462 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[March 23, 1907. 
Boats, like men, have ailments ranging from 
slight indispositions to incurable diseases; the 
former caused just as with mankind nine times 
out of ten by neglect, the latter usually existing 
from the time the boat is built and is the result 
of ignorance on the part of her designer or 
builders. Of the latter the least said the better. 
Her owner gets “stuck” when he has such a 
yacht built; the man he sells her to gets “stuck,” 
and he who tries to rebuild and eradicate the 
cause of her trouble gets stuck the worst of the 
lot. Boat builders soon recognize such yachts 
just as doctors soon learn the incurables. 
There are certain mechanical laws which must 
be recognized in any and every branch of trade, 
but some men with “ideas” seem to think when 
they take up the subject that they can disre¬ 
gard these laws entirely. Hence the conception 
of an incurable in the yacht list. 
If there were a log floating in the water and 
you wanted to tow it along the shore, how 
would you proceed? Would you take a stick 
and push it from behind? No, for if you did, it 
would sheer first in and then out in a most 
exasperating way—you would tie a rope near 
the front end and pull it along after you. Yet 
many a yacht is built so full and clumsy at the 
forward end that all the resistance is centered 
there, while the pressure of her sails is well 
ait of this point pushing—just as you tried to 
push the log—with the same result. The yacht 
takes a sudden sheer up into the wind in spite 
of all the endeavors of the man steering to keep 
her going straight. 
A bluff-bowed schooner has to stow after sail to steer in 
very hard breezes. 
Tn very full bowed craft, such as the ordinary 
three-masted schooner, this is more noticeable 
than in yachts. Yon will see these vessels go- 
mg along in heavy weather with all her after 
sails stowed or reefed down very small to try 
and get the pushing pressure nearer to the front 
end. nearer the resistance which is in them 
nearly all felt at the bows. 
A 
Weather vane, having greater area exposed by feather 
points its head up into the wind. 
Another example, the weather vane, illustrates 
what is perhaps the most common complaint 
among yachts. Maybe you have noticed that 
the weather vane always (unless broken or 
rusted fast) points toward the wind. What 
makes it point toward the wind is the fact that 
the feather of the arrow exposes more surface 
and receives more pressure from the wind than 
does the head of the arrow. 
1 hat sounds childish in its simplicity, yet 
some men will expose far more sail on one end 
of a yacht than on another and then puzzle their 
brains over why the yacht does what the weather 
vane does—keeps continually coming up into 
the wind in spite of the man steering her. 
It would not be fair to leave the foregoing- 
statement without some explanation. It is not 
always to be inferred that because a yacht acts 
like a weather vane, that her designer did not 
know the functions of this barn ornament, but 
rather that through lack of professional ex¬ 
perience he did not know the exact point where, 
like the weather vane, his yacht was pivoted or 
balanced in resisting a side pressure such as 
her sails exert. 
Arrow shows where vacuum is formed by a full-bodied 
hull_ going faster through the water than it can fill in 
behind hull, forming a drag. 
Then also there are other points that bear 
on this problem, due to the peculiarities of hull 
or sails. A deep cutter, for instance, that is 
perfectly balanced so far as calculations are 
concerned, and that sails perfectly balanced in 
moderate weather, will, when driven hard in a 
very* strong breeze, roll up such a quartering sea 
as to cause an undue resistance to the after part 
of the hull. So much water has to close in 
around her hull and so much rise to the surface 
from under the deep hull, that it cannot close 
up quickly enough, and a vacuum is formed 
under the lee quarter of the yacht. This acts 
exactly like a drag over the stern, stopping 
the yacht, with the result that the center of re¬ 
sistance, which up to this time remained near 
its calculated position near the middle of the 
yacht (if anything, a little forward), due to the 
resistance of the bow wave, now suddenly shifts 
aft several feet.' The boat then does what some 
consider a mystery, she “runs off her helm,” 
technically speaking. In plain language the re¬ 
sistance now being way aft and pressure on the 
sails forward, she turn's and runs off before the 
wind, just as a weather vane would do if you 
shifted the point upon which it pivots so far 
aft as to bring more surface forward of it than 
aft. 
Another reason demonstrated in several large 
yachts built in the past fifteen years is this: 
J he designers upon receiving an order for a 
craft larger than they had had any previous ex- 
A—Shows center of lateral resistance when yacht is on 
even keel. 
-hows how center •, shifted forward by yacht being' 
depressed at stern when sailing. 
perience with were afraid to carry the same ideas 
that had made them famous in their smaller 
boats into so large a craft. They imagined they 
had to. fine the forward end of their craft to 
withstand successfully the terrific pounding of 
so large a craft at-sea. The result was, theo¬ 
retically, the boats balanced perfectly in the 
plans; but everything being so fine forward, all 
the power was concentrated in an immense 
mainsail with small headsails to such an extent 
that the pressure downward became so great 
as to squat the yacht's stern and teter the bow 
up. I his destroyed the balance at once, causing 
the center of lateral resistance to shift aft, and, 
augmented by the lifting tendency of the jibs, 
this big craft caused a panic aboard her by pay¬ 
ing off when she should naturally luff. Nat¬ 
urally she scared her sailing master dreadfully, 
and he quit her, declaring her unmanageable. 
She was, until one man, who had gray matter 
enough to study out the cause and effect, took 
charge of her. He slacked off main sheet when 
he wanted to luff, and to the amazement of all 
aboard she was manageable in his hands. Why? 
Because by slacking the mainsail the terrific down 
thrust of that immense sail was stopped and a 
pushing impulse exerted instead. 
So you see even sailing a boat calls for not 
only a plain matter-of-fact knowledge of sailing, 
but an ability to cope with apparent mysteries 
which, in fact, are only nature’s unalterable 
laws. Her judgment, unlike some human de¬ 
cisions, never varies, and you can rely on 
figuring back from effect to cause with cer¬ 
tainty of an explanation. 
Several small craft with this incurable feature 
have shown how little the people in charge real¬ 
ized the true cause of it by the comical altera¬ 
tions made to cure it. A board, for instance, 
fitted to the shape of the stem to give her more 
gripe and prevent the bows paying off, or the 
addition of considerably more mainsail, which 
only added to the existing evil and demonstrated 
the truth of that old saw—“A little learning is 
a dengerous thing.” 
Curable ailments caused by neglect are more 
numerous than incurables, thanks to the vast 
army of technical yacht designers now in the 
field who have made a study of yachts and who 
keep the amateur from producing incurables. 
But, oh, the curable defects we see in yachts! 
How many boats in your own harbor are there 
whose masts are plumb? 
The practice of taking up slack on the lee 
turnbuckle is resorted to much too often. 
And nine times out of ten the amateur will al¬ 
ways take up what slack he can get on one side 
and then find far less to .take up on the other, 
with the result that the masthead is anywhere 
from six inches to a foot over to one side. An¬ 
other even more frequent and greater evil in 
■destroying the balance and sailing qualities is 
