My next rule would be: _Get everything shipshape and, so far as you can, keep it shipshape._
That is, see that the falls are clear, that everything is properly stowed away; that you know where everything is to be got at in any emergency; that you have to look for nothing; that you make the most of every space—and the rest of it.
All this I say knowing full well that I myself am incapable of it; but I am giving advice, I am not practising. I am expending myself for the good of others, and what I myself do is no affair of yours. The best known and the most tragic tag descended to us from antiquity is, ‘_Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor._’ Some would say that they are not only the most tragic words the great pagans bequeathed to us—the pagans upon whom we all repose—but would add that they are also the most ironic; for if you stop a little after the _proboque_, and add in another voice the following two words, you will appreciate the sardonic accent.
My own boat has usually come into port more like the disturbed nest of a dormouse than like the spick and span arrangement which I advise. Half the blocks will be jammed, the anchor will be caught under the bows, and, as like as not, the fluke of it hooked over one of the whiskers. The falls will be all tangled up together. The warping ropes will be mixed up with the anchor chain in the fo’c’sle, so that there is no getting at the one, or paying out the other. She will perhaps be coming in under three reefs with hardly enough wind to move her, because it has been blowing a few hours ago, and I have been too lazy to shake them out. Her jib will be slack, her cabin light broken where I have put my heel through it. A hundred other little familiar touches will make whatever landsman is passing his time gazing out to sea from the pier-head recognise from far off the Nona, as the Arabs recognised the great ship of Richard the Lion-hearted, saying, ‘There comes the red sail of the Frankish king.’ There never was such a boat as the Nona for coming in hugger-mugger. But do as I preach, not as I practise. Have everything in its place and a place for everything, so that, in a flash, you can shorten sail, let go the anchor, get to your warping ropes, or do any of those many things required by sailing-men. Even Plato was moved to discover the way in which the horrible Phœnicians used space aboard their ships, and had everything in order, though Heaven knows he could have had little sympathy with the sailing of the seas. Indeed, very few men who have written in the sentimental and rhetorical fashion (of which he was a master) have had also a call for the outside. But even he, I say, admired the order of shipboard. So be it with you.
Go into all the least details, think of how any object you have aboard will be treated by the weather. Use no ornament which the salt air can spoil, and put not one ounce aboard beyond what you need.
My third rule is this: _Keep tight decks._
I speak with feeling here, for most of my life the rain and the salt sea have come through upon my face as I slept, as coffee does through those abominable new contraptions which they call ‘filters,’ and which they put above your cup instead of boiling the coffee honestly apart as our fathers did. Most of my life, half the days at least that I have sailed the sea, water both salt and fresh, and always tasting of varnish and of tar, has trickled through also upon my provisions, notably upon bread, which it quite astonishingly spoils. Therefore I say from experience, keep tight decks. It is very simple. You have but to go along the seams carefully on a hot, windless day, with a spike or a screw driver and a mallet, prodding in shredded rope, and treating it afterwards with any one of the compositions they sell.
My fourth rule (I am giving them in no order of importance) is: _Have an anchor heavy enough for your craft._
It is a temptation to have too light a one for the easier handling. It is always a mistake. An anchor drags mainly through lack of head. Holding-ground always makes a difference but, with little craft, lack of head is the trouble. You must pay the price of heavy work for the sake of security, and it is better to have an old-fashioned anchor than the stockless anchors they sell now. These are all very well for large boats, but I do not believe in them for small ones. Be at the pains of getting your anchor up properly, and unstocking it, and also, when you let it down, of mousing the catch. Nothing will get you into more trouble than not being able to let go your anchor quickly, when there is necessity; and, in that connection also, mind you keep your chain clear. It is a good plan to tie small but conspicuous shreds of bunting or coloured string at every two or three fathoms of the chain in the first part of it; thus you will know how much you have let out, for although it is always better to let out too much than too little, it is annoying to have a great length of chain dragging about in shoal water, and the noise of it moving may confuse you into believing that you are dragging. I spent an abominable night once off a shingle bank in heaving water, where the tide ran strong, from having let out too much chain in the dark. The metal lay all along the bottom like the great sea serpent, and the movement of the boat sent a violent wrangling of iron up the chain all night long, so that I was perpetually running upon deck, between poor intervals of sleep, to judge by the distant light whether she were dragging or no. And I had good occasion for anxiety, seeing that not far upon my lee the shoal came right up out of the sea, with the water breaking upon it. You might think that however much chain you had let out, your boat would lie to the end of it; but it is not so. If you have a great deal too much chain let out in shoal water, the weight of it holds the boat like a kind of second anchor, and it grumbles and shifts and moves all the time.
