Chapter 1

What Its All About

Moogly, the Neanderthal man, was having troubles. The previous night he had, like men of the present generation, been out with the boys. Zigzagging caveward, he had faced Zook, his irate, club-swinging mate, who had promptly gone into action with a barrage of mastodon-bone dishware. In a frantic effort to escape, Moogly rushed to the murky river and executed a quick, but ungraceful, dive into the pea-soup waters. His safety was short-lived for, having never studied naval architecture, he became a living exponent of the theory that a floating body must have a weight that is less than that of an equal volume of water. In brief, Moogly was at the point of drowning when he spied a floating tree trunk with some of its withered branches projecting above water. In what passed for a jiffy in those days, he was astride the trunk.

But his safety was none too secure. Zook trotted along the bank accurately heaving the remainder of the family utensils. Luck came to Moogly at that point; a miasmatic breeze came up and caught the upper branches of Moogly's craft and he sailed out, out toward the murky horizon and freedom from Zook's hirsute pitching arm.

It was all as simple as that—then. Moogly sailed, but he didn't know where he was going and he had no idea in his pea-sized brain of how to get back home again. Perhaps he didn't even want to get back. Out beyond, there might have been better Zooks waiting for the sweet caress of his club.

Things are different now. We want to sail with a lot more comfort, with greater speed, and certainly with some surety of getting some place and then turning around and coming back more or less the same way. Our sailing craft give us the desired speed and comfort, but naval architecture has not done too much to aid us in getting there and back again. These latter points are accomplished through application of what Moogly lacked—a pretty superior sort of human intelligence. We now sail good boats designed by skilled men, but we require some knowledge of why a boat sails, as well as how we must handle the little ship, to make her go when and where we want.

Sailing is fun, lots of fun. Hundreds of thousands of youngsters between eight and 80 consider that it is the world's best sport. In this era of cluttered concrete, it offers about the only practical method for the average person to taste a slice of transportation freedom. On the water, you find traffic laws to be almost nonexistent. True, there are navigating rules designed to prevent collisions, but the average boat sailer may not have to apply them more than once or twice a day, rather than at intervals of seconds as is true on the road. There is also the head-swelling joy because you are the master of your ship. You go and come when you please and limit your territory only by the time you have to spend and the borders of the waterway upon which you maneuver your boat.

You can enjoy an entire day's sail within view of the club house or, even if the boat is pretty small and very inexpensive, you can go off on cruises. Expense is an important item for most people. It is true that the operating costs of a sailboat are so low as to be considered nonexistent. In fact, only depreciation, anchorage, winter storage, and upkeep can be charged as truly applying to operational expenses.

Taking these up one by one, depreciation is dependent on first cost and first cost is something almost impossible to estimate. Good sailing boats are on the used-boat market at prices ranging from a couple of hundred dollars upward. You may be able to get a buy for even less providing you are willing to do some work fixing her up. Let's settle one point right here. Sails cost money and homemade ones are seldom of much use unless you are satisfied to limit your sailing and your speed to a point where the game may not be worth the disappointments and the embarrassment of having everyone else sail rings, around you.

To get the most boat for your money, build her yourself. This competent craftsman is putting the deck on his nearly completed 18-foot hull.

If you are considering constructing a boat, you must have a place to work, the necessary tools, lots of time, and quite a sizable bit of skill.
 
To save all the dinero possible, and still have a good boat, the logical advice is to build her yourself. This means first, that you have a place to do the work; second, that you have the skill; and third, that you have both the tools necessary and the time required. Don't let anybody kid you that you can build a sailboat in your cellar shop in a few days. A fair time estimate, assuming that you can read plans and use tools, would be something close to 10 working hours per foot of boat length for the simplest sort of an open craft. Any boat with a cabin, or much in the way of interior arrangements, will take a lot more time.

How much will she cost if you have the time, the place, the plans, and the skill?
 
Estimating that is not simple unless you are willing to accept a method that is open to wide variations. Assuming that you are willing to spend more if needed, a fairly accurate method is to multiply the length of the proposed boat by her beam. To that figure, add $10.00 per foot of boat length.

MI Photo

Since materials for a boat will cost about one third of what the completed craft is worth, you can save real money by assembling her yourself.
 
