CHARACTERS OF A YACHT.
Speed, safety, and accommodation are the three first qualities of a yacht. She ought to be pleasing to the eye when afloat, of such a breadth as to carry her canvass with ease, and at the same time so sharp in her bow and well-shapen astern as to displace her weight of water smoothly and gradually, while she leaves it in the same way.
VARIOUS KINDS OF YACHTS.
Yachts are of various kinds, according to their size. If more than eighty tons burden, the schooner is most suitable; for, as the spars are more numerous, they are proportionally lighter. The schooner, as has been before observed, has two masts—the foremast and mainmast; the one bearing the sail called the boom-foresail, and the other a mainsail. She has two or more headsails, called staysail, fore-staysail, and jib. Her topsails are either square or fore and aft.
The Cutter has one mast and four sails—viz. mainsail, maintopsail, foresail, and jib. Some smaller craft have larger jibs, and no foresail.
The Dandy-rigged Yacht differs from a cutter, in having no boom for her mainsail, which can consequently be brailed up by a rope passing round it. She has a mizen-mast standing in the stern, which sets a sail called a mizen, and which is stretched on a horizontal spar, projecting over the stern. This style of rig is more safe for a yacht, as the boom in ordinary cutters is liable to sweep persons overboard; and the sail can be taken in quicker by brailing it up than by lowering it down.
The Hatteener has only two sails, a fore and a main sail, of a triangular shape. Each has a spar standing from the deck to the peak of the sail, and a boom at the bottom, like a cutter. This rig, from setting more canvass abaft, is well adapted for narrow waters.
