The rudder-post should be attached to the skag which is arranged at the under side and rear of the boat, and with a short iron tiller fastened as shown in Fig. 3 C and D the rudder may be swung.
When sailing on the ice the centre-board should be hauled up as high as it will go, for it is of use only when the boat is in the water.
A scoot is a cranky boat on the ice as the runners or fore-shoes are closer together than on an ice-boat with a triangular frame. Going before the wind it is all right, but when sailing on or up into a stiff wind it will keep a boy moving to hold his balance and steady the boat.
The shovel-nosed scooter shown in Fig. 8 is an easier boat to handle as it is broader than the sharpy, but it is not quite so fast, being slightly heavier.
It is twelve feet long over all with a five-foot beam and fourteen inches high including deck and bottom. The side boards are twelve inches wide, curved up at the bow, and bent in at the stern as shown in the illustration.
Twin masts are stepped two feet from the bow and lashed together nine feet above the deck. The rigging is the same as for the twin-mast ice-boat, and the sail measures twelve feet on the gaff, fourteen feet on the boom, with the leach eleven feet in length.
A small centre-board mounted in a trunk will be necessary for water sailing, and with several coats of paint the scooter will be ready for use.
An interesting boat for a boy to sail is a wind-runner like the one shown in Fig. 9.
Two spruce planks twelve feet long and ten inches wide are attached to three battens and separated four inches. The stern batten is four inches high and two inches wide, and through a hole made in the middle the shank of the rudder-post extends, from the top of which the tiller works.
The front ends of the planks are rounded and mounted on a triangular framework six feet across at the front and extending back about five feet from the ends of the planks.
A mast three inches in diameter and nine feet high is stepped through a collar and into a block attached to the back of the front cross-piece as shown in Fig. 10. An iron pin at the bottom of the mast drops into a hole made in the block and the backstays hold the mast in place.