Читать книгу A Guide to Motor Boat Design and Construction - A Collection of Historical Articles Containing Information on the Methods and Equipment of the Boat Builder - Various - Страница 7

“SOUSE my swashbuckets, but there’s a lot of fittin’s about a boat!” You won’t say this, you’ll groan it, before they’re all bought; and most of them have to be before she ever leaves the dock. Otherwise, next time you’re down Quarantine way you’re liable to run afoul of a fast launch with a queer flag full of vertical red and white stripes, and before you can manage to disappear she’ll give you the four toots, which signal you will do well to obey, for it says: “Heave to! We’re coming alongside to take out your works and see what makes you act so. This means YOU!” Presently two leathery officials in navy blue come over the side and begin to look around. “Let’s see ye’re running lights? Hev ye got any?”

“Er,—no; but we’ve a cook for’d with one flaming red nose and two green eyes. Wouldn’t he do for a combination headlight if we stand him up in the bow and let him shut his port eye——”

“One hundred, please. Got any life-preservers?”

“Stacks of it—in the ice-box; it’s all yours——”

The inspector shakes his head and tries your whistle. “One-second squeak,” he mutters. “Got a fog horn?”

“Sure thing! Jim, here, can beller like an Alabama coon when he——”

“One hundred bucks——”

“What!!”

“I said ‘One hundred dollars’ fine!’ young man, for being at large without side lights, life-preservers, a fog horn, and I don’t know what all besides.”

(Long, panic-stricken pause.)

“Here, officer—take my boat. She’s all I have in the world (sob), and as much as ten dollars couldn’t buy her——”

Oh, it’s harrowing, but it’s much safer, to have all the fittin’s the law requires, besides a whole lot that the far sterner laws of the Sea insist upon—with your life as the penalty of being without them. It’s the most joyful thing in the world to be minus a compass in a thick fog, out of sight of land; it’s screamingly funny to have a canary-bird’s-claw anchor, with a roaring reef under your lee; it’s the height of hilarity to be under way in a nor’easter with no oil-skins and a four-hour watch ahead—but one can be still happier with all these “fittin’s.”

The principal trouble with fittin’s is,—your pocket-book. By the time the boat is built or bought, you’re busted; so you venture out, shy a raft of commodities that you’ll get nabbed for not having, or else the Sea will want to know where they are in that curiously urgent way the Sea has of reminding you that your boat is ill-found.

First, the anchor. I shouldn’t advise anything less than 1 1/2 pounds per foot of length of your boat, and 2 pounds, if she has high sides with extension trunk cabin. Such a boat will usually gambol all around the anchor—playful to look at, but nervous business for the owner unless he knows the bower hook is big enough. If you are over 35 feet you need at least a 70-pound sheet anchor and a 50-pound stream anchor, the latter for ordinary cruising, as it is easy to heave, and the former for business purposes, when the real goods are blowing. And be sure you get a forged wrought iron anchor, not a malleable one; that is, for the regulation fluke-and-stock anchor. The stockless variety with swinging blades are of cast steel, but I do not care for them, preferring the old-fashioned kedge hook that was good enough for Noah and Nelson and all those other primitive navigators. The forged anchor is easily recognized by the hammer marks where the shank joins the crown and by the clean appearance of the flukes. If she is suspiciously smooth along the crown and the edges of the flukes are a little ragged and fringy, she’s a malleable, and old Nep will grin up his sleeve to see you buy her. I once rode out a bird of a nor’easter on a malleable anchor and it got the hook so deep in the sand that nothing but the engine would pull it up. When she came up on the bill-board the shank was trying to bite the ear of the port fluke, so bent was it, and, on attempting to straighten it, it parted just under the crown at the first tap of the blacksmith’s sledge. As we had had a neat, rocky shore under our lee all night, this scribe would have been by now playing jewsharps to the mermaids if that shank had parted down there in the sand.

And, when you bend on your anchor rope, don’t forget to make fast the cotterpin which holds the anchor stock in place when set. It wants a short piece of galvanized chain closed around the stock so that the cotter will not plunk overboard the first time you take it out to fold in the stock of the anchor.

