Sept. 26, 1908.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
5°5 
Family Cruising for the Impecunious. 
After many attempts in previous years with 
varying results, I have this summer succeeded 
in arranging and carrying out a plan by which 
half a dozen people were able to cruise to¬ 
gether in reasonable comfort for about what it 
would have cost to live at a summer hotel. As 
there may be others who would enjoy such a 
cruise, I propose to go somewhat into details. 
To put it briefly, we chartered a lobster smack 
60ft. long, schooner-rigged, and spent the month 
of August on her, cruising in a leisurely way 
between Winter Harbor, Maine, and Gloucester. 
The rock upon which 1 have run in other at¬ 
tempts has been the difficulty of finding a vessel. 
Once, by mere chance, I got hold of a good 
schooner, but usually the vessels that I could 
hear of in the neighborhood where I was were 
too small or too busy or otherwise impossible. 
This year I got on the track of the Portland 
smacks. The lobster trade there used to be 
carried on largely by sailing smacks which 
either gathered the lobsters from the Maine 
coast or, more often, went on regular trips to 
Nova Scotia. Recently the course of trade has 
changed; smaller motor boats are more profit¬ 
able for the local business, and the Nova Scotia 
lobsters are packed in ice and shipped by the 
regular steamers. This change in the methods 
of business has left the older and larger smacks 
on the hands of the dealers. There is still 
enough of the Nova Scotia trade to make it 
worth while to fit out the vessels for a few trips 
in spring, but after the first of July they are in 
the market, to be chartered for fishing or for 
other uses to which they are suited. These 
uses, however, are not many; the large well 
which occupies the middle of the vessel makes 
her useless for the ordinary coasting trade and 
in the fishing such vessels must compete with 
the regular Boston and Gloucester fleets. 
If my information is correct, smacks of this 
kind are lying idle every summer in Portland 
and probably in Boston and Rockland also. 
They are schooners of 40 to 60ft., easily handled 
by two men, strongly built for winter work in 
open waters and fairly well Kept up. In sailing 
qualities and accommodations they are inferior 
to the better Gloucester fishing vessels, but 
they have the advantage of freedom from the 
smell of fish. On the other hand, they are 
greatly superior to the ordinary small coasters, 
which has but one cabin and is a dull sailer to 
windward. The lobster smack, being intended 
also for fishing, has both a forecastle and an 
after cabin, often very neatly finished, with 
accommodations altogether for a dozen men. 
The vessel that we chartered had four wide 
berths in the cabin and six, not quite so good, 
in the forecastle. We turned the after cabin 
into a dining and sitting room by day and a 
ladies’ cabin by night. It had a skylight, a small 
stove which was a great comfort on wet and 
cold days, considerable stowage room, lockers 
in front of the berths and a floor space about 
7ft. by 10ft., with full headroom. The holds are 
shallow because of the well-deck, but by shifting 
the ballast a little and building a booby-hatch, 
we made a fairly comfortable toilet room in 
the after hold, and there was space in the fore 
hold for trunks and stores and, if we had needed 
them, for a cot or two. 
The vessel, when I took her in Portland, was 
very dirty from lying near a coal dock, but by 
the terms of the charter I was allowed a. week 
or more before the first of August for cleaning 
and overhauling. We sailed her up to Friend¬ 
ship, where I had been staying, and gave her a 
most thorough scrubbing, inside and out; we 
caught three mice that had come aboard and 
then fumigated her with sulphur candles. It is 
well enough known that many vessels are, to be 
plain, infested with bedbugs and. though I had 
spent two nights in her cabin on the trip from 
Portland without being molested, I still took all 
possible precautions to assure myself that she 
was free from this pest. Finally we scraped 
her masts, painted the cabin, deck and rails, 
overhauled the rigging and iron work and 
painted a fresh red stripe around her, “for luck.” 
