DEC. 11, IM. 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



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general interest in such craft among boating men in all parts of 

 the country, and many new and useful craft have been built of 

 late, though as they do not race they are little heard of. Descrip- 

 tions, and particularly drawings of these boats and their rigs are 

 always welcome, and we will gladly publish them. 



NEW YORK C. C— The New York C. C. did a graceful thing 

 in remembering its namesake, the new cruiser New York, and 

 adding its share to the service of plate subscription now being 

 raised by the Herald. The only other club on the subscription 

 list is the Oswego Y. C, which was one of the first subscribers. 



CANOE YAWLS AND SMALL CRUISERS. 



'Editor Forest and Stream: 



I send you with this the lines of the canoe yawl whose sail plan 

 you were kind enough to publish in your last issue and which I 

 hope will be on the stocks iu a few days. The more I study the 

 thing out and bxperiment the more I am satisfied with the 

 governing ideas of the design, the cutting away of deadwoods 

 and keel and the use of two centerboards, one a little forward of 

 the ordinary position and the other in the form of a more than 

 ordinarily powerful rudder. Madcap has at any rate been a 

 decided success, and 1 hope the new boat will be even more so. 

 Looking over some of your back numbers I came across the lines 

 of the Heathen Chinee, a very successful boat on the Thames. 

 In your remarks you said the success of the peculiar design was 

 probably due in great measure to the Cninese lugsails which she 

 carried; but are not the same features present in her design, a 

 big centerboard and rudder giving lateral resistance in plenty 

 and a full middle body tapering not only horizontally but verti- 

 cally to the ends and the absence of any fore or after dead wood 

 or skag. 



I pointed out in a letter to you some years ago that of all sailing 

 eralt the canoes, and only the canoes, were adhering to straight 



keels, and I still believe that the greatest improvement in model 

 which can now be effected is iu cambering and rocl^ering the 

 sides upward and reducing the frictional surface to the mini- 

 mum amount possible. In windward work especially I believe 

 that the excessive fining of the waterlines is of comparatively 

 small importance. Henrt K. Wicksteed. 



COBURG, Ont., Dec. 5. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



Probably many of your readers are, like myself, interested in 

 an all-round boat that is not too large to be handled alone in 

 putting iu and out of a boat house, that is easily managed by one 

 man under sail, but has room enough for a f nend if company is 

 wanted. To such, a description of my boat may prove of interest. 

 Two years ago I came into possession of a canoe 16ft. long, 40in. 

 beam, 211 n. deep at ends and 15in. amidship; fully decked, with 

 Sin. waterways; a keel boat with straight keel l%in. deep running 

 her full length, rigged with two leg-of-mutton sails of good size. 

 Before the wind she would run like a witch, but close-hauled, the 

 lee way she would make was surprising. Unfortunately, on the 

 Delaware one cannot keep the wind continually aft, and I finally 

 got tired of being beaten by boats in every other way inferior, so 

 early this season I began a great overhauling of old numbers of 

 the Forest and Stream, a comparison of canoe rigs of various 

 kinds, and the covering of any blank paper that came under my 

 hand with various designs of rigs. Each seemed lacking in some 

 important particular, but I finally settled on the following plan: 



To avoid sacrificing the room iu coclipit the centerboard well 

 was put forward under the deck, using a steel-plate board ^soin. 

 thick, the keel enabling me to do wiih a small board well lor- 

 ward. The forward mast tube was moved forward right into 

 the eyes, the after one 12in. further aft. The steering gear was a 

 heavy yoke of my own contrivance, bolting through deck and con- 

 nected with yoke or rudder by wire rope. Nearly twenty years' 

 experieuce in Delaware River hikers, tuckups and duckers failed 

 to make me see the many defects claimed for the gaffsail, and I 

 have never yet seen a sail with as many good all-round qualities, 

 if properly cut and fitted; so the sails of tlie So-So are both gaffs, 

 with all halliards leading to clutch cleats right at the helmsman's 

 baad, By letting go peak halliards gajl is reduced one<-half v«ry 



quickly, but it has to be bad weather indeed when her sails are 

 scandalized or even reefed. 



