THE MINIATURE YACHT AND HOW TO RIG HER.
Boat making and sailing are most fascinating pursuits, and we do not know but the old saying, “When a man has taken to boat-sailing, he is a sailor to the end of his days,” is to a certain degree applicable to the boy who intelligently fits out his tiny craft, and sends her on little voyages across the neighboring pond.
If the sailing is to be done on water of any depth, there is one caution we should like to give at the very outset: Learn to swim before you sail her. No mere pleasure is worth risking one’s life for, and accidents will happen even to the most careful boys.
After this, you may play on or near the water with as much safety as on the land.
Aside from the pleasure, one learns an extremely useful lesson in making a miniature model yacht, and in sailing her. A certain familiarity with the rigging, and the looks of the thing, will thus be obtained, and if your fingers have patiently set up shrouds and stays, and rove the mimic halyards, they will be less at sea with the ropes and stays of a real vessel.
Many boys living near the sea, and accustomed every day to see vessels lying at anchor, or sailing in and out of the harbor, have very hazy ideas concerning the rigging of any kind of craft. Well I remember in my early days of being obliged to run down to the wharf to see where to attach my topmast. Whether it belonged forward or aft of my mast I had not the slightest remembrance, and yet scarcely a day went by without my seeing a vessel in some form or other.
Boys are not the only persons, however, who look at things and do not see them. The power of minute and careful observation is a rare quality, and the majority of people go through life without forming the habit, or indeed dreaming they have not made the best use of their sight.
For the benefit of the boys who belong to this class, and those less fortunate ones living inland where yachts are unknown, I write this chapter.
In several of our large cities, ponds are set apart for the especial purpose of sailing toy vessels. They are the exclusive property of the boys, and any fine afternoon in season, and frequently out of season, if the ice does not interfere, crowds of boys may be seen sitting on the edges of these “lakes,” intently watching the graceful fleet as it skims lightly over the water. The sixty-acre lake in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, and Conservatory Lake, Central Park, New York, are both set apart for the owners of these miniature yachts; and it is wonderful how many older people, as well as the boys themselves, take interest in this amusement.
