[to be continued.]
[RIGS AND MAKESHIFTS OF THE SMALL BOAT.]
BY DUDLEY D. F. PARKER.
While a boy may not have occasion or the good fortune to handle or own a large boat, he is almost certain, if he lives near water, to have something to do with a bateau, skiff, or small boat of some character. Or perchance he may own a row-boat of the St. Lawrence skiff variety, and may wish to put a sail on it. Now there is nothing more clumsy and dangerous than a badly rigged small boat. By badly rigged is not meant only the boat whose spars are imperfect, or other things connected with her rig radically wrong, but also the boat that carries a rig that may be perfectly suitable for another class, but is entirely out of place in one of this size. A thing to be avoided in all small boats is unnecessary rigging; too many halyards and sheet ropes are in the way, and, where the rigging is on a very small scale, are very apt to get tangled or out of order when most wanted. So it may readily be seen that, for instance, the jib-and-mainsail rig of a twenty-five-foot boat, with its accompanying number of sheets, stays, and halyards would be totally out of place in a fourteen-foot bateau. The whole attention of the natives or "shell-backs" in or near our fishing villages has been devoted to the originating of makeshifts for the avoidance of everything that makes the construction and handling of a boat more difficult. Their idea seems to have been that anything that could be accomplished without the aid of mechanical means, simply by the use of a little extra muscle, had better be done that way.
PLATE 1.
PLATE 2.