She Was All Right In Every Particular, They Said, Except
That I'd Never Be Able To Run Her Before It In A Stiff Wind And Sea.
"Her Lines," They Explained Enigmatically, "It Is The Fault Of Her
Lines.
She simply cannot be made to run, that is all." Well, I
wish I'd only had those crack sailors of the Bohemian Club on board
the Snark the other night for them to see for themselves their one,
vital, unanimous judgment absolutely reversed.
Run? It is the one
thing the Snark does to perfection. Run? She ran with a sea-anchor
fast for'ard and a full mizzen flattened down aft. Run? At the
present moment, as I write this, we are bowling along before it, at
a six-knot clip, in the north-east trades. Quite a tidy bit of sea
is running. There is nobody at the wheel, the wheel is not even
lashed and is set over a half-spoke weather helm. To be precise,
the wind is north-east; the Snark's mizzen is furled, her mainsail
is over to starboard, her head-sheets are hauled flat: and the
Snark's course is south-south-west. And yet there are men who have
sailed the seas for forty years and who hold that no boat can run
before it without being steered. They'll call me a liar when they
read this; it's what they called Captain Slocum when he said the
same of his Spray.
As regards the future of the Snark I'm all at sea.
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