ON ONE-MAN BOATS
"Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea!"
Coleridge.
ON ONE-MAN BOATS
This is a subject upon which volumes of rot have been written by men who ought to have known better. We can forgive a man of no experience for writing absurdly upon a subject, but when those who have had experience in handling craft alone come out in print in advocacy of an utterly unsuitable type of vessel it is about time for somebody to call them down. It is the books of such men that have made common the idea that the single-hander's vessel must be a sort of enlarged toy boat; in consequence, whenever a single-hander is pictured, it is of that type.
The principal cause of this error is that the men who have taken charge of the task of disseminating information regarding the single-hander are of a class that, as a class, look upon small things as making big things and not as big things being made of small things. Consequently they give more importance to any part than they do to the whole. Then they are the servants of an idea; this once firmly fixed they distort all out-doors to fit it. All evidence to confirm is at once admitted, while just as quickly the door is shut in the face of whatever does not go to prove their first and final conception to be correct.
Single-Hander
Almost every man I know of who has contributed to the literature of the single-hander has first sat by the fireside and designed a craft and then built and sailed it to prove that it is the only perfect thing.