Do not from laziness fail to change jibs often; also, carry three jibs aboard. The jib is the most sensitive part of your canvas on a small fore-and-aft craft. Too much canvas there will press you, too little will make the helm gripe, and in either case she will not be sailing her best. Changing jibs is a bother, but it is a task which must not be shirked. Many a man has got his boat out of hand by failing to set the second jib, or even the storm jib, when it was coming on to blow. Note carefully also which of your jibs goes best with such and such a reefing of your mainsail. The temptation is to carry too large a jib, and, therefore, to carry too weak a weather helm. It is better to have your canvas balanced. She will behave better in every way. The Nona, when she is under two reefs, carries her second jib pleasantly and with a smile, and yet how often (I must confess it) have I carried my first jib when I should have changed jibs! and that from indolence.
My seventh rule may seem a strange one, but I am sure that it is sound: Carry a pole mast, and do not bother too much about hoisting your topsail.
A topsail is always a business on a small boat, a business to put up and a business to strike. There is many a wind in which it would add half a knot to your speed, but you are not racing, and the half-knot does not matter. The necessary occasions for carrying a topsail are exactly two: one, when the breeze is very light, and it makes all the difference between sailing at a reasonable pace, and merely crawling; and the other, when you are getting into harbour and have wind aloft, but little along the surface, or when you have your mainsail brailed up to see your way, so that only with the topsail can you get a sufficient amount of canvas and a weather helm.
I know that all this rough and ready talk about the topsail will sound like heresy to the men who are sailing their boats in all weathers, and think, as people do, of speed as a special advantage, but I am sure I am right. Plain sail is the rule, and topsail on a little craft is always something of a frill. It is never a necessity, and over and over again you will find it a handicap. What I mean is, do not use it for the sake of using it. Do not be ashamed of sailing without your topsail when other craft have got theirs set, if in your case it is a trouble to set it. Never, never set your topsail when you think she might be at all over-canvassed under it; your business is to sail, and neither to show off nor to make time.
My eighth rule (which, if I were putting them in order of importance would come very early in the list) is: Look to every part of your gear; not only when you are starting out upon a cruise, but all the time. Look minutely to every point where there may be weakness. See that all is secure, and that all the running gear runs freely. This means running your eye and hand over the ropes and looking closely to the blocks, and to the attachments of hooks and swivels, and to the ties of the leach upon the rings, and to the parrel line at the jaws, and, indeed, to all details, of which there is a very long list, when you come to think of it, even in the simplest rig. Take nothing for granted, test everything. When you find anything doubtful—a cleat that shakes a little, or a run that jams for a second, or whatever it may be—put it right at once. The whole thing may be somewhat of a business, but in this, as in most things on board a boat, work all the time.
But who am I that I should write thus? Was it not also I who, in May-month of the year 1901, ran from France to the English island most abominably over-canvassed, not being able to take in a reef because my throat halyard had jammed? I noticed a jerk in it, even as I left the shores of the Morini, and I neglected to put the block right because I was eager to be off. I said to myself, “It will work all right when the time comes!” But it did not, and, therefore, did I run with a most astonishing speed, and, on to the end of the affair, in no small terror, until I saw tall England, looming up above me out of a sort of smoke; and ever since then I have been most attentive to that one block. And why not to the others? Because conduct is by mood rather than by reason, and the do-nothing mood is a mastering one; as witness the home dogs of the rich, the cats of the poor, and sundry other beasts, including man.
Now my ninth rule is: Keep with you all the charts you can.
You can never have too many for your purpose. Many people are content with general charts, and do not take with them the plans of harbours. It is an error. The plans of harbours are even, in this sort of knocking about the coasts, more useful than the general charts. For a man can always tell where he is (more or less) along the coast, but the working in and out of harbours is the difficulty, and the knowing of where to lie, and what areas
