Sailing across Europe

21.08 in across, and, Boat Plans, club, europe, fan, paradox, poppycock, port, sailing, silent, starboard

IF YOU’RE NOT ACQUAINTED with him already, allow me to introduce Negley Farson. He was an early 20th century American author, adventurer, war correspondent and (more relevant to this column) a sailor. In the 1920s, he and his English wife, Eve, sailed a 26-foot wooden centerboard yawl called Flame from England, through the canals, rivers, and lakes of Europe, over the Alps and  right down to the Black Sea. It was an extraordinary voyage that took them eight months.

He describes it briefly in his famous autobiography, The Way of a Transgressor, although he did in fact devote a whole book to this boating trip. It’s called  Sailing Across Europe. Both books are still in print, together with many others, including a classic on fishing, which he loved dearly.

Flame was probably the first boat of its kind to go through what was then the only freshwater link across Europe connecting the North and Black Seas. It climbed over the beautiful Frankischer Jura mountains in a series of steps — 101 locks in 107 miles.

“So shallow and so overgrown with weeds was it, that we could not use our motor,” Farson reported, “and I hauled Flame, with a rope around my waist, over the Frankischer Jura range! As soon as breakfast was over, I would go out on the towpath and turn myself into a horse. Flamewas 2 1/2 tons deadweight, and it took me three weeks to pull her over the mountains for 107 miles.”

They were now over the backbone of Europe, beginning the long descent to the Black Sea, but they missed disaster by inches at Ratisbon, where they shot beneath a bridge built in the year 1300. “Once out in that swift current of the Danube pouring out from its gorge above Kelheim, we were helpless. The steeples and roofs of Ratisbon simply raced at us as Flame hurled her weight at the one navigable arch of the bridge. We had taken out masts out to get under this arch.

“Not until the last minute did I see that the peasants at Kelheim had directed us to steer through the wrong arch. It was choked with rocks so that a white froth of rapids was sluicing through it. I had to swing Flame sharply to the right and try to hit a small open hole of arch by the town wall.

“We just made it, grazing it as we shot through. All I saw of it was a row of open mouths from the Ratisboners wondering what on earth was this little craft doing up above the bridge, some yells as we shot perilously at the bridge — and then the sun was shining on the back of my head again. The bridge was being snatched away into the distance behind us, Ratisboners wildly waving us a goodbye salute.”

On their way to the Black Sea, Farson and his wife experienced many more hair-raising adventures (some even life-threatening)  in countries recently destabilized by the Great War, and their journey makes wonderfully exciting reading. Great stuff for these cold winter nights.

Today’s Thought

Traveling is not just seeing the new; it is also leaving behind. Not just opening doors; also closing them behind you, never to return. But the place you have left forever is always there for you to see whenever you shut your eyes. And the cities you see most clearly at night are the cities you have left and will never see again.

— Jan Myrdal, The Silk Road

Tailpiece

“Do you prefer American girls, Canadian girls, Mexican girls, French girls, or German girls?”

“Yes.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

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Sailing science advances slowly

04.08 in across, advances, and, Boat Plans, boats, dont, europe, mix, pets, sailing, science, slowly, why

IT TOOK MANKIND a long time to figure out how to represent the shape of a boat on paper. Indeed it is quite an achievement to be able to “see” the three-dimensional shape of a hull in the mind’s eye just by looking at a set of lines drawn on a flat surface. It took centuries before waterlines, buttock lines, and stations became the everyday tools of naval architects.

In fact, before the sixteenth century little was known of the science of ship design, according to Steve Killing, author of Yacht Design Explained: “It was experience rather than theory that taught the shipbuilder (who was often the designer) what was fast and what was seaworthy.”

In those days, experimentation was the only way to make a new ship better than the last, and sometimes progress wasn’t progress at all, Killing says. “In 1697 Paul Hoste, a French Jesuit priest and professor mathematics, was beginning to explore the new science that Newton’s example had inspired.”

Hoste wrote: “It cannot be denied that the art of constructing ships . . . is the least perfect of all the arts . . . . The best constructors build the two principal parts of the ship, viz. the bow and the stern, almost entirely by eye, whence it happens that the same constructor, building at the same time two ships after the same model, most frequently makes them so unequal that they have quite opposite qualities.”

Progress in the early days was very slow, and we might be forgiven for presuming that science is making much greater strides in this modern age. But we are forced to think again when accidents happen such as the sinking of OneAustraliaduring the 1995 America’s Cup Challengers’ Series. That catastrophe came about because of simple structural failure.

So much for computer-aided design. “Even with the latest scientific know-how on hand, we’re still learning things the hard way,” notes Killing.

Today’s Thought

There is a period of life when we go back as we advance.

— Rousseau, Émile

Tailpiece

“How much is a bottle of brandy? It’s my nephew’s birthday and he likes brandy.”

“Well, madam, it depends on the age. Seven-year-old is quite reasonably priced. Ten-year-old costs a bit more. Twelve-year-old can be quite expensive.”

“Gee, that’s terrible. My nephew is 25.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

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Strange things going on

02.19 in across, Boat Plans, europe, going, into, on, sailing, storms, strange, things

THE PLANETS are in line. Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue has a size-16 woman on the cover for the first time. Playboy magazine has stopped publishing nudes. Something’s going on. Should we duck or run for cover?

Of the three, Playboy seems the most ominous. It’s the Internet, of course. Men no longer have to buy Playboy to find out what women actually look like under all those clothes they wear.  The Internet is full of free photographs of naked women, the great majority of them taken and submitted by themselves.

In the old days when I worked in South Africa, you weren’t allowed to see women’s bodies until you got married. Any book, film, or magazine with a naked woman in it was banned. The apartheid censors were rather cavalier in this respect. They even banned books without first reading them. For example, they took one look at the title of Anna Sewell’s best-seller, Black Beauty, and banned it immediately. It was actually about a horse, not a woman, and the censorship board suffered withering scorn when the news came out, but that didn’t stop them in their attempts to curb free speech.

Playboy was also on the banned list, of course, probably at the top of it. So when I found myself in Rio de Janeiro at the end of a transatlantic yacht race, I bought a copy of Playboy at a corner newsstand. I knew a man at the newspaper where I worked in South Africa who swore to uphold the traditions of free speech by hoarding a secret stash of Playboy magazines, which he rented out to trusted colleagues. He would pay me at least 20 bucks for it if I could smuggle it home. But I had a better idea.

I took it back to the boat, which the skipper was due to sail back home to South Africa with a new crew. I told nobody about it. I unzipped the cover of the starboard berth in the saloon, slipped the magazine into the bottom, and zipped it up again.

Weeks later, when the yacht arrived in Durban, I met the owner/skipper on board. In front of him, I unzipped the berth cover and there was my Playboy, untouched by human hand, pristine after thousands of miles of ocean travel. The skipper nearly fainted. “If Customs had found that they would have confiscated my boat,” he yelled. “Get it out of here.”

He obviously didn’t care much for free speech, so I took my Playboy to work, (after checking out the articles, of course) where I collected my money, and it joined the secret stash. Just another small blow for press freedom.

Today’s Thought

Free speech is not to be regulated  like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience . . . that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance.

— William O. Douglas, Associate Justice, US Supreme Court, 24 Jun 57

Tailpiece

“Is this the sound-effects department?”

“Yes.”

“Good, send me a galloping horse immediately.”

“What for?”

“Well, the script calls for the sound of two coconut shells being clapped together.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

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