Oct. 1904 1 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
329 
Sawennishat C. C. 
In the early spring of 1903, nine of the charter mem- 
bers of the Sawennishat C. C. purchased the eight-acre 
ti :ct of land on the west shore of Irondequoit Bay, 
1 1 1 awn as the Edgerton property, with house, barn and 
(.: her buildings. It is without doubt the most beautiful 
spot within many miles of Rochester, being entirely 
under timber, the most of which is pine and chestnut, 
situated in a valley through which runs a stream of 
clear spring water; hills on either side rising to the 
height of 150 feet. After the purchase of the property, 
the nine stockholders with eight others incorporated the 
Sawennishat C. C. The house being too small for the 
requirements of the club it was enlarged; a new spring 
was struck which flows 18 cubic feet during the dry 
summer months. New docks were built and new grad- 
ing had to be done, all of which was not completed until 
the first of June, but on Decoration Day, 1903, the club 
house was formally occupied. The club house, while 
not of as elaborate construction as some of its neigh- 
bors, is as convenient as it was possible to make it. 
The lower floor, or cellar as it is called, is used as a 
boat room, having a dirt floor, which is of great ad- 
vantage in not allowing the boats to dry out during 
the winter months that they are not in use. In front 
are double doors opening on a long canoe dock; along 
the side of the room are lockers for the sailor men. The 
second, or main floor, has a veranda 6d feet long, run- 
ning across the entire front and extending along either 
side. On this floor is situated a large living room, 
dining room, kitchen, men's bunk room, locker room 
and shower baths and steward's quarters. The large 
bunk room runs the entire length of the western side, 
having windows on three sides, giving perfect_ ventila- 
tion on the warm summer nights. On the third floor 
are to be found the private rooms for the married mem- 
bers, and bath and toilet. 
The season of 1904 was a very prosperous one, and 
very gratifying, to the promoters. There are several 
names before the club for election and the prospects 
for the coming year are very bright. The house is kept 
open the year round and in the winter there is skating, 
tobogganing and other winter sports. The club is 
limited to twenty-five members. The officers are: S. 
G. Raymond, Commodore; C. E. Hoyt, Vice-Commo- 
dore; W. H. Sampson, Purser. 
A Cruise on Lake Ontario. 
The man who undertakes to write an interesting ac- 
count of a summer cruise on Lake Ontario starts with a 
bad handicap. Our cruising conditions are usually so 
favorable that the only chance of securing incidents to 
make a spicy yarn is to start on your voyage with a badly 
found boat and an incompetent crew. Given a leaky boat, 
worn out rigging, rotten sails, and a crew cheerfully care- 
less of harbor lights, buoys, and charts, you have a fair 
chance of leading a life of startling adventure and hair- 
breadth escapes; but given a "right little, tight little" 
vessel, a canny skipper and a good crew, life afloat is apt 
to be monotonously safe and uneventful. 
The little vessel whose adventures I am about to relate 
is an excellent boat of her type. She was designed by Mr. 
W. P. Stephens. With a waterline length of 18ft. she 
has 5ft. 9in. beam, 3ft. draft, and is 21ft. 9m, over all. On 
her keel she carries 1,000 pounds of iron, and swings aloft 
in a yawl rig about 300 sq. ft. of canvas. 
The crew of Lorna on this present trip to the Bay of 
Quinte comprised the Skipper and his good friend 
Watty, who had acquired a thorough knowledge of sea- 
manship in the course of some three years' experience on 
the half deck of a large ocean vessel. Now, to begin at 
the beginning, Watty had signed articles to appear at the 
Union Station, Toronto, at 9 P. M., Friday, July I. 
The Skipper, according to promise, met the train, and 
soon sighted a pale-faced apparition steering through the 
crowd with a fast returning nautical roll. 
"Watty, ahoy!" 
"Ay, ay, sir ! Just reporting for duty, sir." 
"Good ! Port your helm, Watty, and we'll steer for 
York street bridge and then straight down to the water 
front." 
