with putty or marine glue, the wet might have got in and caused decay. The insertion of a knife into various parts of the crack will soon settle this matter. The main boom should be examined for "springs" near the outer end chiefly; the bowsprit at the gammon iron, or stem head, and at the outer end above and about the sheave hole; the mast, about the deck and under the hounds. The masthead will require very careful examination under the eyes of the rigging for rot, and right away to the cap for wrings, which generally show themselves by a lot of little cracks. The rigging, blocks, and sails will of course require an overhauling. The standing rigging is now generally made of galvanised iron wire or steel wire; if it has seen much service, rust from the inner strands will show itself, and the "lay" of the strands will have been stretched nearly straight. Hemp and manilla rope, if much worn, with a washed-out appearance, should be in certain places unlayed, or untwisted, and if there be any signs of stranding, or if the tar is dried up, the rope will have seen its best day. The shells of the block will require examination for splits, and the hooks, eyes, sheave, and pin for flaws of whatever description. The sails should be laid out and examined; if the stitching in the seams or roping be worn and ragged, if the canvas be black looking, very soft and thin, admitting a great deal of daylight through the woof, then the sails will be only fit for a fisherman or coaster. As a rule, a suit of sails will last through four or five summer cruises; but three months' knocking about, winter cruising in the Mediterranean or elsewhere, will do as much harm as two summer cruises, and it will never be prudent to start on a long winter cruise with sails that have seen more than three seasons' wear. Of course sails may have been exceptionally well cared fornever rolled up wet or unfairly stretched-and the vessel may have been in the happy condition of never having been under way in much of a breeze. Then if they are six or seven years old, and an expert pronounces them fit for a winter's cruise, they can be depended upon; but to be caught in a breeze is bad enough, and it is a great deal worse if when so caught some of the spars, rigging, blocks, or sails give out. A mainsail is most likely to go at the clew or to split from foot to head, but occasionally they split right across from leech to luff. A jib will go all ways; its head will come off, tack or clew will come off, and sometimes they will split or burst out of the stay rope. For racing, a mainsail is of little use after the second year, and even with the greatest possible care they will hardly do the third, as they get thin and soft and fly right away from the spars into bags with the least weight in the wind. The owners of some small yachts have a new mainsail every season, and this is quite necessary if the yacht is sailed in as many as thirty or forty matches, and if the sail has been frequently reefed. Lastly, the ground tackle or holding gear must be examined. The anchors and chains should be galvanised, and be of the weight and size set forth in the tables for yachts of different tonnages, which will be found farther on. CHAPTER XI. BUILDING A YACHT. SOME men seem to have quite a passion for building yachts, whether for cruising or racing, and do not believe in the paraphrased adage that "fools build yachts for wise men to buy." So far as a racing yacht is concerned, it is quite natural that a man should wish her first success or fame to be identified with his name, and that he would not care to own a vessel which had already become famous under another man's flag. On the other hand, there are plenty of men who, directly they hear that a yacht is successful, and read of her wonderful exploits in the reports of matches, long to possess the wonderful craft. And so it happens that there is always something for the builder to do. The man who finds excitement in building is always certain to fancy that there is something even in his last success that can be improved upon; and he is glad to meet with the obliging purchaser who so covets the possession of the property he is anxious to discard. The man who knows nothing whatever of yachts and yachting, in setting out to build, will be mainly troubled to know which builder to go to. He will hear that one builder is famous for cutters, another for yawls, and another for schooners; whilst another, more wonderful than all the rest, is famous for every kind of craft, from the tiny Una to the bold Mediterranean cruiser of 300 tons. Then, again, one builder is celebrated for the soundness of the materials he uses; another for the excellence of his fastenings; and another, perhaps, for his disregard of the quality of both materials and fastenings. All this will be very perplexing to the man who has yet to serve his apprenticeship at the sport, and he at last dives into it with something like the feeling with which he took his first header, and inwardly appeals to the honour of the builder: Build me straight, O worthy master, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle, And probably the master does build him a staunch and strong and goodly vessel. But there need be no doubt about the matter. Lloyd's Society for the Register of Shipping have long been in the habit of superintending the building, and afterwards classifying a vessel; and if builders generally objected, and no doubt correctly, that Lloyd's rules were not quite adapted for yacht building, principally on the ground that those rules required the scantling of a yacht to be unnecessarily heavy, reasons for the objection are now swept away; Lloyd's have, during the past two years, modified those rules so as to accord with the undoubted soundness of the practice of the best builders, and there is now no reason why even a yacht intended for racing should not be classed. It may not be considered prudent to use materials to qualify her for the highest grade of seventeen years, but at least every yacht, whether intended for racing or not, should be built of materials to take a twelve year's class. The highest grade of class is A 1 seventeen years, and a vessel that is qualified for this high class is certain to be a "staunch and strong and a goodly vessel;" and it will be of little consequence, so far as these qualities go, which builder has the construction of the vessel, as it will be the duty of the surveyors to see that the work is carried out in a proper manner. The owner will know and feel that he has a vessel which will come out of the heaviest storm unstrained, and should he wish to dispose of her the unquestionable character which she has for strength will facilitate her sale at a full value. Therefore the advice to a man who knows little about yachts cannot be too urgently repeated-always build up to Lloyd's rules and under Lloyd's survey. No matter how high the repute of the builder may be, he will be only the more willing to agree to the survey, and will take delight in showing that he, so far from having any objection to build up to Lloyd's rules, will actually exceed their requirements, both in quality of timber used and in fastenings. Vessels of the racing sort, of 40 tons and under, are now built with keels out of all proportion to the sizes of their other scantling: thus the Lily has a keel sided (by "sided" is meant its transverse thickness) amidships 10in., or as large as the keel of a vessel of 100 tons. This enormously thick keel of course tapers fore and aft, and is only so thick amidships in order that a heavy weight of lead or iron might be carried. underneath. A similar weight could only be carried on a smaller wood keel by greatly increasing the draught, and then the strength and thickness of the keel might be unequal to the weight of the lead and to the boring for the necessary bolts. Sometimes a lead keel, or keelson, is worked inside, fore and aft, between the heels of the timbers and on H top of the keel proper, and this plan will be fully described further on; in the accompanying drawing, Fig. 18, a a are the timbers, the heels of which meet on the middle line of the wood keel b; c is a wroughtiron knee, bolted to the sides of the timbers, and meeting the keel at d in the form of a plate, through which a bolt passes to the under-side of the wood keel at e. Across the heels of the timbers the transverse wrought-iron plate ƒ is bolted, the same through-bolts serving for knee and plate; the knees are alternately placed the fore side and aft side of the timbers. Fig. 19 shows a broadside view of the construction, a being the double timbers, b the wood keel, c the iron knees, d the plate FIG. 18. for the keel fastenings e; f the iron transverse plate, g the lead or iron keel, and h the bolts for the same. In Fig. 18 g g are very deep garboards, fastened, as shown, with long yellow metal or copper spikes; but one bolt might be made to go through garboard and keel. This mode of construction has recently received a fourteen years' class at Lloyd's for a 25-ton cruising craft, and no doubt it is well adapted for small vessels, for which grown floors cannot be obtained, nor suitable iron floors cast. The iron knees and plates should have two coats of Stockholm tar or black varnish before fixing, and another |