March 9, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
309 
Ticks from the Ship’s Clock. 
The Board of U. S. Army engineers that has 
been engaged in surveying the route of a pro¬ 
posed canal across the State of Florida will hold 
its final meeting on Nov. 8 in Jacksonville, Fla., 
after which its recommendations wfill be for¬ 
warded to the War Department. This canal is 
to have an average depth of about tw'elve feet. 
The steam yacht Liberty, owned by the late 
Joseph Pulitzer, and sent to Southampton, Eng¬ 
land, shortly after his death, has been sold. 
The purchaser of the vessel is B. Nicholson, 
of Gosport, England, and the sale was made 
through the agency of Messrs. Tams, Lemoine 
& Crane, of New York. Tw'enty-six thousand 
one hundred and eighteen dollars of the $33 864 
thus far paid on foreign-built vessels under the 
Payne-Aldrich law was paid by the late Mr. 
Pulitzer on the Liberty. 
N. G. Flerreshofif has sold his steam yacht 
Roamer, after several seasons’ use, and is to 
have a new gasolene-driven yacht this season. 
Captain Herreshoff is in Bermuda and about two 
w'eeks ago he sent orders to the Herreshoffs 
works at Bristol for a motor boat of the cruis¬ 
ing type, 64 feet in length, w'hich will be used 
during the summer along the coast and in the 
winter will carry the designer and his family to 
Bermuda. 
Nat Plerreshoff’s new boat he evolved during 
his stay in Bermuda, and it may have been that 
his theories as to power in cruisers were changed 
when he gave heed to the experiences from the 
New York-Bermuda power boat races, which 
were participated in by just such a type of boat 
as Captain Nat is now about to have built. PLs 
new yacht will be 64 feet over-all, 13 feet of 
beam, a draft of 4^2 feet and her oak timbers 
will be inches square and spaced 12 inches 
on centers, facts that go to show that rough 
seas are being prepared for. She will have a 
high freeboard with good accommodations in the 
wa)' of cabins and a raised forward deck to give 
her power in pounding into a head sea. 
George Nash, of the Columbia Y. C., is having 
a cruising motor yacht built by the Hudson Yacht 
and .Boat Company at Nyack designed by Morris 
M. Whitaker. This yacht is 55 feet long and 
13 feet beam. The interior arrangements have 
been worked out for the owner’s special require¬ 
ments. Ihis yacht will be driven by two 30 
horsepower Sterling motors. The outside fit¬ 
tings will be of rnahogany and the interior will 
be finished in white enamel. 
New York Y. C. Schedule. 
With the intention of not conflicting with the 
racing dates of other clubs that sail their regattas 
on Long Island Sound, the New York Y. C., 
through its regatta committee, H. deB. Parsons, 
C. Sherman Hoyt and J. M. Macdonough, has 
arranged its schedule in a way that all the larger 
yachts, such as the schooners Elena, Westward 
and Enchantress and the sloops Aurora and Ista- 
lena, may be able to compete for the prizes of¬ 
fered. 
Ihe first race will be the annual regatta, to 
be sailed off Glen Cove on Thursday. June 13. 
The next will be the race for the Glen Cove 
cups, to be sailed off the same place on Satur- 
clay, July 6. Then comes the annual cruise, be¬ 
ginning with the rendezvous of the yachts, prob¬ 
ably at Glen Cove on Wednesday or Thursday, 
Aug. 7 or 8. The races for the Astor and King’s 
CUDS will be sailed off Newport as usual during the 
following week. The club’s season closes with the 
races for the Sound cups off Huntington or Glen 
Cove on Sept. 5, and the race for the autumn 
cups off one of those two places on the follow¬ 
ing day. It is quite likely that there will be 
races for the Brenton’s Reef challenge cup, now 
held by former Commodore Robert E. Tod's 
three-masted schooner Karina, and for the Cape 
May cup won last year liy the schooner Atlantic 
and now in the possession of the New York 
Y. C. 
Y. R. A. of Gravesend Bay. 
The annual meeting of the Yacht Racing As¬ 
sociation of Gravesend Bay was held on Feb. 28 
in the Crescent Athletic club house, Brooklyn. 
The clubs represented were: Atlantic, Beiison- 
hurst and National, Marine and Field, New 
York Canoe and Crescent A. C. Dr. J. E. De 
Mund presided and L. S. Tiemann acted as sec¬ 
retary. The first business of importance was the 
election of officers. Charles M. Camp, of the 
Marine and Field Club, was unatiimously elected 
president to succeed Dr. De Mund. H. R. Scrib¬ 
ner, of the Bensonhurst Y. C., was chosen to 
succeed Mr. Tiemann as secretary-treasurer, and 
IT. J. Gielow was re-elected measurer. 
Peter Bentley, of the National Y. C., presented 
the report of the committee on new courses. He 
had gone very thoroughly into the matter and 
arranged several courses that will take the races 
outside Coney Island and do away with the 
merry-go-round racing of past years. A chart 
with the new courses marked was carefully ex¬ 
amined by the delegates, and then it was de¬ 
cided to let the matter wait until the next meet¬ 
ing, and in the meantime each delegate will have 
an opportunity to examine the courses more 
carefully. 
At the last meeting it was decided that the 
association should take over the handicap class. 
Commodore G. R. Le Sauvage and Alfred 
Mackay, of that organization, were on hand to 
make a vigorous protect against this. They ad- 
mffted that the handicapping had not met with 
general approval, but said that things would be 
bettered. The delegates decided to reconsider 
their former action and this matter will be taken 
up at the next meeting, March 12, when. a re¬ 
port from the handicap association will be pre¬ 
sented. 