Our course lay down the Royal Canadian Y. C. dock 
to the end of Noverres' row of boat houses. "Now," I 
said, "I'll show you the boat," and as I spoke there burst 
upon the gaze of the man who had walked the half deck 
of the 225ft. ship a vision of the little Lorna. There she 
lay in the half light, white, slim, and graceful, with bare 
spars and clear decks all trim and neat, for every stitch 
of canvas is taken ashore when not in use. He used half 
admiringly, half distrustfully, then said: "She's pretty 
small, isn't she?" "Yes," I replied, "but yachts are like 
wives — the comfort you derive from them is not always 
expressed in terms of their size. Much depends on 
quality and how well they are managed." 
Watty grinned acquiescence, and we turned into the 
boat house to gather together our dunnage and store it 
on board. 
It was nearly midnight ere we finished, for the essence 
LORNA. 
of comfort on a small boat is proper stowage, and that 
takes time and thought. Then, too, the canvas had to be 
sent on board and got in shape ready for hoisting, for 
we contemplated an early start on Saturday morning. 
For stowage, Lorna has the forepeak, which is in 
continuation of the cabin ; the space under the cockpit, 
into which various boxes are slid, and the spaces under 
the deck around the coc,kpit. As the latter is merely a 
water-tight tray drained to the sea, these spaces are open 
to the cockpit and very easy of access. In the forepeak 
the blanket "rolls an4 4«onage bags are stowed, and at the 
forward end of the cabin, against the after side of the 
mast, stands the tool chest, well equipped with essentials 
for repairs to" hull or rigging. The cabin has a fixed star- 
board bunk and a folding port bunk. The boat having a 
standing keel, this arrangement gives plenty of foot and 
leg room in the cabin during the day. The table is 
formed of a light plank suitably stiffened. One end rests, 
when in. use, on a ledge of the after cabin bulkhead, and 
the other end is supported by a line passed through two 
holes in the plank, eyes spliced in the ends of the line 
being slipped on to hooks in the cabin top. The table is 
thus easily adjusted to and from the fixed bunk, as suits 
the crew's convenience. 
Our labors ended, Watty squatted on the bunk beside 
PRESQTJ ILE POINT LIGHT. 
me, swept his eyes from end to end of the cabin (6ft.), 
and expressed the opinion that he thought he was going 
to enjoy himself. He then stripped off his outer gar- 
ments, rummaged in his dunnage bag, and dragged to 
light a gorgeous suit of striped pink pajamas. "Oh, ye 
gods and little fishes ! Has it come to this, that the crew, 
the deck hand and ordinary sea cook must swell it thus 
before the captain's eyes in roseate splendor, like a bifur- 
cated radish on a spree." The pink pajamas soon dis- 
appeared between the blankets, the Skipper followed suit, 
and all was peace. 
The sun rose next morning about 5 hours 5 minutes, 
and 10 minutes later Lorna cast off her lines and slipped 
out into the bay before a light land breeze. Out in the 
lake the land breeze soon left us, but we had small op- 
portunity of bewailing our luck, for a light S.W. breeze 
soon sprang up, and all hands settled down for what 
promised to be a lazy all-day sail to the N.E. 
Real gales are very infrequent in summer time on Lake 
Ontario, and, as heavy winds have usually a good deal 
of E. or W. in their direction, the danger of being caught 
on a lee shore may be disregarded with any kind of a 
weatherly craft. Coasting, therefore, is perfectly safe, 
and the only object in keeping a fair offing is to make 
the most of light breezes off the lake, which may become 
very soft close inshore. 
There is nothing exciting in a quiet sail on Lake On- 
tario on a bright August day, and yet nothing is more en- 
joyable, particularly on a first day out when the fresh 
glow of anticipation puts one in a particularly happy and 
appreciative mood. A light breeze, too, if a fair breeze, 
speeds a boat merrily on her way. The bold Scarborough 
bluffs gradually slipped by; the Gothic pinnacles of the 
Dutch churches carved by wind and water on the face of 
the escarpment; Port (?) Union, the mouth of the 
Rouge, and Frenchman's Bay, one by one dropped behind 
as the day wore on, till round a point ahead Whilby light- 
house hove in sight. But to-day we will have none of 
Whilby, and with spinnaker drawing we pass it by, with 
the crew, stripped to his pajamas, dancing hilariously on 
the cabin top, and casting a rosy radiance over his im- 
mediate surroundings. 
