LIKE ANYONE who is interested in
boats, I often look through the advertisements to see what’s for sale these
days. In the first place, it’s always interesting to see how other people’s
boats compare with yours, and in the second place somebody might be offering
the boat of your dreams at a price you can actually afford.
It’s also interesting to see how
sellers rate the importance or desirability of certain features on their boats.
All too often I see near the top of the list of wonderful attributes the familiar
sentence: “All lines led aft.”
The fact that so many lines end up
in the cockpit is apparently cited with unbridled pride. It’s obviously offered
up as a special juicy tidbit that no potential buyer can resist, and hallooed
abroad for all to know and take notice of. It’s almost as if Sisyphus has
finally rolled his rock to the top of the hill and got it to stay there.
All lines led aft, indeed. Of all the attributes I look for in a
sailboat, this must be at the bottom of the list. In fact it’s not on the list
at all. It seems to be one of those fads that sweeps the sailing world from
time to time, and then lies dormant until some fool resurrects it years later.
Admittedly, there are certain lines
that should be led aft, especially on a boat designed to be singlehanded. Foresail sheets, the mainsheet, a downhaul
for the boom, and perhaps a topping lift are plenty enough to turn the cockpit
into a bowl of tangled spaghetti, with the ends and loops of lines doing their damnedest
to snag winches and block scuppers.
But when it comes to reefing lines
and tweakers and Barber haulers and halyards and uphauls, it’s madness to try
to control them from the cockpit, where you’re already fully occupied with the
tiller or wheel.
It’s not often admitted, but many modern
skippers seem to be reluctant to leave the cockpit and stand on deck to hand
and reef. Our obsession with safety (and government’s role in this) might have
something to do with it, but it might also be due to the fact that fewer
sailors than ever know how to make their boats heave to. Or, if they do, then modern designs, with
their minimal underwater surfaces, are too finicky to heave to with any
reliability.
When you’re dousing the mainsail,
for example, even if you can free the halyard from the cockpit, you’re got to
get up on deck and go to the foot of the mast to furl the sail. You might as well make the halyard fast at
the mast in the first place. And you can make any decent boat heave to and look
after herself while you fiddle around with reefing and furling the sails.
Sooner or later you’re going to have
to quit cowering in the cockpit and get up on deck to do something, so the more
often you do it the more natural it will seem, and the better you will get at
it.
Of course, “All lines led aft” is
not the only fad that gets my wimmies in a froth. Fully battened mainsails will
do it, too, along with dripless propeller shafts, pressurized water in the galley,
and hard dodgers. But don’t mind me. Ignore me. We old curmudgeons are used to
it.
Today’s
Thought
It
seems to me much harder to be a modern than an ancient.
— Joubert, Pensées
Tailpiece
“And how would you like your hair
cut, sir?”
“Off.”
“Yes, sir, but what style?”
“What are your prices?”
“Haircut $25, shave $15.”
“So, okay, shave it to a short back
and sides.”
(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday,
Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)
