On Yachts and Yacht Handling

by Thomas Fleming Day

Now for the cruiser, and its name is legion. But out of the lot there are more bad than good ones to be picked. A cruiser, in the first place, is a house—a home for days, and perhaps weeks and months. Therefore, she must furnish sleeping and eating accommodations. This means room to stretch and stand, or at least sit upright. A cruiser in which a man cannot live in comfort is no cruiser.

Then first, in selecting a cruiser, the accommodation must be looked to; that is why when a man who knows anything starts to buy one he invariably puts the question, "What is her head room?" The answer generally tells the whole story. The next important query is, "What is her draught?" the third, "What is her rig?"

Unless you can sit up and lie down comfortably the boat is no cruiser; you can at once make up your mind to that. While no man expects to spend the greater part of his time below, the time he does spend below is that in which he seeks rest, and must get it; this is impossible in cramped quarters.

The importance of the draught depends largely upon where you want to sail and harbor. Your draft should never exceed the low-water depth of the channel you have to pass through in order to reach your anchorage. In our northern waters three feet is the minimum draught required; in southern waters less is almost necessary. In some localities three feet is the maximum draught. Short draught has the disadvantage of forcing the bulk of the boat above the water line, and the making of high houses, in order to get head room. This produces a boat that offers considerable resistance to the wind, and consequently makes excessive leeway. They are also unsteady at anchor, and hard on the ground tackle.

Deep draught cuts you out from many harbors and sheltering places, and in getting from port to port along shore frequently obliges you to take the longest way round, but it has the advantage of giving a firm hold on the water and of keeping the weights and windages down low. But, as in everything, there is a happy medium—a betwixt and between.

It may be stated that for all reasonable purposes on a cruising boat of 40 feet and under to be used on our coast, a draught of five feet is sufficient. All over that will prove a cause of worry and a hindrance to pleasant voyaging. With this draught you can pass into nearly all our bar harbors and navigate with safety among the shoals in our sounds and channels. I prefer to limit my draught to three feet, but then it is my peculiar pleasure to sail where other men seldom venture.

Cutter Rig

It is difficult to get a weatherly keel boat on four or even five feet draught. A boat to be good to windward must have a deep plane of resistance. This makes it almost impossible to dispense with the centerboard in small boats. But as soon as you admit this contrivance into your plans you partly spoil your accommodations. Many designers have tried to get round this by combining the two forms. Putting in a half board that houses in the keel and does not come above the floor. Such of these as I have seen have proved to be poor makeshifts, and the result is the spoiling of what would have been a good keel boat.

While fully aware of its disadvantages, I am a firm believer in the centerboard for small cruising boats. That it weakens a vessel there is no doubt, but with the modern method of building the trunk the injury to the fabric is very slight. The saying that "A centerboard boat always leaks" is more fact than fiction, but in several modern yachts that I have cruised in this is not so, the trunk having been constructed in such a way as to resist the strains which are the cause of leakage.