Under her new rier, So-So was tried early in March last and was 

 given the benefit of all the hard spring winds, before most of the 

 summer sailors began to think of refitting. She proved fast, safe 

 and weatherly, eats right into the eye of the wind, is stiff as a 

 church, rarely requiring one's weight to be thrown outside her 

 gunwale. Our fat test small boats are the tuckup?, and so far the 

 So-So has beaten every one she sailed against. In July, after a 

 hard spring's sailing, accompanied by my wife, I cruised along 

 the upper waters of the Chesapeake, making headquarters at a 

 fine oid farm house on the eastern shore. We took the weather 

 as we found it, and found some of it pretty bad, So-So would ride 

 a sea that would drench the crews of .he fishing noats, and she 

 would keep dry and outsail them besides, several times beating 

 boats that she could have been set inside of easily. With my wife 

 for crew, I explored the rivers that form the bead of the bay, 

 Northeast, Elk, Bohemia, etc.. quicltly and comfortably. Her 

 fastest ^ailing is done when haijdl°d by one man, with small 

 sandbag Just aft (f cockpit to put her down hy the stern, but no 

 olhor ballast. I may sometime put a racing rig on her and sail 

 her with a crew on the gunwale. So-So. 



PAIiMTRA, N. J., Dec. 7. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



I have been much interested in reading from time to time de- 

 scriptions of small cruisers and the many different rigs for this 

 class of boats. 



The one described in your issue of Nov. 26 while good,would not 

 do so well where there is much shoal water. I have a Barnegat 

 cruiser, one of Mr. Bishop's building, 16ft. long, oft. beam, and 

 aiin. deep, as described in the Forest and Stream of Jan. 14, 1886. 



The rig is a simpie leg-o'-mut.ton sail, laced to boom, and in 

 place of mast hoops I have small brass castings sliding on a jack 

 screwed to after side of mast. Only one halliard is used, running 

 ov^r a sheave on masthead and having spliced into one end a 

 snap hook, which is snapped into a ring in head of sail, then 

 when putting sail on the boat aU that is required is to put the 

 slides on the jack and hoist away. - 



The advantages of this rig are. first, simplicity, no clumsy ar- 

 rangement of the blocks and halliards: second, it can be taken 

 very quickly from the mast, which cannot be done with most rigs 

 on boats of this size, thus enabling the cruiser to keep his sail 

 always dry. 



The jacK is a strip of oak a^in. square, having a groove in two 

 opposite sides ^jgin. wide, in which the flanges of the slides work. 

 It commences about 1ft. above deck, running to masthead. A 

 stop can be put to prevent the slides Irom dropping off when the 

 sail is lowered or reefed. The centerboard is well forward, and 

 the rudder has a small drop plate. 



This type of boat is very able and comfortable for cruising, and 

 the rig, I think, is very good for such purposes. 



The sRil contains 120sq.f t., 16ft. hoist, 15ft. boom, 21ft. leach; and 

 1 havp carried full sail on Barnegat Bay when large catboats 

 were reefed. 



A boat of this kind can sail over flats where the small cruisers 

 with low-hung metal rudders and boards could not go. 

 Tom's River, N. J., Dec. 1. H. W. SmTH. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



Of iai:e I have become very much interested in reading the 

 Forest and Stream, aud I was much taken with Mr. H. K. 

 Wicksteed'i plan tor single-hander in the Issue of Nov. 26, under 

 the head of Canoeing. 



Only the fear of a breach of etiquette in canoeing prevented me 

 from building a canoe with overhanging ends. Why not have a 

 shorter keel, with overhanging stem and stern, on a canoe as well 

 as on a yacht? Is ic not a safer boat on a rougii sea? Such a boat 

 has proved to be fast in a yacht. Why not in a canoe? We have 

 no organized club here in Silver Creek, although we should have. 

 We nave a number of canoes and small yachts, and one would 

 think by the boating talk that we would have a large fleet of new 

 white wings in the spring. 



Our sailing is on open water— Lake Erie— and yet we find men 

 who think that a single-hander should be light enough to take 

 under one's arm and swim ashore if upset. For myself, like Mr. 

 Wicksteed, I desire a canoe that I can rake some comfort in on a 

 cruise, and in a race can invent something for ballast that will get 

 her there in time single-handed. 



Another obstacle in my way has been the centerboard trunk in 

 the cabin. And I have now designed an cscillating centerboard 

 that wholly does awav with the centerboard trunk iu the middle 

 portion of the boat. The centerboard Is of extra length, and soes 

 home to its house as quickly as a folding board when coming in 

 contact with an obstruction. I would like to have the opinion of 

 some good boating man as to its merits, and would cheerfully give 

 the details in full to any reader of the Forest and Stream who 

 would like to test the practicability of the device. J H H 



Silver Creek, N. Y. 