Now the putting on of these little markings is of value, also, to prevent you letting out too little chain. The rule of thumb is: Three times as much chain as there is depth of water. This, in my youth (and for my youth I must be forgiven), I neglected in the port of Harwich, thinking it was nearer high tide than it was, so the little ship got adrift, and was rescued, or, as the man preferred to call it, ‘salvaged,’ by a barge called the Lily. The barge had no right to be called the Lily, for it was foully dirty, and as black as soot. The owner of the Lily claimed one third of the value of my boat, ‘Because,’ said he, ‘it was salvaged below London Bridge.’ He attached to this formula a magical importance. I offered him two pounds. He wanted much more. I appealed for help to a ship that was lying in that harbour, and they sent off a boat’s crew for me to convince the man. He took the offer I made him, but said that he had been bullied. I do not think he had. I think two pounds is a fair price to pay for the trouble a man may have been at to put a boat out, and tie a rope on to a drifting craft of that size. But still he complained that he had ‘salvaged her below London Bridge,’ and had a right to one third of her value. But there again, what was the value of any boat in which I had already sailed?
My fifth rule would be: _Don’t keep too close to the wind; let her sail; keep her full._
This attempt to be always pointing up is one of the curses brought in by racing. Your own hearty middle-class boat can never point close to the wind. If she can, it is a bad sign, for she will be putting on airs. Be content if she will lie and sail at an angle of forty-five degrees from the direction in which the wind is blowing. If she cannot do that she is a bad boat, but if she can do that, she is well enough. Now this is called ‘within four points of the wind,’ being one eighth of the thirty-two points that make up the whole round of the compass. There are all sorts of smart craft which will point much closer than that, and there are particular kinds of rigs, used honestly and not for racing at all, which will keep much closer, I am told. Certainly the London barge seems to keep closer, that marvellous rig, that perfection of rigs for its purpose; and the Norfolk wherries, shooting up the rivers, seem to keep quite miraculously close, though I think in this their great momentum and the flood of the water helps them. But as for you, sailing ordinarily upon the sea, be quite content if she does her duty with the wind halfway between beam and bow. It is here as it is with most things in life, be content with the sound average, keeping the limits which God has set all around. Do not wish for too long a life, for too large a fortune, or for too much honour. Eat your peck of dirt before you die; take the rough with the smooth; consider that it is all in a day’s work; expect rain and fine. In general, write out a list of all the commandment-proverbs and learn that list by heart. Then break them.
They that sail too close to the wind have great difficulty in bringing their boat round, especially in a seaway, and there is nearly always some of their canvas (if it is an honest boat, and not one of your millionaires’ models) not doing all it should when you lie too close. In connection with this, I would add (without making it a separate rule): _Take care never to pin the boat—that is, never get your mainsheet too taut_; give the boom plenty of angle. Let your mainsail take the full wind. If you look at the pictures of the old boats in the time when men were men, you will see that they sailed with easy sails bellying, and were not concerned to look smart with stiff, boardlike sails. Of course, in the racing-machines, you get more speed by these tricks, but it is no way to treat a good boat of stock and sound ancestry. It is driving her and playing tricks with her. Be content to feel the power of the wind.