Uffa Fox's Second Book. (Peter Davies. 35s.)
Uffa Fox
A YEAR has passed since Mr. Uffa Fox published his first book, Sailing, Seamanship, and Yacht-construction. The interval has established it as one of the few books (other than works of reference) which are necessary to a yachtsman.
Mr. Fox, by his brilliance as a designer, has shown himself at a comparatively early age to be an artist of a high order,
in that his repeated successes can all be traced to some simple revolution in principle. carried straight to perfection without
fumbling. But he is also gifted with what can orily be de- scribed as physical genius.. In the handling of small craft he
can do things which verge- on the miraculous. 1--
Let me quote an instance. Every landsman, even, must know by sight the International 14-ft. Dinghy class—fast little cockle-shells, open and tiny, built for racing in sheltered waters and conveyed by their owners from regatta to regatta on a - trailer behind a baby-ear : as ready to capsize as a billiard-cue on an unpractised chin. In one of them, after winning twenty races in succession at Cowes, Mr.- Fox put to sea (with a crew of two to man bailer, and to keep her upright by their combined weight on the weathergunwale), on a day when a fifty-ton cutter put back to harbour for shelter. He then 'sailed her a hundred miles across the Channel to le Havre ; took in further trophies and cups as additional ballast, and sailed her home again. Without question that was a more difficult achievement of seamanship than many a small yacht's voyage round the world.
It will thus be seen that Mr. Fox is a remarkable man, and in his profession sui generic. Now, fortunately, he is from the literary point of view uneducated. There is therefore no obstacle to prevent him from putting it all on paper. He can write with facility, with compression, with clarity and wit, all that he thinks and knows and feels ; for no one has ever explained how difficult that is.
It is small wonder, therefore, that his first was a most remarkable book. It is perhaps only natural that the second should to a certain extent fall short of it. This is no fault of the author's. In the first book he had.the experience of his whole life to draw upon : in its sequel, little more than the experience of the last twelve months. But it is only to its predecessor that it yields. There is no other rival in the field : and it will be a matter of great satisfaction to all yachtsmen to learn that it is to become an annual event.
For such a periodical review of achievement in an art which is at the present moment so very much alive as that of yacht- design and sailing would be of the greatest value, even had it not the acided. grace of Mr. Fox's authorship. It forms a kind of marriage-market of ideas and practice, and should enormously accelerate their propagation. .
Occasionally, and with good reason, Mr. Fox ventures on propheey. He suggested in his first volume that the principle of stepping the mast on deck, instead of On the kelson, success- fully applied already to canoes and dinghies, would spread to larger craft. In the sequel he describei a'sbi-metre, Hakahala,' in which this has been done. NoW, whereas this may be a right principle with regard to the staying of the mast, it has obvious disadvantages with regard to the construction of the hull, in that it means that the considerable compression 01 the mast has to be borne at a T-joint in the middle of a deck- beam—its weakest point This can only be done by using an over-size 'deck-bean:1 of great strength : hi" the case of Hakahala,' three steel beams connected together to form a girder. With larger craft the "difficulty would seem ahno,t insurmountable. I would therefore venture to suggest, in all diffidence, that the theory should be carried further : that instead of being stepped on do*, the mast should be stepped as 'far ahem- the deck as the position of the boom-goose-neck will allow. The step itself should be in the form of sheer- legs, tied at the feet ; thus carrying the weight towards the ends of the beams, beneath which it might again be tauten by large. hanging knees—or those partial bulkheads which are a feature of Barnswalkiw: Apart from constructional theory, the advantage in, say, a six-ton cruiser of having a. clear run fore-arid-aft below deck is too obvious to need emphasis.
_RICHARD HUGHES.
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