Hudson River Y. R. A. Secedes. 
The Hudson River Yacht Racing Association, 
2,000 strong, has withdrawn from the American 
Power Boat Association and will hereafter run 
its regattas on a home rule basis. This decision 
was made at a meeting held Feb. 26, those pres¬ 
ent representing the Albany, Rondout, Pough¬ 
keepsie, Newburgh, Shattemuc, Tarry town, 
Colonial, Tappan Zee and Yonkers yacht clubs, 
the Highland Boat Club, New York Motor Boat 
Club and Tarrytown Boat Club. 
To quote Commodore Selden, of New York 
Motor Boat Club, the secession was due to the 
flagrant attempt of naval architects and engine 
builders to run the amateurs for professional 
gain. 
“I look for our action to be promptly followed 
by other racing associations,” continued Mr. 
Selden_. “The amateur racing sport of motor 
boats is now too large to be controlled by the 
naval architect and engine builder. These gentle¬ 
men must either follow the lead of the amateur 
boatmen or flock by themselves in a class purely 
professional.” 
The next regatta of the association will be 
held at the New York Motor Boat Club on Labor 
Day. The following officers were elected for 
1912: President, E. W. Marshall, Yonkers Y. 
C.; Vice-Presidents, W. H. Frank, Poughkeepsie; 
J. P. Olcutt. Tappan Zee; R. B. Greene, Tarry- 
town, and C. F. Chapman, New York; Secre¬ 
tary, Joseph H. Acker, Tarrytown; Treasurer, 
James Bedell, Shattemuc; Measurer, Charles O. 
Gunther, Nyack. 
Renovating the Hull. 
If a boat has been properly cared for when 
laid up, the work of repainting and renovation 
will be much simplified by reason of the lessened 
amount of labor in preparing and cleaning down 
the work. But, in case she has not been prop¬ 
erly cleaned out in the autumn, we must be pre¬ 
pared for some rather unpleasant work before 
starting- on the more showy part of the job. The 
first thing to do when commencing on the over¬ 
haul of a motor l;oat is to remove all loose gear 
to a convenient place, stripping the hull as bare 
as possible of all portables. The engine should 
then be removed, if it is to be, and all bad 
grease and dirt cleaned out from the bilges and 
around the engine room. The loose gear should 
be separated into lots, according to whether it is 
to be painted or varnished, simply stored till 
again required, or to go into the hands of some¬ 
one else for repair or cleaning. 
The next job is to clean out the bilges thor¬ 
oughly with soda water so as to remove every 
trace of grease and oil, for paint will not take 
and dry properly on a greasy surface. A plen¬ 
tiful supply of hot water is a positive lioon 
when engaged on this work and a little trouble 
in rigging up some sort of a boiler or kettle will 
be well repaid. An old cauldron capable of hold¬ 
ing five or ten gallons can be rigged up on a few 
bricks and a fire of wood made beneath it. First 
of all the bilges should be wiped out as clean as 
possible with some cotton waste or old rags, and 
the limbers all cleared to allow the water to 
drain to the plug hole (one must be made if no 
proper plug be fitted already). A start should 
then be made with hot soda water right forward 
in the chain locker, but care must be exercised 
that no splashes are allowed to remain on var¬ 
nished work, or the varnish will be eaten off. 
About a pound of soda to a bucket of water is 
strong enough, and a bucketful can be made to 
go a good long way with care and plenty of 
scrubbing. A couple of stiff brushes will be re¬ 
quired—those with “ears” are best to get up into 
the corners with. 
After a good scouring with soda, the work 
should be gone over a second time with soap and 
hot water. All varnished and painted work may 
be cleaned with this, and the bilges may be fin¬ 
ished with it. The work should be divided up 
into sections and started from the top, so that 
the soapy water cannot drain down into work 
already cleaned off. 
The next process is known as. “rubbing down” 
and consists of smoothing off all surfaces that 
are to be repainted or varnished, by means of 
pumice stone, sandpaper or similar abrasives. 
Good, fine pumice stone is about the best all¬ 
round thing to use, but wants careful handling 
or the -vvork will be_ scratched. A supply should 
be obtained in varying sizes, say from pieces of 
about two inches in diameter to those of twice 
that size, according to the class of work. These 
must be sawed up with an old saw and the flat 
faces rubbed down perfectly smooth on a piece 
of flat stone with plenty of water. By the way, 
the slab should be worked on over the whole 
surface, or it will go hollow and want refacing. 
Flat surfaces, or those slightly convex, like the 
seats, topsides and so forth, can be rubbed down 
with the pumice, but irregular parts must be 
done with fine sandpaper or steel wool. The 
sandpaper can be used wet and works very well 
so, leaving a smoother surface than it does when 
used dry. Only sufficient rubbing should be done 
to get a smooth surface, and no attempt should 
be made to remove the old varnish in this man¬ 
ner; hand scraping is about the only really satis¬ 
factory way to get that off. though there are 
numerous compositions sold for the purpose. 
After rubbing down, the whole job would be 
thoroughly washed with clean water, so as to 
remove any deposits of dirt or “rubbings” from 
the many corners, and should be covered up in 
such a way as to keep dust and dirt from settling 
in or on the work, and yet to allow of ample 
ventilation and proper drying. Any little pools 
of water that accumulate in low places, or where 
the limbers do not drain properly, must be wiped 
out dry, and all lockers should be left open so 
that the air can circulate. The loose gear must 
be cleaned and rubbed down in the same way 
