Early Sail boating

MOOGLY, the Neanderthal man, was having troubles. The previous night he had, like men of the present generation, been out with the boys. Zigzagging caveward, he had faced Zook, his irate, club-swinging mate, who had promptly gone into action with a barrage of mastodon-bone dishware. In a frantic effort to escape, Moogly rushed to the murky river and executed a quick, but ungraceful, dive into the pea-soup waters. His safety was short-lived for, having never studied naval architecture, he became a living exponent of the theory that a floating body must have a weight that is less than that of an equal volume of water. In brief, Moogly was at the point of drowning when he spied a floating tree trunk with some of its withered branches projecting above water. In what passed for a jiffy in those days, he was astride the trunk.

But his safety was none too secure. Zook trotted along the bank accurately heaving the remainder of the family utensils. Luck came to Moogly at that point; a miasmatic breeze came up and caught the upper branches of Moogly’s craft and he sailed out, out toward the murky horizon and freedom from Zook’s hirsute pitching arm.

It was all as simple as that—then. Moogly sailed, but he didn’t know where he was going and he had no idea in his pea-sized brain of how to get back home again. Per­haps he didn’t even want to get back. Out beyond, there might have been better Zooks waiting for the sweet caress of his club.

Things are different now. We want to sail with a lot more comfort, with greater speed, and certainly with some surety of getting some place and then turning around and coming back more or less the same way. Our sailing craft give us the desired speed and comfort, but naval architecture has not done too much to aid us in getting there and back again. These latter points are accomplished through application of what Moogly lacked—a pretty superior sort of human intelligence. We now sail good boats designed by skilled men, but we re­quire some knowledge of why a boat sails, as well as how we must handle the little ship, to make her go when and where we want.

Sailing is fun, lots of fun. Hundreds of thousands of youngsters between eight and 80 consider that it is the world’s best sport. In this era of cluttered concrete, it offers about the only practical method for the average person to taste a slice of transpor­tation freedom. On the water, you find traf­fic laws to be almost nonexistent. True, there are navigating rules designed to pre­vent collisions, but the average boat sailer may not have to apply them more than once or twice a day, rather than at inter­vals of seconds as is true on the road. There is also the head-swelling joy because you are the master of your ship. You go and come when you please and limit your ter­ritory only by the time you have to spend and the borders of the waterway upon which you maneuver your boat.

You can enjoy an entire day’s sail within view of the club house or, even if the boat is pretty small and very inexpensive, you can go off on cruises. Expense is an impor­tant item for most people. It is true that the operating costs of a sailboat are so low as to be considered nonexistent. In fact, only depreciation, anchorage, winter stor­age, and upkeep can be charged as truly applying to operational expenses.

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