Any boat with a cabin and cruising facilities, such as this 24-footer, will take a lot of time to assemble, but will be well worth the effort.

The result will be what you must lay out for the lumber and other material plus the ordinary sails—maybe.

Here is an example. The boat you are to build is 16 feet long and 6 feet wide. Sixteen times six is 96, or $96.00 out of your poke, plus $160.00 more; or a total of $256.00 more or less—probably more. This checks up well with the rule of thumb that says that the material cost of a boat—not counting any overhead, profit, or labor— is one third her list price. Remember that this is for a simple, small, open sailboat. Admittedly, you can build a flat-bottomed skiff and rig up some sort of a sail for less money. If you feel that the result is a sailboat, your opinion will not be shared by the other fellows around the anchorage. If, for example, you can drive a Model T and remain heedless to the jibes of "get a horse," you may be the sort of character to go to town with boat-buying economy.

Having disposed of first cost, we come to depreciation. Marine-insurance people have complicated formulas to work out such things, but the average mortal can come pretty close to a correct figure if he knocks off 10 per cent of the boat's value each year. True enough, this would imply that after 10 years she would be worthless, a situation far from true. But the idea is not to arrive at a real value but to set a figure that you know you can afford. The 10-percent system will run higher than should be true and is thus better if you are pushing the wallet too hard.

Anchorage charges may be nothing at all. You may live where there is plenty of mooring space and all you have to do is to put out a mooring and let it go at that. Most fellows are in no such cushiony position and must hire mooring space from boatyards or join clubs where such privileges are included in the dues. The service may cost you anywhere from $25.00 to $100.00 a year depending upon how swank you want to go.

Winter storage is another intangible. You may live in the south, where you don't haul out at all except for painting. But if you live in the north, you had better figure on $2.00 per foot of boat length per season for the hauling charges—unless you are one of the rugged gents known as "Frost-biters" who race (brrrrrr!) all winter, defying weather, pneumonia, and the advice of your loved ones.

Upkeep costs depend upon how much you can do yourself. If you can paint, varnish, make splices, and attend to all minor repair-and-maintenance chores, the upkeep will be little. If you have the boatyard do all this work for you, the figure may go kiting to $100.00 or more each year for even a small boat. Again you see where the Handy Andy sort of man gets off cheap as a boat owner. He is able to accomplish just about a_iy job that may come up for approximately a third, and sometimes a quarter, of the cost of having it done. Two coats of varnish applied yourself will cost you about five bucks. Most boatyards will bill you a sinful sixty skins for the job. Sure, they will do a better job, but it may require an expert to tell the difference.

Let's suppose you have passed the financial examination and are satisfied that you can afford the tab. You are now ready to join the Windjammer's Fraternity, an organization that pretty well dates back to the wild, wet dawn of history. For centuries after Moogly had his little-woman troubles, the world's only highways were the watercourses, and man, a bit lazy even then, discovered that there were better ways to move than by means of oars. This applied even in the days when slave power was to be had for the taking.

Please don't ask what nation first used sailing boats. Hobbs, in Sailing Ships at a Glance, mentions an Egyptian vessel with a crude square sail, probably able to sail only before the wind, dating about 10,000 B.C. He also shows that there was a square-rigged Egyptian vessel in 4700 B.C. that had backstays and other evidence that the sail could be trimmed at various angles. Viking vessels seem to have dated back to about 1000 B.C., making them sort of Johnnie-come-latelys.

In the field of boating for pleasure, Philippona, in Het Zeilen, tells of a "jacht" at Amsterdam, Holland, in 1620 A.D. and mentions the formation of a yacht club in St. Petersburg (Russia, not Florida) in 1718. The Water Club of Cork, Ireland, was organized in 1720. The first recognized club in America was the New York Yacht Club, which was founded in 1844. It appears that boating for fun trailed the transportation desire by close to 12,000 years.

And the organization of interfleet and intersectional one-design competition came along still later. It wasn't until 1916 that the first national one-design class organization was set up. It was the brainchild of Commodore Geo. W. Elder, and the boats were Stars.
Kit boats are inexpensive to buy and iun to put together. This 10-footer has 43 sq. it. of sail and is produced by Marine Mart, Buffalo 7, N. Y.

Marine Mart Photo

Are You Ready To Move Onto The Next Lesson? Click Here...