Port (?) Oshawa comes next, marked on Lorna's chart 
"L. F., white." Inquiries on a previous occasion disclosed 
the fact that the fixed white light consisted of a lantern 
hung on the end of the dock when a vessel was expected 
to call. Harbor there is none. Next Raby Head looms 
up, a bluff big and bold, its feet buried beneath a chaos 
of boulders hidden beneath the lapping waters of the 
lake. 
By 5 P. M. Darlington lies abeam, surely a place of 
strong religious tendencies, for the lighthouse resembles 
more a little white church with exaggerated belfry than 
the Mecca of dock-wallopers and longshoremen. 
Now our good sou'wester failed at last, and slower and 
yet slower moved the boat, till we lay idly rocking on the 
swell. Watty looked disconsolate, till I reminded him 
that exercise was what he came for, then without a grum- 
ble he dropped into the dinghy and towed us into New- 
castle harbor. This little harbor is a very good place. 
A few stonehookers seem its only vehicles of commerce, 
and the occasional calls of the steamer Argyle the only 
suggestion of the world "which amuses itself." There 
are, of course, a few summer cottages near the lake, but 
the yachtsmen does not feel that they make any undue 
inroads on his privacy. That evening, while Watty 
smoked his pipe, the Skipper wrote up his log, and with 
much satisfaction ticked off 46^2 miles to the good. 
Sunday changed the program ; the lazy run before the 
wind gave place to a day of wind-jamming in a light to 
moderate breeze. In such a wind trim sheets to a nicety, 
give her a free rein, and Lorna will jog herself along to 
windward in a most independent fashion, while the crew 
indulge in converse high, or even woo the god of slumber. 
A boat of moderate form and moderate ballast, like 
Lorna, is a most comfortable sea boat, and shoulders 
through a head sea in an easy manner quite astonishing 
to those accustomed to the thundering jar with which the 
exaggerated bow of a modern racer takes the rhythmic 
sapphire ridges. 
A gray day this was, with hints of coming rain, and the 
rolling fields and hills along shore seemed cold and 
sombre. The wind being in the E. gave us a long leg 
alongshore, and a short leg out into the lake, weltering 
blue-gray to the misty horizon. This sort of work in a 
light breeze is somewhat slow and about two miles an 
hour to the good seemed the best we could do. Early in 
the afternoon Port Hope came abeam, a small well shel- 
tered harbor, but not our goal. The pretty little town of 
Cobourg, lying five miles further to the E. suited us 
better, so still we kept at our unceasing zig-zag. The Gull 
light we passed to port, giving a wide berth to the rocky 
shoal on which it is built. All around is plenty of water, 
but out here a mile and more from shore lies this soli- 
tary rock, something unique in this end of our beautiful 
lake. The Gull past, Cobourg seems practically attained, 
and by 5 :30 P. M. we were slowly sailing by its piers into 
the inner harbor, which is very small but very snug and 
quiet in any wind. 
Monday morning awoke great expectations on board, 
for our anchor must remain on deck till Presqu'ile at least 
HER DAY S WORK DONE. 
Old Schooner in Presqu'ile Cove. 
be reached, some 24^ miles to the E. Then one is at the 
gateway of the famed bevy of Quinte. 
By 7 A. M. we were once more out in the lake hammer- 
ing away against another E. wind, too light and too 
nearly dead ahead to. promise a port before dark. The 
afternoon was upon us ere the W. end of the low ridge 
of hills which forms the northern sky line of the western 
part of the bay begun to lift into clear view. There, too, 
ahead of us certain tree tops begin to peep above the 
eastern horizon, steadily growing in clearness and size 
till Watty is prepared to swear it is an island. But, no; 