The skipper had been a deep-water sailor and 
during the leisure hours of the cruise he spent 
his time in blackening the iron work, making 
mats for the spreads, rigging a boat-boom and 
in many smaller matters bringing her up to the 
standard of a smart vessel. All this did not, 
to be sure, give us the finish or the accommo¬ 
dations of a yacht, but the difference was really 
superficial; in the essentials of comfortable liv¬ 
ing on a boat, good beds, good food, plenty of 
water, a tight deck, a stove for cold weather, 
room to move about—in all these essentials we 
were well provided for. The wide and unen¬ 
cumbered deck, with a high rail, was a real 
luxury, such as only a large yacht would afford. 
For boats, we had the dory belonging to the 
vessel and a lighter sailing dory that I had 
bought before we started. 
It is possible that a stranger might find some 
difficulty in chartering such a vessel; refer¬ 
ences and proper guarantees would doubtless be 
expected, and the owner might require that 
the skipper should be selected by himself. The 
better way, if one can follow it, is to begin by 
finding one’s own crew. We were extremely 
fortunate in the two men whom we secured, 
almost by chance, in the village from which we 
sailed. They were middle-aged men of intelli¬ 
gence and character. The skipper was fearless 
and yet careful, not the kind of man who begins 
to be nervous when he goes out of the harbor 
and recovers himself only when the anchor is 
down, but fond of sailing, extremely ready to 
change his plans, well satisfied if we were en¬ 
joying ourselves. 
The second man, who did us the kindness to 
ship as cook, had once owned the vessel and 
sailed her as master to Nova Scotia for lobsters 
and to the Georges for swordfish. It may seem 
an odd combination to say that he made most 
admirable blueberry loaf and that he quoted 
Charles Lamb, but in fact the combination of 
practical efficiency with literary taste is native 
to New England. If one can be so happy as to 
secure the services of such men—and money 
alone will not do it—he will find, if he is him¬ 
self intelligent, that the pleasure and profit of 
a cruise are greatly increased by the opportun¬ 
ity to know something of lives and conditions 
different from his own. And, to return to the 
purely practical side, the chance of getting a 
good vessel on reasonable terms is much better 
if one approaches the owner through men who 
are already known to him. 
Statements of cost are of little value unless 
they are precise and I make no apology for 
giving details with some frankness. The total 
cost was $360; the main items were $55 for the 
vessel, $128 for wages ($2 a day for each man), 
$100 for provisions and about $50 for cleaning 
and fitting out (new mattresses and bedding, 
dishes, towels). In the total are included some 
miscellaneous items, laundry, three or four 
drives, two nights at a hotel, half a dozen meals 
ashore, as well as the cost of sending the vessel 
back from Gloucester. There were six in the 
family party and we had one guest or another 
with us all the time. Divided up, the expense is 
not appreciably greater than the cost of 
living at a summer hotel, while the comfort and 
pleasure—if one finds pleasure at all in cruising 
—are incomparably greater. 
I am not giving our plan as a model, but as 
an illustration; details might be varied and the 
expenses reduced—or increased. A party of 
young men chartering a smaller smack—there 
are some very good ones of about 40ft.—could 
get along with one man as skipper or, if they 
had some knowledge of sailing, as “cook and 
hand.” 
This is not a log of our cruise nor would it be 
worth while to enumerate our twenty or more 
harbors, but some little statement of what we 
did is needed to supplement the explanation 
of how we did it. We sailed from Friendship, 
Maine, on Aug. 1, and landed at Gloucester 
Sept. _ 1. We followed no very definite 
plan; indeed, it was a part of my treaty with 
the skipper that, if we started in the morning 
to run to leeward and suddenly announced at 
noon that we preferred to go to some harbor 
up to windward, he was to beat back without a 
murmur. We were not so capricious as that, 
ARTHUR BINNEY. 
(Formerly Stewart & Binnky.) 
Naval Architect and Yacht Broker, 
Ma»on Building, Kilby Street, BOSTON. MASS. 
Cable Address, “Designer,” Boston. 
C. Sherman Hoyt. Montgomery H. Clark, 
HOYT <& CLARK. 
MnifTBRn^Acc 117111078 AND engi nkers. 
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Telephone* 1375 and 1375 Broad. 
WILLIAM GARDNER, 
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No. 1 Broadway, (Telephone 2160 Rector’ * Now York 
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