Here’s a quote from a fiery, passionate piece Jack London wrote for the magazine Country Life in America in 1912:
‘Barring captains and mates of big ships, the small-boat sailor is the real sailor. He knows—he must know—how to make the wind carry his craft from one given point to another given point. He must know about tides and rips and eddies, bar and channel markings, and day and night signals; he must be wise in weather-lore; and he must be sympathetically familiar with the peculiar qualities of his boat which differentiate it from every other boat that was ever built and rigged. He must know how to gentle her about, as one instance of a myriad, and to fill her on the other tack without deadening her way or allowing her to fall off too far.’
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Read the whole story:at the Jack London Index: The Joy of Small-Boat Sailing
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Hi Gavin,
Nice post! Jack London also had a 45ft ketch, the Snark
http://www.huntington.org/LibraryDiv/snark.html
no one is quite sure what ever happened to her:
http://www.jacklondons.net/snark2.html
You can visit his ruined mansion in Sonoma county, CA, near San Francisco, where there are also a lot of artifacts and a nice model of the Snark. There is also an effort afoot to build a replica ship.
Cheers,
David