Attached to the anchor is—rope. Have a chain if you prefer, but good manila for mine. Nothing less than 2 1/2-inch (circumference) for any boat from 22 to 40 feet, and chain for the sheet anchor of the latter size. Secure it to the anchor ring with a fisherman’s bend, which is simply two turns around the ring, across in front of the standing part of the rope, and under inside the turns around the ring. Pull taut and seize the end to the standing part with a bit of marlin. You will need not less than 150 feet of anchor cable, as you may have to anchor in a 30-foot channel with a six-knot tide some day, and your scope should never be less than five times the depth. Then you want a stout 3/4-inch eyebolt in the anchor post or windlass head to bend the bitter end of the cable to. If she once starts to go, nothing but that eyebolt will save the rope and anchor for you, for if you dare touch it you’ll go overboard like a skyrocket. A little windlass is necessary for any anchor over 75 pounds, but the usual 40 to 60-pound anchor can be hoisted on deck by hand, and, to break it out, simply snub up short and start the engine, tripping the anchor, whereat you can easily gather it in. The cost of a good anchor is about twelve cents a pound.

Both for’d and astern you need chocks for the anchor cable. I used to get these in polished brass, but now, galvanized iron is plenty good enough, with a perennial coat of paint. The polished brass chock is too much workful to keep looking like anything. Besides, these chocks will cost you about $4 for bow and stern sets in polished brass. Before leaving the subject of anchors in general I want to put in a word for the sea anchor. Some day you may need it; off soundings. Be sure that there is something in your boat like a grating, a stern sheet or what-not, that can be rigged as a sea-anchor in emergency. Make a bridle, attaching to three corners of this invention and weight one of the corners so it will float upright, while the bridle drags it vertically, broadside to, in the water. Bend the anchor cable to this bridle and get her over if the weather is thickening to wind’ard and the motor promises to be in for a three-hour balk. It will keep her head to the seas; and it may save something worse than an ugly rolling. Use the dink submerged if your power boat is large and the power minus for the nonce.

The next “fittin’s” to look to are the running lights. The old rules used to taboo the combination light. Even a green-eyed citizen, with a red nose was disallowed, but now motor boats under 26 feet overall may carry them, provided that the former white light that used to be in the middle of the combination does not show. Boats of this size are also required to show a clear white light a foot higher than the green and red combination for’d, so that your boat must have a flag-pole socket astern and a pole with halliards for the lantern by night, and presumably your ensign by day. For motorboats from 26 up to 40 feet overall (deck measurement) four lights are required; green and red starboard and port side lights, in light screens, so fixed as to show the light from dead ahead to two points abaft the beam; a white light, placed as far for’d as possible, throwing an unbroken light ten points on each side of the vessel (dead ahead to two points abaft the beam on either side); a white light aft to show all around the horizon. This is also your anchor light, which must be shown from sunset to sunrise unless you happen to be an inner boat in an anchorage whose limits are already clearly lighted. If you get run down while at anchor without a light you are liable for all damages to the other fellow, besides the Government fine. All these lanterns must have fresnel glass lenses, which are fluted, with prisms inside, so that the flame appears as a long, bright bar of light when looking at it from the water alongside. In the spitkit class under 26 feet, plain glass is allowed, but it makes a poor, discouraging, dangerous light to carry. A set of fresnel glass lanterns in polished brass will cost you about $12 for the four. Screens for side lights of motorboats above 26 feet must be 18 inches long and above 60 feet, 24 inches long. The screens are usually painted red and green inside, though the law does not expressly require it.

The running rules on which the navigation laws are based have been made into rhymes by some forgotten poetical genius, and are well worth committing to memory, for it is impossible to get them wrong, once learned that way; the meter will not jibe if you attempt to get port and starboard mixed up.

RULE I.

Meeting steamers do not dread

If you see three lights ahead.

Green to green, or red to red,

Perfect safety, go ahead!

Pretty and soothing, isn’t it? Especially the third line. Rule II covers the only dangerous situations afloat, and so it has quite a poem:

RULE II.

If to starboard red appear,

’Tis your duty to keep clear;

Port or starboard, back or stop her,

Act as judgment says is proper.

