As black as night she turned to white, And cast against the cloud A snowy sheet as if each surge Upturned a sailor's shroud.
This is poetry; but it is true. You look to windward, and you look to leeward; you look ahead, and you look astern, and you feel that, if you are not already engulfed, you probably may be in the next minute.
Dr. Johnson said the pleasure of going to sea was getting ashore again; certainly the pleasure of a storm is getting into smooth water again.
The ideas of pleasure as connected with yachting vary as much as the ideas of Paradise; to one it means steaming at full speed from one port to another; but this becomes monotonous. A friend of mine used to write a letter at Cowes, address it to himself at Guernsey, and then steam, hard all, to Guernsey to get his letter. When he got it he would write to himself at Plymouth, then steam away, hard all again, to get that, and so on; even in steaming you must have an object of some kind, you know.
To another dowagering up and down the Solent, lunching on board, and then hurrying back to dine and sleep ashore are pleasure; to another, sailing with the wind, or against the wind, or drifting when there is no wind, is the ideal of yachting. Certainly that is mine. I have tried both. I have had a steamer and I have had sailing vessels, and if I lived to the age of the Hyperboreans and owned several gold mines I should never keep a steamer for pleasure. In sailing, the interest never flags; the rigging, the sails, the anchors, the cables, the boats, the decks, all have their separate interest; every puff of wind, every catspaw, is a source of entertainment, and when the breeze comes, and, with everything drawing below and aloft, you tear along ten or twelve knots an hour, the sensation of pleasure is complete--if you are not sick.
I can never allow that steaming, under any conditions, can give the same pleasure as sailing--nor a hundredth part of it. If you are in a hurry, steam by all means--steam, steam, steam, pile on the coal, blacken sea and sky with your filthy smoke, and get into your port; but that is the pleasure of locomotion, not of yachting. Even as regards locomotion, there are occasions when a fine sailing vessel will go by a steamer as if she were standing still.