Category: Sailing cruisers

Sailing yachts used for cruising, or as cruiser-racers.

The joy of small-boat sailing 95 years ago, by Jack London

Jack London

Jack London Jack London

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.’

[ad name=”intheboatshed-post”]

Read the whole story: Continue reading “The joy of small-boat sailing 95 years ago, by Jack London”

Wooden boat day at Bewl Valley Sailing Club

BVSC

Jim Vandenbos with a well deserved special award
for bloody-mindedness in racing his sailing canoe
in a Force 5 wind

Like most sailing clubs, the club we belong to focuses strongly on racing modern boats. No doubt the racers have a lot of fun, and without them the club would have no officers to run it.

But this concentration on racing and modernity leads, as always, to great conformity, with fleets of practically identical boats. (Historians of boating say that one of the great examples of how racing leads to conformity is the development and improvement of the Thames barge through the latter half of the 19th century, by the way.)

Bewl Valley Sailing Club nevertheless has a small band of eccentrics who don’t quite fit the stereotype, either because they cruise and won’t race; choose to sail old class dinghies from the days when they were typically built from plywood; are weekend craftsmen, some of whom build their own traditional boats with great skill and care while others build in plywood and epoxy; and a very few both design and build.

[ad name=”intheboatshed-post”]

Read more on this and check the photos: Continue reading “Wooden boat day at Bewl Valley Sailing Club”

Anderson by sailing canoe from Stokholm to Petersburg, pages 126 to 192

Click on the headline above before bookmarking. Click on the images below for larger, clearer pictures. For more photos from the R C Anderson’s Canoeing and Camping Adventures click here: http://intheboatshed.net/?s=anderson

Anderson by sailing canoe from Stokholm to Petersburg, pages 126 to 192: ‘Pligg was taking two cameras, one an immense arrangement, and as he intended to develop en route he wanted a good lot of gear, especially as both cameras were fitted for plates only.’

Anderson from Stokholm to Petersburg Anderson by sailing canoe from Stokholm to Petersburg, pages 126 to 192 Anderson by sailing canoe from Stokholm to Petersburg, pages 126 to 192

Anderson by sailing canoe from Stokholm to Petersburg, pages 126 to 192 Anderson Anderson

Anderson Anderson Anderson

[ad name=”intheboatshed-post”]

See the rest of this post: Continue reading “Anderson by sailing canoe from Stokholm to Petersburg, pages 126 to 192”