St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1893-10-16
NOT ALL JOYOUSNESs.

aCntIng has Lots OF DiSCOm-
forts for Those Who Seek
Them.
Boston Transcript.
One commonly thinks of yachting as
the most delightful of summer pas
times, and the very word calls up Wis
ions of "a wet sheet and a flowing sea,
and wind that follows fast" smells of
salt things and whistlings through the
rigging. blue sky, whitecaps, driving
clouds and all that sort of thing, to say
nothing of the possibilities of delightful
companiOnship and the delicious I'M
conventionality of meeting ones fellow
men and women with all the formality
and restraints Of On-shore life thrown
off; no making talk or anything of that
kind, but Rocking about carelessly and
easily in flannel suits and having ''a
real good time" Or, again, racing,
with its eXcltements, and cruising, with
all its possibilities of adventurous, for
example, cruising in Bar Harbor, where,
it is well known, Americas fairest
daughters gather yearly, decked in
their best, for the sole purpose of max
ing Bar Harbor Utopia and haven of
rest for those who have plenty of money
and go down to the sea in expensive
yachts.
Such is the popular and accepted view
OF yachting, but there is another and
gloomy side to the picture, which the
writer, who is sometimes inclined to
groWl, can set forth clearly in three
distinct statements, with an open chal-
lHnQA IN contradiction Eirct hof IN
''go and take sall'' in a small boat
belonging to some one else, and to sail
almlesSly about on the open sea, is ian
awful bore;" secondly, that to go as an
amateur crew. on a sailing yacht I'M
der sixty feet long is not only a bore,
but hardship, and on yachts over sixty
feet in length it is not customary to
have an amateur crew." unless an
occasional and almost always useless
passenger can be considered such; and,
lastly, that cruising is lottery abso-
lutely dependent on the weather. Fogs,
Gains, storms and head winds are quite
as usual as free winds and sunshine.
Observe that nothing has been said
about seasickness, which makes yacht
ing impossible to so many.
There is no place on earth where the
sun can strike down out of the skye and
bleach and blister and siZzle as it can
upon yachts deck. There is no other
place that can be hotter or more stuffy
or more uncomfortable than a Yachts
cabin on hot day, when there is no
wind or when the wind is dead aft, ana
when 1t is rough and the water is driv-
ing across the yachts deck in a sheet of
white foam and the crew are ali hud-
| died behind the shrOudS, into which old
ollskinS have been stuffed to make
screen, and the man at the wheel has
life lines, running from the main sheet
to the main shroudS OH either side of
him. to keep him from being washed
overheard, and the oil bags are hung to
Wlndward, to keep the water from
breaking. and the fire is out in the GAL
ley, and the cook has been scalded by
the sour soup stock jumping out of the
boiler, and the barometer is dropping
Ike mad, and the skylight leaks so
that every wave which comes aboard
sends bucketsfull of swash down into
the cabin, and when every now
and then a wave comes aboard and
pounds down on her deck like a load of
| pig iron, and those below are shaken
about like corn in a pepper, and those
! on deck simply hold on and duck their
headS-when such is the condition of
| affairs, yachting would not be consid-
cred a pastime.
The delights of being amateur crew"
can be briefly summed up. They con-
siSt in lying fiat Oh your face either in a
hot sun or pouring rain, and if you
turn over having the owner shout at
you: keep still! Do you think that
you're wild elephant? You Jared her
all over that time" Furthermore, all
yachts are not rugged alike, and if the
amateur crew is told at a critical point
| in tine Tacn-SaV iuSr before roundIn u
the leeWard mark-to let go the spin
maker halyards, and let the jib halyards
go instead, so that the whole sail goes
over to leeward, the remarks which will
be made to him will be unit for publ
cation"
mo, yachting is not all beer and
skittles.'"