The cruise of the Nona The story of a cruise from Holyhead to the Wash, with reflections and judgments on life and letters, men and manners
not persuade me to a motor, for, of all things abominable to God and
His Saints, I know of nothing more abominable than machinery and petrol
and the rest on board a little cruising boat.
I would rather die of thirst, ten miles off the headlands in a brazen
calm, having lost my dinghy in the previous storm, than have on board
what is monstrously called to-day an ‘auxiliary.’ The name is worthy
of the thing. By auxiliaries the Roman army perished. Further, it is
a nasty foreign sort of term. Call it the machine and tell the truth.
I am told by those who use the abomination that it is ashamed of
itself, and often will not start, as though to say, ‘You came out to
sail the seas, and I am reluctant to cheat wind, weather, and tide in
your favour.’ I will not deny that mechanism is valuable to those who
conduct huge hordes, the rich and the poor, from Europe to the New
World, but in a little cruising boat I will have none of it. It would
be foolish to be rid of it in armament, for there it does give one’s
country a great advantage, but in a little cruising boat it is as much
out of place as is electric light where one should use candles, or as
are motor-cars in the hunting of wild beasts. But I must return to
things more practical.
My next rule would be: _Get everything shipshape and, so far as you
can, keep it shipshape._
That is, see that the falls are clear, that everything is properly
stowed away; that you know where everything is to be got at in any
emergency; that you have to look for nothing; that you make the most of
every space—and the rest of it.
All this I say knowing full well that I myself am incapable of it;
but I am giving advice, I am not practising. I am expending myself
for the good of others, and what I myself do is no affair of yours.
The best known and the most tragic tag descended to us from antiquity
is, ‘_Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor._’ Some would say that
they are not only the most tragic words the great pagans bequeathed to
us—the pagans upon whom we all repose—but would add that they are
also the most ironic; for if you stop a little after the _proboque_,
and add in another voice the following two words, you will appreciate
the sardonic accent.
My own boat has usually come into port more like the disturbed nest of
a dormouse than like the spick and span arrangement which I advise.
Half the blocks will be jammed, the anchor will be caught under the
bows, and, as like as not, the fluke of it hooked over one of the
whiskers. The falls will be all tangled up together. The warping ropes
will be mixed up with the anchor chain in the fo’c’sle, so that there
is no getting at the one, or paying out the other. She will perhaps
be coming in under three reefs with hardly enough wind to move her,
because it has been blowing a few hours ago, and I have been too lazy
to shake them out. Her jib will be slack, her cabin light broken where
I have put my heel through it. A hundred other little familiar touches
will make whatever landsman is passing his time gazing out to sea from
the pier-head recognise from far off the Nona, as the Arabs recognised
the great ship of Richard the Lion-hearted, saying, ‘There comes the
red sail of the Frankish king.’ There never was such a boat as the Nona
for coming in hugger-mugger. But do as I preach, not as I practise.
Have everything in its place and a place for everything, so that, in
a flash, you can shorten sail, let go the anchor, get to your warping
ropes, or do any of those many things required by sailing-men. Even
Plato was moved to discover the way in which the horrible Phœnicians
used space aboard their ships, and had everything in order, though
Heaven knows he could have had little sympathy with the sailing of the
seas. Indeed, very few men who have written in the sentimental and
rhetorical fashion (of which he was a master) have had also a call for
the outside. But even he, I say, admired the order of shipboard. So be
it with you.
Go into all the least details, think of how any object you have aboard
will be treated by the weather. Use no ornament which the salt air can
spoil, and put not one ounce aboard beyond what you need.
My third rule is this: _Keep tight decks._
I speak with feeling here, for most of my life the rain and the salt
sea have come through upon my face as I slept, as coffee does through
those abominable new contraptions which they call ‘filters,’ and which
they put above your cup instead of boiling the coffee honestly apart
as our fathers did. Most of my life, half the days at least that I
have sailed the sea, water both salt and fresh, and always tasting
of varnish and of tar, has trickled through also upon my provisions,
notably upon bread, which it quite astonishingly spoils. Therefore I
say from experience, keep tight decks. It is very simple. You have but
to go along the seams carefully on a hot, windless day, with a spike or
a screw driver and a mallet, prodding in shredded rope, and treating it
afterwards with any one of the compositions they sell.
My fourth rule (I am giving them in no order of importance) is: _Have
an anchor heavy enough for your craft._
It is a temptation to have too light a one for the easier handling.
It is always a mistake. An anchor drags mainly through lack of head.
