind fills the mainsail, when the order, "Let draw!" ”

“ Why should we not go with him? He was overdue with a raft of logs and cordwood he had contracted to take down below Hell Gate, and was just about to get to work building it. We could just throw our boat aboard, and off we would go together. If he could get enough help, he could have the raft ready in two or three days, and, once started, it would not be a lot slower than the skiff, especially if we took a fast motor-boat he knew of for towing purposes and to “put her into the rapids right.” ”

“ I asked.
"Looking out for things and reporting them to the ship over the telephone," was the reply. "Perhaps even trying to run them down and destroy them."
"Can't we play at a bit of work now?" I suggested. "Supposing we were at sea, and you saw what you thought to be the wake of the periscope of a U-boat a few miles away. What would you do?"
My companion laughed. "Well," he said, "if I had the old Xerxes down there on the other end of the string, I should simply report the bearing and approximate distance of the periscope over the telephone, and let her do the rest." ”