But if on your port is seen

A vessel with a light of green

There’s not so much for you to do,

The green light must keep clear of you.

The poet who wrote that was a genius. Take it apart, and I defy you to get any of it in wrong again and yet come out all right in your meter. These two rules cover about the whole subject of maneuvering at night except when overtaking another craft, in which case you must keep clear of him. Sail boats carry no white light, wherefore keep clear a single red or green light as all sailboats have the right of way. Tugs carry two white lights hanging from the top of the flag pole for ordinary tows, three for tows 600 feet long or more. You can perceive by the above that “by their lights ye shall know them”—not only what the stranger is, but which way she is going.

By day the rules of the road prescribe a corresponding set of navigation signals; wherefore you will find the law requiring you to possess in good working order: a whistle or blast of two seconds’ duration; a fog bell; and a fog horn. (They used to call for four seconds’ blast, but even the 18-inch hand-whistle would peter out in about three seconds unless blown by an expert.) As sold, you get the hand-pump in polished brass for $1.75 in the 12-inch length, and $3.50 in the 18-inch, with the whistle stuck on an elbow at the bottom of the pump. This will not do, since the whistle has to be above the cabin roof to be both ornamental and useful; so the handiest place for the pump is to screw it to the cockpit floor just under the steering wheel with a brass 3/8-inch pipe, running up the cabin panel to the roof, on which is screwed the whistle. This sailorman has no use for a chime, for the reason that three small whistles use up a good deal more air than one larger one. One bright spirit of my acquaintance has an air cylinder reservoir 2 feet long by 12 inches diameter, with a check valve on it, through which his pump fills the reservoir with compressed air. A very respectable deep-voiced tugboat whistle connects to the reservoir and every one gives him a wide berth in a fog, not guessing by the whistles that it only belongs to an 18-foot motorboat instead of an ocean-going tug. The foghorn may be an ordinary tin fish-horn from 2 to 3 feet long. Don’t blow it under way in a fog, unless your regular whistle is rusty or out of whack, for the other boats will take you for a sail craft, and it isn’t fair to give wrong impressions at sea. Your fog bell may be 6 inches across the mouth for motorboats up to 40 feet, but the 8-inch bell in polished brass is only $1.85, so by all means get it, no matter how small your craft. You’ll appreciate it some day in a thick fog! And don’t blow your horn and ring your bell at the same time, as Kipling makes his fishermen do in “Captains Courageous.” The two signals mean two different things, under way and anchored, and are sure to get you into trouble if you sound them both at once. When under way at half speed in a fog blow a “prolonged” blast (say, three seconds if the pump will let you) every minute. If anchored, ring the bell for five seconds once every minute; not oftener, as that would tell the other fellow that there are two of you, but right on the dot, timing it with your watch.

In navigating by day, one blast of your whistle means, “I’m turning to starboard,” or “Will pass you on your port.” Two blasts:—“I’m turning to port,” or “Will pass you on your starboard.” Meeting obliquely, if you have the other fellow on your port you have the right of way. He should then give one blast saying that he is turning to starboard and will pass you to port. You answer with a single blast showing that you understand. If he wishes to cross your bow he will give two blasts, meaning he will turn to port. If you assent, two blasts give him the permission; if not, do not attempt to cross-signal or contradict—blow four short toots and slow your motor until both of you come to some agreement. He should at once slow down on hearing your alarm signal. Most harbor tugs will cross your bows even when you have the right of way, and few of them ask your permission. They feel that “business is business” and you are out for pleasure, so it is not worth while getting stuffy about it. If in a dangerous predicament and you have reversed engines, give three blasts to let the other fellow know you have done so, and if you see any of his lights out at night give him the “double-two,” or two short blasts, a pause, and then two more. It is not merely a courtesy, it is your duty. And if you hear the double-two, don’t gape around like a man paralyzed, but look to both your screens, your bow light and stern lantern, at once. It may mean you!