Holding-ground always makes a difference but, with little craft, lack
of head is the trouble. You must pay the price of heavy work for the
sake of security, and it is better to have an old-fashioned anchor than
the stockless anchors they sell now. These are all very well for large
boats, but I do not believe in them for small ones. Be at the pains
of getting your anchor up properly, and unstocking it, and also, when
you let it down, of mousing the catch. Nothing will get you into more
trouble than not being able to let go your anchor quickly, when there
is necessity; and, in that connection also, mind you keep your chain
clear. It is a good plan to tie small but conspicuous shreds of bunting
or coloured string at every two or three fathoms of the chain in the
first part of it; thus you will know how much you have let out, for
although it is always better to let out too much than too little, it is
annoying to have a great length of chain dragging about in shoal water,
and the noise of it moving may confuse you into believing that you
are dragging. I spent an abominable night once off a shingle bank in
heaving water, where the tide ran strong, from having let out too much
chain in the dark. The metal lay all along the bottom like the great
sea serpent, and the movement of the boat sent a violent wrangling of
iron up the chain all night long, so that I was perpetually running
upon deck, between poor intervals of sleep, to judge by the distant
light whether she were dragging or no. And I had good occasion for
anxiety, seeing that not far upon my lee the shoal came right up out of
the sea, with the water breaking upon it. You might think that however
much chain you had let out, your boat would lie to the end of it; but
it is not so. If you have a great deal too much chain let out in shoal
water, the weight of it holds the boat like a kind of second anchor,
and it grumbles and shifts and moves all the time.
Now the putting on of these little markings is of value, also, to
prevent you letting out too little chain. The rule of thumb is: Three
times as much chain as there is depth of water. This, in my youth
(and for my youth I must be forgiven), I neglected in the port of
Harwich, thinking it was nearer high tide than it was, so the little
ship got adrift, and was rescued, or, as the man preferred to call it,
‘salvaged,’ by a barge called the Lily. The barge had no right to be
called the Lily, for it was foully dirty, and as black as soot. The
owner of the Lily claimed one third of the value of my boat, ‘Because,’
said he, ‘it was salvaged below London Bridge.’ He attached to this
formula a magical importance. I offered him two pounds. He wanted much
more. I appealed for help to a ship that was lying in that harbour, and
they sent off a boat’s crew for me to convince the man. He took the
offer I made him, but said that he had been bullied. I do not think he
had. I think two pounds is a fair price to pay for the trouble a man
may have been at to put a boat out, and tie a rope on to a drifting
craft of that size. But still he complained that he had ‘salvaged her
below London Bridge,’ and had a right to one third of her value. But
there again, what was the value of any boat in which I had already
sailed?
My fifth rule would be: _Don’t keep too close to the wind; let her
sail; keep her full._
This attempt to be always pointing up is one of the curses brought in
by racing. Your own hearty middle-class boat can never point close to
the wind. If she can, it is a bad sign, for she will be putting on
airs. Be content if she will lie and sail at an angle of forty-five
degrees from the direction in which the wind is blowing. If she cannot
do that she is a bad boat, but if she can do that, she is well enough.
Now this is called ‘within four points of the wind,’ being one eighth
of the thirty-two points that make up the whole round of the compass.
There are all sorts of smart craft which will point much closer than
that, and there are particular kinds of rigs, used honestly and not for
racing at all, which will keep much closer, I am told. Certainly the
London barge seems to keep closer, that marvellous rig, that perfection
of rigs for its purpose; and the Norfolk wherries, shooting up the
rivers, seem to keep quite miraculously close, though I think in this
their great momentum and the flood of the water helps them. But as for
you, sailing ordinarily upon the sea, be quite content if she does her
duty with the wind halfway between beam and bow. It is here as it is
with most things in life, be content with the sound average, keeping
the limits which God has set all around. Do not wish for too long a
life, for too large a fortune, or for too much honour. Eat your peck of
dirt before you die; take the rough with the smooth; consider that it
is all in a day’s work; expect rain and fine. In general, write out a
list of all the commandment-proverbs and learn that list by heart. Then
break them.
They that sail too close to the wind have great difficulty in bringing
their boat round, especially in a seaway, and there is nearly always
some of their canvas (if it is an honest boat, and not one of your
millionaires’ models) not doing all it should when you lie too close.
In connection with this, I would add (without making it a separate
rule): _Take care never to pin the boat—that is, never get your
mainsheet too taut_; give the boom plenty of angle. Let your mainsail
take the full wind. If you look at the pictures of the old boats in the
time when men were men, you will see that they sailed with easy sails
bellying, and were not concerned to look smart with stiff, boardlike
sails. Of course, in the racing-machines, you get more speed by these
tricks, but it is no way to treat a good boat of stock and sound
ancestry. It is driving her and playing tricks with her. Be content to
feel the power of the wind.
There are times when all these rules admit of exception. For instance,
you find that you can just make a difficult channel in the last of the
flow or the ebb, before it turns against you; and that you can only do
it by lying very close indeed. Then you must coax your she-companion
(by whom I here mean your boat), and even spill the wind out of her
sails a little, so as to work her up and through, and you may then get
in your mainsheet as close as you dare, and haul everything tight—too
tight—headsail sheets and halyards as well, for you are attempting a
feat. But I am all against doing such things as a habit; and if again