The Ketchum keystone. [volume] (Ketchum, Idaho) 1885-1899, 1893-10-28
NOT ALL PLEASURE.
Even the Sport Of Yachting Has
It's Drawbacks.
There 10 No Place 30 Fot ~ Ships
Deck and Nothing So Exasper-
ating ~ IN Inexpe-
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
'wet sheet, and flowing sea, and
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, to say
nothing of the possibilities OF delight
full companionship and the delicious
unconventionality 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 its 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 a small boat
belonging to some one else and to sail
aimlessly about on the open sea is san
awful bore;" secondly, that to go as
'amateur crew. on rowing yacht
under sixty feet long is not only
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 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 sky and
bleach and blister and sizzle as it can
upon q yachts deck. There is no place
more uncomfortable than yachts
cabin on a hot day, when there is no
wind or when the wind is dead aft, end
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, into which
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 fl lom being washed
overheard, and the oil bags are hung to
windward to keep the water from
breaking, and the FIRE is out in the
galley, and the cook has been scalded
by the soup stock jumping out OF the
boiler, and the barometer is dropping
like mad. and the skylight leaks 80
that every wave winch comes aboard
sends bucketfuls of swash down into
the cabin, and when every now and
then q wave comes aboard and pounds
down on her, deck like load OF pig
| iron, and those below are shaken about
| like corn in a pepper, and those on
deck simply hold on and duck theil
heads-when such is the condition Of
| affairs yachting would not be consid
cred a pastime.
The delights of being "amateui
crew" can be briefly summed up. They
consist in lying fat on your face either
in a hot sun or pouring rain, and il
you turn over having the owner shout
at you: "Keep still! Do you think
that you're a wild elephant? Yo,
Jared her oil over that time" Further
more, all yachts are not rigged alike
and if the amateur crew is told at {
critical point in the race-say just be
fore rounding the leeward mark-tt
let go the spinnaker halyards and le
the balloon jib halyards go instead, 81
that the whole sail goes over to lee
ward, the remarks which will be made
to him will be unfit for publication.