All boats are required to carry life preservers, two sets of the harbor rules, and means for putting out gasoline fires. While the law regarding life preservers reads only for the hired launch, it worked backwards to the bonafide owner, as every hired launch immediately became “the owner and his friends,” so that in many harbors the inspectors were forced to require one life preserver to each person on all boats so as to reach the commercial launches. The sets of harbor rules are printed both in pamphlet form and as a framed document. For small boats up to 40 feet the pamphlet form, kept in the chart drawer, will answer, but larger boats must frame and post up the harbor rules in some conspicuous place in the chart room. As for a good gasoline extinguisher, you can get a dandy little tin sand squirt-can loaded with chemicals for a dollar, and there is no excuse for being without one.

So much for the legal “fittin’s”—now for the equally important things that the Sea requires. First, good steering gear. There will come times when you will have to snake that boat around on her own tail with the seas driving you ashore and a rock-ribbed dock on either side of you, so don’t be niggardly about the size of the rudder. There is nothing more comfortable to a sailorman than a ship quick to mind her helm, one that will go the limit as regards turning on her own heel when she has to. About one square foot of rudder to every ten feet of length of your motorboat isn’t a bad rule of thumb. Have a good stout shoe running out from the skeg to the heel of the rudder. The kind that are swung free look pretty, but you lose interest in them if some one backs the boat against a bunch of rocks and jams the rudder forthwith. The tiller rope is best of red cord with steel wire insertion, for boats up to 35 feet. Beyond this, chain or steel wire rope only. The red rope costs 6 to 8 cents a foot. Lead it through flat iron sheave blocks under the washboards, being sure that the sheaves are somewhat bigger than the rope and avoiding sharp bends out of the general plane of the sheaves. The steer wheel drum wants enough port and starboard turns of your rope on it to swing the rudder full each way without over-running the securing staple which anchors the rope on the drum. A good five-spoke polished brass wheel large enough for any boat up to 35 feet can be had for $1.75. It has a brass shoe which carries the axle and drum, and this shoe should be bolted to some stout panel where it will not pull out, no matter if you put on strain enough to nearly part the steering rope. You will, you know, some one of these days, so you might as well be prepared for it.

The steering wheel should go on the port side of the cockpit. To me the wheel invariably suggests a compass, as one seldom sees the one without the other just in front of it, in a stout binnacle, screwed to the deck. For motor boats the best rig, to my mind, is a permanent compass mounted on one of the aft panels inside of the cabin, with a pane of glass so that the skipper at the wheel outside can see it day and night by simply glancing through his binnacle pane. This is also the cheapest rig, and one which you can feel reasonably certain will stay well lighted and be protected from the weather, which the small brass binnacle, with its dinky lamp, will not stay or be. Assuming that you elect to locate your compass in a permanent box on the aft port cabin panel, set the rhumb line true fore and aft and screw the fixture in place just under the panel window pane. The rhumb line is a fixed black line which you will find inside the bowl of the compass and represents the fore and aft center-line of the ship with respect to the rotating compass card. By the rhumb line you lay your course in degrees and minutes on the card as taken off your chart bearing. Simply keep your rhumb line on the point on the card which represents your bearing and you will “arrive.”

In almost any cruise you will need a set of charts covering the various landfalls you will make, giving all buoys, lights, soundings, etc. By writing to the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey you can get a book giving all the charts for the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coast lines. These are numbered and you order the ones you want from the diagram maps in the book. The charts cost about 50 cents apiece and are very complete and up to date. If your boat draws any water at all, do not attempt to go beyond the limits of your chart without picking up the course on another. We once tried that on a river showing only five miles back from the harbor chart. Fifteen years before I had often navigated that river so I followed the old bend regardless of the fact that many a large schooner was now sailing down some new channel cut through the marsh. I didn’t know where the new channel went, but I was sure of the bend, so I followed the familiar old course. Suddenly there was a crash for’d and our cruiser hurdled up into the air. Something solid drummed along our keel and out astern, and we found ourselves afloat in that new channel with our rudder jammed fast. We had hurdled clear over a sheet piling breakwater, two feet below water at mean low tide, with our 35-foot cruiser going ten knots an hour. A tap on the rudder with a machinist’s hammer freed it and we got under way again, but it was a ticklish business thereafter without any chart!

