Power Boating Volume 3 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 Excerpt: ...Bristol Channel pilot boats that still navigate that turbulent estuary of Southwestern England. The widely different conditions of the Gulf of Maine, however, have refined away many of the characteristics of the English model. This trace of resemblance may be nothing more than the family likeness noticeable among all working boats; and there is such a likeness, due principally to the fact that all are built to conform to Nature's rules, and however much the outward manifestations of Nature may vary in different localities her fundamentals are ever the same. Or the similarity may be due to an actual blood-relationship, as it were; for all our New England types are merely the outgrowth of models brought hither by our forebears. But we are not so much concerned with questions of pedigree as with the final perfection of a specific type. Approaching the Maine sloop from a distance her rig, and its proportions, first attract attention. The mast, stepped well forward, is low and there is no topmast. The double headsails suggest evolution from the cutter, but this is a false conclusion. Originally the boats were true sloops with but a single headsail, set from the bowsprit end, then came a flying jib and jib-boom, this melting in turn into a pole bowsprit and the location of jib-stay was moved aft, never as far as the stemhead, but so far as practically to transform the jib into a staysail and to rob the flying jib of its descriptive adjective--so that they are now known respectively as jumbo and jib. Their combined area has dwindled until it is not greatly in ex cess of the former single headsail. The mainsail is large, with a rather square, wide head, moderate hoist and a boom swung low and parallel with the water. This trait of the boom is not due to any error o...