And now you find you can weather the island, and, choosing a 'smooth,' go about for the last time. If the seas breaking on it looked fine from the yacht nearly three miles off, they look awe-inspiring now close under your lee with their roar thundering in your ears. Now you are no longer riding head first over the seas, but running free at a slashing pace, sheet in hand, watching the sea narrowly over your shoulder, ready to luff instantly if some specially dangerous monster should make it necessary.
And when you are well clear of the rocks you bear up and run before it--most glorious and exulting sensation of all. The big seas come hissing and growling up in pursuit, and lift up her stern on high, and the boat seems positively to fly as she tears down their steep faces. You have to use all your strength at the tiller to keep her straight, and your mate keeps the peak halliards in hand and lowers the peak now and again to ease your task and avert a possible broach to. In less than half an hour you are back on board the yacht; a little wet, maybe, but tingling with exhilaration, and warmed through for the rest of the day.
These are but two typical sails out of many that might be sketched, for the variations of weather and sea and coast are nearly endless, and the yachtsman who is a persistent boat-sailer will find his memory stocked with glowing recollections of rapturous sails and fascinating explorations wherever his yacht has taken him--in breezy English waters, and on the wild west coasts of Scotland and Ireland; in Greece and Italy, and many a pleasant land in the Mediterranean Sea; perhaps even the Coral Islands of the South Pacific, and the wooded bays of far New Zealand.
Of course there is a reverse side to the picture--days when storms make sailing too dangerous to be quite pleasant, and more often, days when want of wind makes it almost intolerably tiresome. To row, or be rowed in, a heavy boat halfway across the Bay of Naples by night is certainly an experience in tediousness. Though even such an ordeal as that is not quite without its compensations. But I feel it is rash of me to say so.
Like so many things material and other in the world we live in, every boat is necessarily a compromise between inconsistent objects. In building a boat you must compromise somewhere between speed and stability, weatherliness and the advantages of light draught. And in the case of a yacht's boat freedom of choice in design is limited by some special considerations. She must not be too heavy to carry in the davits; she must not exceed a certain length, say 25 feet; she must not be too broad in the beam to be carried inboard; and her draught of water must be somewhat shallow for the sake of convenience in landing. Subject to these conditions, stability is, I am sure, the object that should principally be aimed at in the construction of a yacht's boat. The ever-present and the most serious danger of boat-sailing is that of being overpowered by weather: that is to say, of being overtaken by a wind so strong that the boat will not carry any canvas sufficient to work her without instantly capsizing or filling with water. And a very ordinary gale of wind, such as occurs on our coasts once at least in most months of the year, will be enough for this, and will, especially if combined with sea, so overpower any open boat, of a size that can be carried on a yacht, that is exposed to its full strength, that she will be unable to show any canvas to it except just to scud before it.