As stated before, the chart gives soundings at mean low tide, in fathoms in white waters and in feet in stippled shoals and shore beaches. Where fore, in picking out your anchorings in a cruise be very sure to take the tide into account and allow at least four feet under your keel at dead low tide. This is because if any sea gets up you will touch at the trough of every wave and pound the skeg off her unless you have at least a few feet clear below it in still water at low tide. To get your depth you need an exceedingly important little item of equipment, the “dipsey lead” which is “tar” for the deep sea sounding plummet. A seven-pound billet will do for any motor boat. Bend on it a length of stout braided “banks” line and let it be at least fifty feet long, as there will come times when you have got to put down the hook in mid-channel and hence will be curious about the depth. For taking anchorage or “feeling your way” soundings, stand up on the starboard bow and swing the lead out into the pickle, about twenty feet ahead, using an underhand swing. Don’t attempt to whirl the lead in grand circles as you’ve seen them do on big ships going seven or eight knots in five fathoms of water. You’ll only hang the plummet on some innocent bystander’s ear, and will make a landlubberly exhibition of yourself in general. It isn’t easy to heave the lead like an old salt. No trouble about the other stunt!

Mark your lead line in feet, with a brass clip at two feet below your boat’s draught, a red flannel rag at 10 feet, a white bunting rag at 15 feet, a leather tag at 20 feet, etc. There is no use adopting the regulation nautical markings of the lead line as they are far too coarse and too deep to be of much use for a motor boat. The different tags, however, are good to adopt as they show the depth as well by night as by day. You can easily feel the difference in the tags and measure the exact point on the line from the nearest tag with your arm even on dark nights.

A highly important but not much appreciated “fittin’ ” (before launching) is the bilge pump. First, when your boat is being built, see that the lead holes (“limbers”) under the ribs fore and aft are all clear and have not gotten choked up with chips and sawdust. Choose a handy point for the bilge well and have a permanent bilge pump put in near it with a permanent suction to the well and a discharge overboard. No well-built motor boat should leak much, but as they gradually grow old they leak a little more every year; and the stern gland of the screw shaft lets in more or less water throughout the season, since its packing will, get worn and hard. It is well worth while, to simply have to work a handle whenever a peep at the bilge well tells you that she has made a few inches of water. The little brass bilge pumps sold for motorboats throw a wonderfully voluminous jet of water,—out of a clear, clean pailful of it. But handling dirty bilge-water is another matter, and these pumps usually stick before the first ten strokes are made. Then there is nothing for it but unscrew the pump and get the chip or grit out from under the ball check-valve, or else free the ball itself, which often sticks on its seat. Put it together again, and observe how nicely it will stick once more in the next three strokes. Besides which, some one has to hold the rubber hose over the side or else it is sure to squirt on the boat cushions, and another boy will have to put in time holding down your temper for you while you struggle with the pump.

Under the head of fixtures and fittin’s comes the signal mast and the awning. The signal mast is a very natty and handy addition to any motor boat, but nothing will make you look more like a landlubber, a gardener, and a cabbage-planter than a signal-mast badly stepped, badly raked, or improperly stayed. Wherefore make a scale drawing of your boat and experiment with a pencil and rubber as to height and step of your signal-mast before cutting any holes for it. It wants a neat yard arm hung in a rope bridle above the shroud withe, and the permanent halliard pulley-blocks are at either end of the yard. Your club flag may fly from the starboard block on the yardarm, with blue peter on bow pole and yacht ensign astern; or else the house flag takes the yard arm, the club flag, the bow pole, and the ensign the stern. The port pulley-block is for signalling.

As regards the awning, let it come forward over the extension trunk cabin by all means, as even a foot of cool shade under the awning will keep the cabin from becoming a sweatbox. All the awning rail equipment should be stout and securely bolted to the deck, as it is the very thing which collides most frequently with dock string pieces, sail craft’s bow-sprits, steam-yacht boat-booms, etc. A good rig is of one-half-inch galvanized piping, forming a hand-rail clear around the awning with short 16-inch stanchions to the cabin deck and long ones to the main deck around the cockpit. The awning is a few inches short of this rail all around, so that it can be stretched taut by a lashing around the rail. This latter should stop a foot back from the edge of the cabin eaves, so as to provide a runway for’d and should leave at least seven feet of clear deck for’d to give room for handling the anchor gear.