As the captain of a catboat, you would have one bit of canvas to handle and you'd have to learn the peculiarities of that rig for there would be no alternative but to set the one and only mainsail first and then grit your molars with a prayer that all is clear ahead. With any craft having two or more sails, your problem is simpler. This is because your boat will have a more powerful weathervane effect that will invariably swing her up head to the wind unless you have an unusual current condition.

In the accompanying drawing are sketches of a catboat, a yawl, and a ketch lying at anchor and heading up into the wind. Each boat has one sail set to aid in maintaining this position. The catboat obviously has but one sail. When that is hoisted, its center will be a short distance abaft the point where the hull pivots in the water. Without attempting to be mathematically accurate, we can say that the catboat has a relative luffing effect of 60 per cent of perfection. Next we move over to the yawl. Her skipper, anxious to lie head to wind, has hoisted his jigger. While the jigger will not have much area, all of it is way aft, virtually over the stern of the boat, and we can consider that he has an ideal luffing effect of 100 per cent. The ketch will rate between the others when its mizzen is raised. There will be more area aft than there is in the yawl's tiny jigger, but the center of pressure will be farther forward, providing what might be called 85 per cent of luffing ability. Yawls and ketches are perfect in this respect. With everything furled but the mizzen, such a boat will head up and, if anchored, lie more or less quietly awaiting your next move. If she is adrift, she will still lie up into the wind and drift astern. If there are exceptions to this rule, they will occur when the wind is light and the current strong. A keel boat will be influenced more by the current than a center-boarder, especially if the board in the latter is raised so there is a minimum of boat below the water line.

Study your boat to find out how she acts with the board up or down and with various settings of the mizzen. By varying the mizzen settings and, in some cases, bringing in the mooring line at a point other than directly over the bow, you can swing the boat at anchor so she may be in a better position to sail off when the remaining canvas is set. Sloops and knockabouts have a little ability to luff into the wind. The true cutter has its mast so far aft that with mainsail set she is almost as quick to luff as are the two-masted rigs.

In getting underway, it is necessary to set the mainsail first except where you can get away from a dock or mooring by sailing directly before the wind. Even under this situation, the mainsail-first rule would be followed provided there is room for you to luff her up and then get away on a course with the wind over either side. In a crowded anchorage, this may not be possible. You may have to sail out into clear water with the wind astern. Your boat will naturally lie head to the wind unless there is a strong opposing current. If you are to take off before the wind, you must turn the boat so the stern is to windward. The best way to do this is by carrying a stern line outside the rigging, passing it through the mooring eye, and making the end fast with a turn or two that can easily be cast off. Once you have rigged this, cast off the original head line and the bow will turn in the direction in which you want to go.

Make sure the stern line is ready for a hurried casting-off and quickly raise the jib. Leave plenty of slack in the jib sheets and, as the sail fills, let the mooring line go. You will head out down wind until you are sufficiently clear of obstructions and can completely slacken the jib sheets and luff her up. Now up with the main and you are under way.

To help in all this sort of close-quarters work, the rudder may or may not be of much use. Bear in mind that a rudder is of little value unless the boat is either moving through the water at an appreciable speed or (and this is a point too often ignored) fast to her mooring with a current flowing by her. In salt water, there is usually some tidal current one way or the other; in river sailing, the current will always be in one direction; but in lake sailing, there will be little or no current flow and your rudder will be nothing more than a dangling fin.

In a very light centerboard boat with a tiller, it is sometimes possible to kick the stern slightly to one side or the other when lying in still water. To do this, you gently shove the tiller way over and then pull back quickly. Don't try it unless you have a more substantial steering gear than is fitted to most low-priced boats. Which remark brings up the recommendation that a husky paddle or a pair of oars be made standard equipment in all small craft.

None of the remarks about the difficulty of getting under way in a crowded anchorage or from a wind-stoppered bottleneck applies if you have either an inboard or an outboard auxiliary. You then start the engine, motor out to a less crowded area, and get up your sails in a leisurely manner. While the sentimentalists will gleefully seek our scalp, we now crawl out on the tippy end of the limb with the statement that a sailboat which does not have either inboard or outboard auxiliary power (the former for the cruising boats and the latter for the open and racing craft) cannot be considered as even half equipped. This crowded old world of ours never has seen a more silly example of backwoods stubbornness than that of the man who refuses to use an engine when its use will get him where he should be instead of where he is. If you go around loudly proclaiming that motors are only installed by sissies in stink boats, we offer the pious hope that you'll sit out in the sun on a windless day until your hide flakes off in sheets.

There was a time when the outboard motor was a hard-starting monstrosity that took as much labor to crank as would have been expended in rowing home. Inboards are a bit out of the picture for the smaller sailing craft of the open types because the drag of a propeller will seriously cut down sailing speed. For such craft, the modern outboard is just as much a necessity as is a mast or keel unless the boat is so very small and light that you can row her for miles without raising a sweat—and that means a baby ship of breast-pocket size.

If your boat has an after deck, it is a simple matter to mount an outboard by means of a bracket. Several types are commercially available. One bolts to the stern. Another fits into a small socket that's permanently bolted to the side of the boat.

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