"Is it come?" they said, on the banks of the Nile,
Who looked for the world's long-promised boat,
And saw that the lines he had drawn on a tile
Would make a good cruiser—if it would float,
Thro' pyramids, temples, and mummies stuffed,
We vainly search for this ideal plan;
We fear the Burgess of Pharaoh's bluffed—
Yet there was hope when that day began.

ON BOATS IN GENERAL

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.