







Ballasting a Yacht. 
A VERY important part of a racing yacht is 
the manner in which her ballast is stowed. This 







Olita with Both Men Aft and Her Bow Out of Water. 
is different with every boat according to her 
model. In very small boats even the position 
of her crew influences the boat’s actions. I 
remember one very marked instance illustrating 
this. It was 1895, the year so many of the half- 
raters were built. I was on the judges’ boat, 
where we could see the actions of all. As they 
started off with a fair wind, about eight of 
them, the Herreshoff boats, Gnome and Olita, 
were last to get over the line. The wind shifted 
soon after all were over, so the boats could 
carry balloor jibs better than spinnakers. We 
were watching Olita, and as one man went 
forward to set the sail, several of us remarked 
at once, “Oh! look at Olita go.” She was a 
peculiar design, having all her overhang for- 
ward with a chopped-off transom. With both 
men lying aft, her long bow overhang did her 
no good, as it was all in the air. But the 
moment the man went forward, her shape on 
the water was lengthened considerably and off 
she shot, running up on the fleet that had been 
dropping her, passing several before the jib 
was set. Oh! how I felt like shouting to him 




Down. 
Olita with a Man For’d and Her Bow 
to lie down on the deck forward; but instead 
of doing so, the man who had been shifting sails 
went aft and laid down. Up came her bows 
and she slowed up, as the hull was shortened 
several feet. Had those men been observant 
they would have noticed that their gain was all 
made while one of them was forward. But no, 
the man forward was probably too intent on 
his sails and the man steering imagined it was 


the shifting of sails that caused the gain; any- 
way, they dropped back to last place again. 
Another illustration of this type of boat was 
the cat Volsung, only her crew knew how to 
get all the speed out of her, and many a time 
I’ve seen her threshing to windward with two 
poor devils bundled up in oilskins lying flat 
on deck way up on her bow, taking their 
medicine like men. 
One learns such things as these sailing boats 
with inside ballast, and the knowledge can often 
be applied to boats with fixed keels to good ad- 
vantage. 
In getting Genesee ready for her trial races 
off Chicago, I spent four or five days sailing 
her with her ballast changed each time until I 
found just how she needed it to get the best 
results. First I stowed it as in Fig. 1, and 
found that while she was stiff, she jumped too 
quickly when a sea was running; she was alto- 
gether too lively. So I tried it as in Fig. 2, but 
then she was too dead and would dive too deep, 
besides not being any too stiff; so little by 
little I shifted it until the final stowing was as 
in Fig. 3. This gave her stability across her 
greatest bearing, and yet the tapered off ballast 
foward prevented her being too quick to jump 
i fore and aft motion. 
ina All her ballast was 




Volsung with Two Men in’ Oilers Laying Up For’d of 
Her Mast. 
inside, every pound of it (about 2,000 lbs.) in 
small lead pigs. 
A very wide boat, such as a cape catboat, 
does better work with her ballast stowed in 
each side locker than in the center, and on the 
old-time sandbag boats the ballast shifting was 
reduced to a science, the various results being 
either the result of careful trials or sometimes 
accidental strikes. JI remember racing on one 
of these boats one day on the Hudson River. 
We had had it nip and tuck for several miles 
with our rival, a more powerful cat even than 
ours; but on the beat down river against a 
southerly breeze and an ebb tide beginning to 
run, the seas gradually increasing as the tide 
strengthened, both cats began to pitch and 
plunge quite heavily. Our boat, a short, wide, 
flat sandbag cat, got pitching so lively, I 
ordered half a dozen sandbags put way for- 
ward and as many more way aft. 
The result was more than gratifying, for our 
craft stopped her wild erratic dives and assumed 
a slower pendulum-like swing and, best of all, 
our rival dropped astern in such a perceptible 
manner as to leave no doubt it was the dis- 
tribution of weight, taming our boat’s actions, 
that did it. 
While there is less of this weight trimming 
to do on a modern ballasted yacht of large 
size, the smaller ones are quite susceptible to 

the trimming of live weight represented by her 
crew; and a knowledge of the results attained 
by such trimming has more effect than one who 
Diagrams of How the Ballast was Stowed in Genesee. 
never has studied this 
suspect. 
subject would ever 
G_Ge Davis: 
The New Haida. 
Mr. Max C. Fleischmann, of Cincinnati, who 
has just returned from a hunt for big game in 
Africa, has placed an order with Messrs. Cox 
& Stevens, of New York, for an auxiliary 
schooner yacht to replace the auxiliary steam 
yacht Haida, which was recently sold to Mr. 
Wood, of Denver, Col. The new Haida will 
be an exceptionally fine vessel, no expense being 
spared in her construction, and her accommoda- 
tions will be unusually. commodious for a yacht of 
her size. The Haida will be 105’ over all, 24’ 
beam and will only draw 5’ without centerboard, 
as she is intended for use in Southern waters 
as well as for general cruising. Her engine will 


“Now Can you 
see better with this 
Qe 
or this, OD 
or this’ Ow 
You Can Tell He’s a Knickerbocker by His Dress. 
be of the Speedway type, 200 horse-power, six 
cylinders, and will be placed in the forward end 
of the vessel, so as not to interfere with the ac- 
commodation. Messrs. Cox & Stevens have 
awarded the contract to the Gas Engine & Power 
Co., of Morris Heights, who will complete the 
Haida early in January. She will proceed to 
Florida waters for an extended cruise as soon 
as she goes into commission. 







































