
BORE S IeANDSeS REAM: 





| WACHTING | 





Sailing. 
4 (Continued from page 824.) 
Sailing a sloop is very much the same, so 
ar as the principles go, but having two sails 
‘nstead of one, the feel of the boat on her 
helm is different. Catboats usually pull fairly 
lard on the tiller—they should do so, to retain 
Nieir ability to luff naturally; but in a sloop the 
lielm should not pull so hard. The jib relieves 
it, and when you do want to luff, slack off the 
lib sheet and the mainsail will cause the boat to 
ome head to the wind. 
Nl It is easier to steer a straight course with a 
lloop. They will lie steady to an anchor with 
‘nainsail set and jib lowered, and larger sails 
lan be used than it would be possible to handle 
‘yn a cat all in one large sail. 





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North River Sloop. 
The old North River sloop rig is almost 
‘ybsolete in large boats, having given way to 
‘he modified cutter rig, just as the old jib and 
aainsail sand-bag rig has been replaced by the 
4nodern raceabout. 
The smaller class of jib and mainsail boat 
vith no top hamper to handle is the next step 
ip from the catboat. There will be no diffi- 
wlty in starting from a dock or mooring with 
rer. To pay the boat’s head off, pull the jib 
Isheet to one side and the jib will turn her 
‘round quickly enough. The jib sheets should 
4yull at about right angles to the jibstay, or so 
ihe foot of the sail receives a little more strain 
han the after edge. The wind should have a 




\'ree flow, after it pushes on the sail, off the 
each of the sail, and it should be sheeted out 
‘rom the middle of the boat. so as the boat 
uffs the jib will shake just before the luff of 
he mainsail shivers. Do not trim the jib in 
J;0 it throws wind back against the mainsail. 
The proper trimming of a jib means everything 
to a sloop. Although one man can sail a sloup 
just as he might a schooner, at times, yet the 
rig naturally calls for two men; one man to 
steer, the other to trim jib sheets and set up 
backstays. 
Nothing is so aggravating to a man sailing a 
sloop in a race as to have two men trimming 
jib sheets, One will trim it down too flat every 
time and the other not flat enough. A modern 
racing sloop is so sensitive that she feels such 
differences more than one would suppose. For 
me, nothing would do but a short boom on 
the foot of the jib and a horse and traveler on 
deck so the jib trims with one sheet and slides 
across from side to side, the hauling end com- 
ing through the bullseye in the center of the 
deck and aft. When the jib is once trimmed 
right, then the man steering can tack as often 
as he likes and no one need scramble for the 
sheet each time and put the sails out of trim 
by resheeting them. 
A properly balanced modern sloop will steer 
with two fingers on the tiller. The arft. 
Herreshoff finkeel boats Houri, Vaquero, Celia 
and Adelaide, for instance, were so finely 
balanced that you could sail them better with 
thumb and forefinger holding the tiller, than 
if you grasped it in your hand. Blow high or 
low, these little boats were always as delicate 
on the helms. In direct contrast to these suc- 
cessful boats, the scow-like sloop Genesee 
steered so hard I had to rig up a small three- 
part tackle. This was hooked into a ring-bolt 
in the weather staving, the hauling end, in a 

The “ Shark “ 
hard breeze, I’d belay on a cleat, and even then 
have to pull quite hard on the bight of this 
line to keep her from luffing. There were two 
radically different models, both winners of their 
kind. One delicately hung the other hard- 
mouthed. 
The finkeels maintained the same shape as 
they heeled and created no uneven pressures, 
the whole sail exerted its push at the same 
place and the hull slipped throush the water as 
clean as a knife, while with the centerboard 
boat, as she heeled in a hard breeze, her bluff 
cheek-like bows shouldered up a _ billow of 
water that pushed her nose up to windward. 
This pressure had to be balanced by pulling on 
the tiller and exerting as much pressure on the 
rudder. Hanley’s theory—and I think he’s 


right: he’s had years of experience with that 
one type of boat—is that this pressure forward 
and aft acts like two inclined planes to push the 
hull to windward, to which her canoe-shaped 
bottom offers no resistance. This is one reason 
he always puts such apparently unnecessarily 
large rudders on his boats. 
The old racing sloop Dragoon, built by 
Weber, was another instance of this same phe- 
nomenon. In a strong breeze and smooth sea 
her wake would show she was crabbing diagon- 
ally to windward of her wake. She would point 
directly for an object and fetch way to wind- 
ward of it. But these broad boats, while they 
are fast and weatherly in a hard breeze, are not 
such good all-round racing boats as the modern 
raceabout model for the average yachtsman. 
With the wind abeam the sloops are at their 

The “Genesee”. 
best; their great stability, large sails and small 
amount of hull to drag in the water, for most 
of it is lifted out and hangs as a powerful dead 
weight of ballast to windward, enables them to 
get up a tremendous speed. 
Some of the finkeel boats have attempted to 
utilize this naturally stable shape as in the 
Cartoon and some of the Huntington racing 
scows. The Mongoose II., for instance, is 
nearly the same shape fore and aft, with a small 
plate fin under her. One gets a very peculiar 
sensation sailing on such a boat. They don’t 
act as if they were going very fast, everything 
is as quiet as can be. The motion is that 
gliding along as on ice; but let the trim of the 
sail be altered a fraction, and there suddenly 
starts up a vibration that plays tunes like an 
aeolian harp. They still go, perhaps not quite 
of 

No-|. 
so fast, but fast enough to leave everything else; 
then some one trims in the sail a few inches 
suddenly the vibration ceases and all becomes 
a still, quiet glide again, akin to flying. 
In sailing a sloop to windward sit so you can 
watch the jib either on the windward side if 

