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/228

 different districts, which is issued each night by the Meteorological Office.

A friend of mine, a most skilled yachtsman in most respects, once sailed from the Isle of Wight to Havre in his five-tonner. He was caught in a gale before he made his port, lost his dinghy, and very nearly lost his vessel and his life. I heard the Cowes boatmen speaking of his foolhardiness in crossing the Channel, where it is one hundred miles broad, with so small a craft. Now they were wrong in making this criticism; for it was not in attempting the passage that his foolhardiness lay, but in his neglect to look at his barometer before he weighed his anchor. He was too impatient to await a slant. I have myself undertaken numerous long coasting voyages with five-tonners, three-tonners, and open boats, having sailed many thousands of miles on the waters that wash our own shores, on the Baltic, the Carribean and other seas, and I do not consider that I was guilty of any foolhardiness in doing so; but had it not been that I always carefully picked my weather and watched my glass, I should no doubt have come to grief time after time. It is the cautious and not the reckless sailor who takes his little vessel to distant shores; for the reckless one, if he attempts the foreign cruise, is likely to have such unpleasant experiences before he has got far from home that he will abandon his enterprise, and may consider himself lucky if he succeeds in bringing his vessel back to his starting-point. Have you not