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Updated: June 9, 2025
'Pick up Sticker's Gat, was the reply. 'It ought to be near Buoy K. A red buoy with a huge K on it soon came into view. Davies peered over to port. 'Just pull up the centre-board, will you? he remarked abstractedly, adding, 'and hand me up the glasses as you re down there. 'Never mind the glasses. I've got it now; come to the main-sheet, was the next remark.
The particular craft which I have now in mind is an excellent sea-boat, fast and comfortable, has a fine cabin with four berths, tables folding on either side of the centre-board well, and capable of seating a dozen, stove, gun-racks, glass and bottle brackets and numerous lockers.
He gave over playing with me, and started on the long beat to Vallejo. To my joy, on the first long tack across, I found that I could eat into the wind just a little bit closer than he. Here was where another man in the boat would have been of value to him; for, with me but a few feet astern, he did not dare let go the tiller and run amidships to try to force down the centre-board.
Catching up the centre-board, lying near, the boy drove it down into its narrow groove with a resounding thud. Seizing the sheet-line with one hand, and squatting well astern he grasped the tiller with the other. Nobly the boat obeyed her little determined commander. The sail filled, she listed to the left and darted forward, bearing bravely up the wind.
She was a fine craft, with a small cabin forward, furnished with every convenience the limited space would permit. The captain seated himself in the standing-room, and began to heap maledictions upon the boat. "I never will sail in her again," said he. "I will burn her, and get a centre-board boat." "What will you take for her, sir?" asked Donald.
"Settle him down on the starboard side of the centre-board case," said Priscilla. "We'll carry the boom to port on the run out." "You will," said Peter, "for the wind's in the east, but you'll have to jibe her at the stone perch if you're going down the channel." "I'm not going down the channel. I mean to stand across to Rossmore and then go into the bay beyond."
One yacht nearly foundered, but fortunately escaped into smooth water, another was dashed upon the rocks, and is probably a total wreck; while a third lost her centre-board over a mud bank, where it buried itself, and held the little craft a helpless prisoner; the crew and guests of the latter took to the small boats, pulled three miles in a squall, and were rescued by a passing steamer when they were all drenched to the skin, and well-nigh exhausted.
Donald kept her moving very lively, and when she had made her two tacks, she had weathered the buoy, and, rounding it, she gybed so near the ledge that the commodore could not have crawled in between him and the buoy if he had been near enough to do so. Hauling up the centre-board, and letting off the sheets, the Sea Foam went for a time before the wind.
This gave us a vessel in shape very much like the centre-board model of boat, but with a deep keel, and consequently great lateral resistance, and space low down in the hull for the stowage of ballast. We thus secured a very small displacement, a light buoyant hull, extraordinary stability, and a fair amount of power.
Before dinner it was carted over to the shop, and in the afternoon the work was actually commenced. The keelson, with the aperture for the centre-board nicely adjusted, was laid down, levelled, and blocked up, so that the yacht should be as true as a hair when completed. The next steps were to set up the stern-post and the stem-piece, and Mr. Ramsay's patterns of these timbers were ready for use.
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