A Guide to Motor Boat Design and Construction - A Collection of Historical Articles Containing Information on the Methods and Equipment of the Boat Builder. Various

      MOTOR BOAT FITTINGS

      “SOUSE my swashbuckets, but there’s a lot of fittin’s about a boat!” You won’t say this, you’ll groan it, before they’re all bought; and most of them have to be before she ever leaves the dock. Otherwise, next time you’re down Quarantine way you’re liable to run afoul of a fast launch with a queer flag full of vertical red and white stripes, and before you can manage to disappear she’ll give you the four toots, which signal you will do well to obey, for it says: “Heave to! We’re coming alongside to take out your works and see what makes you act so. This means YOU!” Presently two leathery officials in navy blue come over the side and begin to look around. “Let’s see ye’re running lights? Hev ye got any?”

      “Er,—no; but we’ve a cook for’d with one flaming red nose and two green eyes. Wouldn’t he do for a combination headlight if we stand him up in the bow and let him shut his port eye——”

      “One hundred, please. Got any life-preservers?”

      “Stacks of it—in the ice-box; it’s all yours——”

      The inspector shakes his head and tries your whistle. “One-second squeak,” he mutters. “Got a fog horn?”

      “Sure thing! Jim, here, can beller like an Alabama coon when he——”

      “One hundred bucks——”

       “What!!”

      “I said ‘One hundred dollars’ fine!’ young man, for being at large without side lights, life-preservers, a fog horn, and I don’t know what all besides.”

      (Long, panic-stricken pause.)

      “Here, officer—take my boat. She’s all I have in the world (sob), and as much as ten dollars couldn’t buy her——”

      Oh, it’s harrowing, but it’s much safer, to have all the fittin’s the law requires, besides a whole lot that the far sterner laws of the Sea insist upon—with your life as the penalty of being without them. It’s the most joyful thing in the world to be minus a compass in a thick fog, out of sight of land; it’s screamingly funny to have a canary-bird’s-claw anchor, with a roaring reef under your lee; it’s the height of hilarity to be under way in a nor’easter with no oil-skins and a four-hour watch ahead—but one can be still happier with all these “fittin’s.”

      The principal trouble with fittin’s is,—your pocket-book. By the time the boat is built or bought, you’re busted; so you venture out, shy a raft of commodities that you’ll get nabbed for not having, or else the Sea will want to know where they are in that curiously urgent way the Sea has of reminding you that your boat is ill-found.

      First, the anchor. I shouldn’t advise anything less than 1 1/2 pounds per foot of length of your boat, and 2 pounds, if she has high sides with extension trunk cabin. Such a boat will usually gambol all around the anchor—playful to look at, but nervous business for the owner unless he knows the bower hook is big enough. If you are over 35 feet you need at least a 70-pound sheet anchor and a 50-pound stream anchor, the latter for ordinary cruising, as it is easy to heave, and the former for business purposes, when the real goods are blowing. And be sure you get a forged wrought iron anchor, not a malleable one; that is, for the regulation fluke-and-stock anchor. The stockless variety with swinging blades are of cast steel, but I do not care for them, preferring the old-fashioned kedge hook that was good enough for Noah and Nelson and all those other primitive navigators. The forged anchor is easily recognized by the hammer marks where the shank joins the crown and by the clean appearance of the flukes. If she is suspiciously smooth along the crown and the edges of the flukes are a little ragged and fringy, she’s a malleable, and old Nep will grin up his sleeve to see you buy her. I once rode out a bird of a nor’easter on a malleable anchor and it got the hook so deep in the sand that nothing but the engine would pull it up. When she came up on the bill-board the shank was trying to bite the ear of the port fluke, so bent was it, and, on attempting to straighten it, it parted just under the crown at the first tap of the blacksmith’s sledge. As we had had a neat, rocky shore under our lee all night, this scribe would have been by now playing jewsharps to the mermaids if that shank had parted down there in the sand.

      And, when you bend on your anchor rope, don’t forget to make fast the cotterpin which holds the anchor stock in place when set. It wants a short piece of galvanized chain closed around the stock so that the cotter will not plunk overboard the first time you take it out to fold in the stock of the anchor.

      Attached to the anchor is—rope. Have a chain if you prefer, but good manila for mine. Nothing less than 2 1/2-inch (circumference) for any boat from 22 to 40 feet, and chain for the sheet anchor of the latter size. Secure it to the anchor ring with a fisherman’s bend, which is simply two turns around the ring, across in front of the standing part of the rope, and under inside the turns around the ring. Pull taut and seize the end to the standing part with a bit of marlin. You will need not less than 150 feet of anchor cable, as you may have to anchor in a 30-foot channel with a six-knot tide some day, and your scope should never be less than five times the depth. Then you want a stout 3/4-inch eyebolt in the anchor post or windlass head to bend the bitter end of the cable to. If she once starts to go, nothing but that eyebolt will save the rope and anchor for you, for if you dare touch it you’ll go overboard like a skyrocket. A little windlass is necessary for any anchor over 75 pounds, but the usual 40 to 60-pound anchor can be hoisted on deck by hand, and, to break it out, simply snub up short and start the engine, tripping the anchor, whereat you can easily gather it in. The cost of a good anchor is about twelve cents a pound.

      Both for’d and astern you need chocks for the anchor cable. I used to get these in polished brass, but now, galvanized iron is plenty good enough, with a perennial coat of paint. The polished brass chock is too much workful to keep looking like anything. Besides, these chocks will cost you about $4 for bow and stern sets in polished brass. Before leaving the subject of anchors in general I want to put in a word for the sea anchor. Some day you may need it; off soundings. Be sure that there is something in your boat like a grating, a stern sheet or what-not, that can be rigged as a sea-anchor in emergency. Make a bridle, attaching to three corners of this invention and weight one of the corners so it will float upright, while the bridle drags it vertically, broadside to, in the water. Bend the anchor cable to this bridle and get her over if the weather is thickening to wind’ard and the motor promises to be in for a three-hour balk. It will keep her head to the seas; and it may save something worse than an ugly rolling. Use the dink submerged if your power boat is large and the power minus for the nonce.

      The next “fittin’s” to look to are the running lights. The old rules used to taboo the combination light. Even a green-eyed citizen, with a red nose was disallowed, but now motor boats under 26 feet overall may carry them, provided that the former white light that used to be in the middle of the combination does not show. Boats of this size are also required to show a clear white light a foot higher than the green and red combination for’d, so that your boat must have a flag-pole socket astern and a pole with halliards for the lantern by night, and presumably your ensign by day. For motorboats from 26 up to 40 feet overall (deck measurement) four lights are required; green and red starboard and port side lights, in light screens, so fixed as to show the light from dead ahead to two points abaft the beam; a white light, placed as far for’d as possible, throwing an unbroken light ten points on each side of the vessel (dead ahead to two points abaft the beam on either side); a white light aft to show all around the horizon. This is also your anchor light, which must be shown from sunset to sunrise unless you happen to be an inner boat in an anchorage whose limits are already clearly lighted. If