Owing To Our
Precautions, We Were Not Taken Aback, But Ran Before The Wind
With Square Yards.
The captain coming on deck, we braced up a
little and stood back for our anchorage.
With the change of wind
came a change of weather, and in two hours the wind moderated into
the light steady breeze, which blows down the coast the greater
part of the year, and, from its regularity, might be called a
trade-wind. The sun came up bright, and we set royals, skysails,
and studding-sails, and were under fair way for Santa Barbara.
The little Loriotte was astern of us, nearly out of sight; but we
saw nothing of the Ayacucho. In a short time she appeared,
standing out from Santa Rosa Island, under the lee of which she
had been hove to, all night. Our captain was anxious to get in
before her, for it would be a great credit to us, on the coast,
to beat the Ayacucho, which had been called the best sailer in
the North Pacific, in which she had been known as a trader for
six years or more. We had an advantage over her in light winds,
from our royals and skysails which we carried both at the fore
and main, and also in our studding-sails; for Captain Wilson
carried nothing above top-gallant-sails, and always unbent his
studding-sails when on the coast. As the wind was light and fair,
we held our own, for some time, when we were both obliged to brace
up and come upon a taught bowline, after rounding the point; and here
he had us on fair ground, and walked away from us, as you would haul
in a line. He afterwards said that we sailed well enough with the
wind free, but that give him a taught bowline, and he would beat us,
if we had all the canvas of the Royal George.
The Ayacucho got to the anchoring ground about half an hour before us,
and was furling her sails when we came up to it. This picking up your
cables is a very nice piece of work. It requires some seamanship to
do it, and come to at your former moorings, without letting go another
anchor. Captain Wilson was remarkable, among the sailors on the coast,
for his skill in doing this; and our captain never let go a second
anchor during all the time that I was with him. Coming a little to
windward of our buoy, we clewed up the light sails, backed our main
topsail, and lowered a boat, which pulled off, and made fast a spare
hawser to the buoy on the end of the slip-rope. We brought the other
end to the captain, and hove in upon it until we came to the slip-rope,
which we took to the windlass, and walked her up to her chain, the captain
helping her by backing and filling the sails. The chain is then passed
through the hawse-hole and round the windlass, and bitted, the slip-rope
taken round outside and brought into the stern port, and she is safe
in her old berth.
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