LWe would be glad to publish the plans of the centerboard, as 

 some such invention is much needed. If it is at all practicable 

 there is no doubt that some of our readers wUl be quick to test 

 the actual merits.] 



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WAR CANOE RACING. 



VERY decided change has been noticeable in canoe racing 

 dunng the past two seasons, and it now seems likely that for 

 a long time to come the paddle will nave an equal sbare of popu- 

 larity with the sail in racing at the meets, and to a certain extent 

 in local events as well. The sailing events have thus far been (he 

 great racing ati Taction of the meets, the entries being far more 

 numerous and the races consequently being greater in number 

 and more closely contested than the paddling events. In pad- 

 dling there have always been one or is^o men of known ability 

 like Johnson, Rice aud others, whom the average paddler has not 

 cared to face; but in sailing the conditions have been different 

 though it is hard to say why, and though a number of recognized 

 experts, like Butler, Brokaw, Gibion, Jones and a score "more, 

 were entered, there have always been plenty of new men to start 

 with them. At Jessup's Neck in 1890 and at Willsborough Point 

 this year, the principal paddling race assumed an importance 

 which it never oefore pussessed, and next year the various pad- 

 dling races promise to be still more exciting. Canoe sailing can 

 never lose us popularity, but just now the amount of time and 

 money required to build and work up a first-class racing canoe is 

 beginning to operate against large fields of starters, so that rela- 

 tively there will be a more equal division of the racing men and 

 piogramme events between the paddling and sailing than has 

 ever before existed. 



A proposition has been made within a year by Mr. Barney look- 

 ing to the utilization of this boom in paddling to increase the 

 excitement and interest of the racing week, especially to the 

 spectators, whether canoeists or transient visitors to the camp. 

 Tne proposal is to the effect that each of the four divisions shall" 

 own and bring to the meet a war canoe, manned by a crew from 

 within the division; the lour crews to paddle a race in these pic- 

 turesque cratt. Mr. Barney has given considerable thought to 

 the details, his idea being that the canoes should be of exactly the 

 same size and model, alike in every respect, and of course manned 

 by the same number of men, probably sixteen and a helmsman 

 For convenience of transportation, each canoe would be built in 

 three sections, a middle part some 16ft. long, and two 7 ft. ends 

 making a total length of 30ft., the three being boiled together by 

 metal counections. In shipping, the two ends would be placed in 

 the central portion, all going into an ordinary box car. A captain 

 w^ould be appointed in each division, whose duty it would be to 

 keep postea as to the paddlers who would be present at the meet 

 and from whom he could pick a crew. Of course the time for 

 crew practice would be short, probably a week, but with enough 

 good paddlers m fair condition a very good crew might be made 

 up for each boat. 



Any one who has seen a war canoe like the L'nktahee, the Ko- 

 kokono or the Mohican under way can form an idea of what a 

 race would be like with four of these canoes, manned by seven- 

 teen men each, the crews uniformed in bright colors and the big 

 single blades flashing. From a picturesque standpoint, the si^ht 

 would far surpass a rowing race sucu as the Harvard- Yale, and 

 with the rivalry between the four divisions the interest and ex- 

 citement would be fully as great. If such a race can be made an 

 establislied feature of the A. C. A. meet, it will in a few years 

 become one o£ the principal racing events. 



NEW YORK C. C— The annual meeting of the New York C C 

 was held on Dec. 14, at the Fercing Rooms, with Com. Howard in" 

 the chair. The question of removing the house to Bensonhurst 

 on Gravesend Bay, and giving up the station on Staten Island, 

 wasluliy discussed, the sense oi the meeting being strongly in 

 favor of the change, and it is probable that it will be decided on 

 When the matter comes up at a meeting next month. A proposal 

 to enlarge the house by adding another story was also discussed 

 ^^?r°i5A^^y,^®^°T^^^^A' The following officers were elected: Com, 

 Wm. Whiilock; Vice-Com., J. R. Lake; Sec'y-Treas., 0, J. Stevens 

 Trustee (for 8 years), G, H. paiey. The incoming regatta com\ 



