YACHTING AND AUXILIARY MOTORS.
EVERY year more sailing yachts are fitted with a motor which is intended not to take the place of sails in ordinary circumstances but to get the vessel over a foul tide in light winds or calms, to help her in beating against bead winds, and perhaps to save the crew the trouble of hoisting the sails when it is desired simply to shift the yacht's berth in harbour. Among yachtsmen there may still be said to be a controversy as to the desirability of auxiliary power, though a majority is rapidly accumulating in favour of it. Eventually the controversy can end in only one way, because convenience, which is the determining factor in most disputes of the sort, belongs only to auxiliary power. In a few more years, when there are many simple and cheap motors on the market, every cruiser with any title to be considered fully equipped for her purpose will have an auxiliary motor. The landsman probably does not know with what comparative ease the compact modern motor can be installed in vessels which were built without any thought of power being applied to them. The writer has seen landsmen incredulous at being told that a box tucked away under a seat, or beneath the floor of the cockpit, contained an engine capable of driving the yacht at three or four knots—that is to say, at a speed sufficient to get over an ordinary tide. In a few cases, it is true, it may be quite impossible to instal a motor of any sort in a yacht, and then, if the owner does not care to part with his vessel, he may buy one of the portable engines which can be placed on deck. The shaft and propeller are fixed to a spar which is laid overboard when in use. But such an apparatus is, of course, a makeshift. Another makeshift, and a very useful one too, is to use a motor dinghy for towing the yacht. Those who have not tried it will not believe how much can b3 done under ordinary conditions with an engine of very low power in a dinghy. The best results are obtained by lashing the dinghy alongside the yacht. For moving about a harbour or getting through a narrow channel in smooth water nothing more is required. But, of course, when a yacht is beating or when she is making long passages it is another matter altogether ; at sea the motor may be needed in a heavy swell when it is impossible to tow from a small boat. Then one can do nothing without a motor actually installed in the yacht. To the writer it seems certain that the next few years will see a great development in the type known as "auxiliary cruiser." If yacht-racing is becoming, in all but the small classes, confined ever more strictly to a limited group and to a strictly defined type of vessel, the pastime of cruising is continually evolving new designs, and becomes more skilfifs more daring, and more widely practised than ever before. To the cruisers the motor will give a wider range, more precision, and more confidence. It is therefore bound to triumph.
It need not be denied that there is very much to be said for the old guard who resist the motor for reasons of seaman- ship and sentiment. The writer sympathizes with all they say, but sums up in a contrary sense on the all-mastering point of convenience already mentioned. The complete cruising yachtsman of the future will no more do without an auxiliary motor than people who have driven in taxis will return to hansom cabs. The opponents of the motor say that the whole joy of sailing is the conquest of the elements by means that are made adequate only by skill and experience. The motor, they say, is a short cut out of difficulties which commends itself only to the lazy man or the duffer. The strongest argument of all from this point of view is that a yachtsman who uses a motor habitually will never learn the tricks and arts which are exacted by sheer necessity from the man who depends solely on sails. Every yachtsman who has fairly gone through an apprenticeship to his sport must recall occasions when he was at his wits' end to decide how to extricate himself from a critical position. Perhaps he found himself wedged among yachts in a crowded harbour with a head wind and a fast-running tide under him. To avoid one danger of collision with certainty seemed to accept another with equal certainty. And probably—as generally happens in these circumstances—several pairs of coldly critical eyes were turned on him with the agreeable if callous expecta- tion of enjoying his mistakes. Yet crises such as these, and nothing else, make the seaman. Thought and action have to work simultaneously. It is for a good reason that the yacht
hands who are generally reputed the best and quickest come not from deep-water ports, but from the intricate channels and swatchways of the Thames estuary, where strong tides among numerous banks are the sternest of school- masters. But if the amateur yachtsman is able to dodge his difficulties by simply switching on a motor and not troubling about his sails till he has sea-room, what then P It is certainly a serious point. The writer confesses that he would like to see all amateurs under a certain age forswear motors until they can make their vessel under sail do practically everything they wish. Even then they will stop far short of perfection. The amateur seaman seldom or never reaches the consummate skill of the professional except in the handling of small boats, in which a lighter hand and a higher degree of familiarity (for professional seamen are not fond of small-boat sailing) tell their tale. No doubt, to ask a young man in his apprentice- ship, so to speak, to forswear a motor is a counsel of perfection. Still, let us hope that the want of money may very often impose a restriction when the more austere principles of sport do not.
In a recent cruise in a motorless yacht of fifteen tons the writer was finally converted to the principle of the auxiliary. He confesses that he has sailed enough to be able to dispense willingly with uncomfortable nights, knocking about at sea, when it has been impossible to make a port. He conceives that he has earned a reasonable degree of comfort in his holidays, and his present inclination is increased when his wife and children accompany him. He must not fall into the error, however, of attributing his own inclination to them; for wives and children who like the sea are more spartan and more rapacious for the thrills of night passages than he can pretend to be. He notes on referring to his log that during his month's cruise from the coast of Essex to Devonshire and back not a single night need have been spent out if the yacht had carried an auxiliary of even moderate power. He would, moreover, have cruised much further and visited many more ports. To begin with, he was at the mercy of strong bead winds for a whole week. At the end of eight days he had got no further on his way than Ramsgate. To try to turn through the Straits of Dover during spring tides against a dead noser in a vessel built more for comfort than for speed is a heart- breaking business. During the days of idleness he watched the Ramsgate smacks warping in and out of the inner harbour, using for their winches steam power which, differently applied, would have been quite sufficient to drive the smacks to and from their berths without the cumbrous affair of warping at all. This in itself was a lesson in the value of auxiliary power—as well as in the conservative character of sailors. One of these days the writer watched a ketch-rigged barge turning down channel with the help of auxiliary power. She had only her mainsail set and was making excellent progress on every board, although without power she would certainly have been waiting for a " slant " in the Downs with a host of other craft.. When at last a fair wind did come, the writer, owing to calms, was forty-one hours under way between Ramsgate and Ryde. With the help of a motor he could easily have made Newhaven from Ramsgate between daylight and dusk, and have reached Ryde in daylight the next day after a " night in" at Newhaven. Similarly an unpleasant night in Lyme Bay in an exposed anchorage—not really an anchorage at all, except that it was made one for the occasion—would have been avoided by reaching Exmouth before dark. The wind, which had completely failed in the afternoon, came in a rain squall about midnight, and made it necessary to get off the land in a hurry in a rising sea. Probably if one were caught on such a lee shore as that in a really bad blow a motor might just make the difference between safety and disaster. Some yachtsmen talk airily of clawing off the land in a gale of wind in a small sailing yacht. But in a gale of wind worthy of the name a small yacht cannot carry enough canvas to counteract the leeway made by wind-pressure on her hull. Fairly caught in a bay, her chances of escape with the help of sail alone are small indeed. Yet, again, on the return journey in his cruise the writer spent a disagreeable hour in the race off St. Alban's Head owing to a sudden faltering of the wind after a strong breeze, and another night rolling off Folkestone with every- thing on board crashing and banging in a pandemonium of noise. With the least motor help he could have made Dover that evening with ease. In brief, he has come to the con-
elusion that, in spite of admittedly good arguments on the other side, the general use of the auxiliary motor in sailing yachts will act on the whole in the right direction by making yachtsmen undertake adventures which they would formerly have shunned.
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