Page:Small-boat sailing; an explanation of the management of small yachts, half-decked and open sailing-boats of various rigs; sailing on sea and on river; cruising, etc (IA smallboatsailing01knig).pdf/193

 CHAPTER IX

THE CRUISING YACHT

How to ballast and fit her out—Anchors and cables—Lights—The compass—Swinging the vessel—Deviation of the compass—The equipment—Cooking stoves—Yacht's dinghy—How to tow a dinghy at sea—Collapsible boats—Sailing dinghies.

To master the art of sailing a fore-and-after is to gain a source of much wholesome pleasure; but the pleasure is greatly enhanced when the amateur sailor has acquired sufficient knowledge to enable him to extend his sailing beyond his home waters, to cruise along shores new to him, finding his way by chart and compass, lead and log, shaping his course across broad seas with no land in sight, employing all the methods of the professional sailor. I know nothing more delightful than a summer cruise on a seaworthy little craft of the right description, oneself as skipper and a friend as crew, along the British coast with its many pleasant havens, or across the Channel to the Norman ports and up the broad Seine; or further still, beyond the North Sea, on Dutch canals and meres, through the forest-bordered sounds and up the winding fiords