Butler citizen. [volume] (Butler, Pa.) 1877-1922, 1893-10-27
Even the Sport Of Yachting Has
It's Drawbacks-
There il No Place So Hot as q Ships
Deck and Nothing So Exasper-
ating as Inerpe-
rienced Crew.

One commonly thinks of yachting as
the most delightful of summer pas
times, says the Boston Transcript, and
the very word calls up visions of a
"wet sheet. and flowing sea, and a
wind that follows fast" smells of salt
things, and whistlings through the
rigging, blue sky, white caps, driving
clouds and all that sort of thing, tosay
nothing of the possibilities of delight
full companionship and the delicious
unconventionahty of meeting ones
fellow men and women with all the
formality and restraints of on-shore
life thrown off; no making talk or any
thing of that kind, but knocking about
carelessly and easily in flannel suits
and having "a real good time" Or,
again, racing, with all it's excitements,
and cruising, with all of its possibili-
ties of adventure, to Bar Harbor. 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-
lenge to contradiction-frst, that to
''go and take sail" In small boat
belonging to some one else and to sail
aimlessly about on the open sea Is IAN
awful bore;" secondly, that to GO as
amateur crew" on a rowing yacht
under sixty feet long is not only a
bore, but a hardship, and ON yachts
over sixty feet in length it is not GUS
tomary to have an amateur crew."
unless an occasional and almost always
useless passenger can be considered
such; and, lastly, that cruising Is a
lottery absolutely dependent ON the
weather. Fogs, calms, storms and
head winds are quite as usual as free
winds and sunshine.
Observe that nothing has boon 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 sky and
bleach and blister and sizzle as 1t can
upon O yachts deck. There Is no place
that can be hotter or more stuffy or
more uncomfortable than q yachts
cabin on hot day, when there is no
wind or when the wind is dead aft, and
when it is rough, and the water is driv-
ing across the yachts deck in q sheet OF
white foam, and the crew are all hud-
died behind the shrouds, into1which
old oil skins have been stuffed to make
a screen and the man at the wheel has
life lines running from the main sheet
to the main shrouds on either side of
him to keep him fiom being washed
overheard, and the oil bags are hung to
windward to keep the water from
breaking, and the fire rs out in the
galley, and the cook has been scalded
by the soup stock jumping out OF the
boiler, and the barometer is dropping
Hike mad. and the skylight leaks SO
that every wave which comes aboard
sends bucketfuls of swash down into
the cabin, and when every now and
then a wave comes aboard and pounds
down on her deck like load of pig
iron, and those below are shaken about
like corn in q 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 pastime.
The delights of being amateur
crew" can be briefly summed up. They
consist in lying fat on your face either
in hot sun or a pouring rain, and II
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" Further
more, all yachts are not rugged alike,
and II the amateur crew 10 told at a
critical point in the race-say just be-
fore rounding the leeward mark--to
let go the spinnaker halyards and let
the balloon jib halyards go instead, SO
that the whole sail goes over to lee
ward. the remarks which will be made
TO him will be unfit for publication" {"