United States or Heard Island and McDonald Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


While we've got it, and the dynamo, and the storage battery, why not have an ice-machine? Ice in the tropics! It is more necessary than bread. Here goes for the ice-machine! Now I am plunged into chemistry, and my lips hurt, and my mind hurts, and how am I ever to find the time to study navigation? "Spare no money," I said to Roscoe. "Let everything on the Snark be of the best.

The good men have positions, and are not likely to forsake their one-thousand-to- fifteen-thousand-ton billets for the Snark with her ten tons net.

Whenever I looked at the bow of the Snark or thought of her water- tight compartments, I was encouraged. Nobody else, however, was encouraged. My friends began to make bets against the various sailing dates of the Snark. Mr. Wiget, who was left behind in charge of our Sonoma ranch was the first to cash his bet. He collected on New Year's Day, 1907. After that the bets came fast and furious.

Charmian and I thought that California was a little bit of all right. Henry swore by Rapa, and Tehei staked all on Bora Bora for his own blood's sake; while Wada and Nakata sang the sanitary paean of Japan. One evening, as the Snark worked around the southern end of the island of Ugi, looking for a reputed anchorage, a Church of England missionary, a Mr.

I had essayed it once before, under my first captain, who, out of San Francisco, jumped the Snark so amazingly over the chart that I really had to find out what was doing. It was fairly easy to find out, for we had a run of twenty-one hundred miles before us.

When we attempted to pursue them, they left solid footing, rose up in the air, and fluttered about like humming-birds. They were much larger than ours on the Snark. But ours are young yet, and haven't had a chance to grow. Also, the Snark has centipedes, big ones, six inches long. We kill them occasionally, usually in Charmian's bunk.

At the same moment the distance recorded on the log was noted. At twelve M., when the sight for latitude was taken. I again noted the log, which showed me that since eight o'clock the Snark had run 24 miles. Her true course had been west 0.75 south. Opposite, in the next two columns, I found that the Snark had made 3.5 miles of southing or latitude, and that she had made 23.7 miles of westing.

Wait till I get out on the ocean, then I'll be able to tell more about the cruising and sailing qualities of the ketch. As originally planned, the Snark was to be forty feet long on the water-line. But we discovered there was no space for a bath-room, and for that reason we have increased her length to forty-five feet. Her greatest beam is fifteen feet. She has no house and no hold.

It drowned Roscoe out of his bunk and ruined the tools in the engine-room, to say nothing of the provisions it ruined in the galley. Also, the sides of the Snark leaked, and the bottom leaked, and we had to pump her every day to keep her afloat.

Go you and do likewise be your own teacher." And right there Roscoe crashed, and he was high priest of the Snark no longer. I invaded the sanctuary and demanded the ancient tomes and magic tables, also the prayer- wheel the sextant, I mean. And now, in simple language. I shall describe how I taught myself navigation.