Chapter 44

THE LAND YACHT.

Only one thing of importance occurred between our Christmas holidays and Eastertide: this was Bill's invention of the tricycle sailboat or land yacht. We had returned to school with sailing on the brain. Our skate sail served us well enough while there was any ice, but as spring came on we wished we had our canoe with us, or even the old scow to sail on the lakes near the school. Once we seriously considered building a sailboat, but the project was given up, as we had few facilities for such work. But Bill wasn't easily baffled, and I wasn't surprised to have him come tearing into the room one day, yelling, "I've got it! I've got it!" In his hands were two bicycle wheels, which I recognized as belonging to a couple of bicycles we had discarded the year before.

"What are you going to do with them?" I inquired.

"I'm going to make a tricycle sailboat."

"What?"

"A tricycle sailboat, a land boat, or anything you've a mind to call it. I mean a boat just like our ice boat only on bicycle wheels instead of skates. We can sail all over south Jersey on the thing. Come on down and help me build it."

THE FRAME OF THE YACHT.

I followed him to the shed at the back of the school and found that he had already procured a couple of scantlings for the frame of the boat. The sticks were 2 inches thick and 4 inches wide. The backbone was cut to a length of 10 feet, and a 5-foot link was sawed off for the crosspiece. The two pieces were securely nailed together about 3 feet from the forward end of the backbone. The crosspiece was set on edge, but a notch was cut in it about 1 inch deep to receive the backbone. We might have braced the frame with wooden braces, as in the ice boat, but we thought that this time we would vary the design by using wire bracing instead, thus making the frame much lighter. I asked Bill how he proposed to tighten the wire. Turnbuckles were the thing, but I knew that they were rather expensive.

"Just you leave that to me," said Bill. "I've a scheme that I think will work out all right."

A SIMPLE TURNBUCKLE.

At the hardware store of the town we bought a pound of No. 16 iron wire, eight large screw eyes and six eye bolts, with nuts and washers. Both the screw eyes and eye bolts had welded eyes and the shanks of the eye bolts were 6 inches long. A pair of screw eyes were now threaded into the backbone at each side about 18 inches from the end, and at each end of the crosspieces an eye bolt was fastened. I began to see Bill's plan. He was going to draw the wire taut by tightening up the nuts on the eye bolts. To get the best effect the hole for the eye bolt had to be drilled in on a slant, so that the bolt would pull directly in the line of the wire. To get just the right angle we ran a cord from the screw eye on one side to the point where the bolt was to be inserted, and traced its direction on the crosspiece. The hole for the eye bolt was now drilled parallel with the mark we had traced. The same was done at the other end of the crosspiece. A pair of screw eyes were now screwed into the backbone at the fore end and a pair of eye bolts were set at a corresponding angle in the ends of the crosspiece. The crosspiece was notched at each side so that the nuts and washers on the eye bolts would have a square seating. Then we stretched on the wire guy lines, drawing them as tight as possible, with the eye bolts held in place by a turn or two of the nuts, after which we screwed up the nuts as far as we could, thus drawing up the wire until it was very taut. This done the second nut was threaded onto each bolt against the first so as to lock it in place and prevent it from jarring loose.

STEPPING THE MAST.

Our next task was to step the mast. We found in the shed an old flagstaff 15 feet long and 3 inches in diameter. The lower end of this, for about a foot, we whittled down to a diameter of 2 inches, and drove it into a hole in the backbone 12 inches from the forward end. The mast was stayed by a wire stretched from the head to an eye bolt at the fore end of the backbone. The end of the mast which projected below the backbone was stayed with wire running forward to an eye bolt and aft to a screw eye on the backbone, and also with a pair of wires running to screw eyes threaded into the crosspiece near the ends. We couldn't very well use eye bolts on these wires except at the fore end, but we stretched the wires as tight as possible before the screw eyes were screwed all the way in, and then, as we turned the screw eyes, the wire was wound up on them and drawn fairly taut. Fig. 219 shows a side view of the frame, and wires marked 1 and 2 are the same as illustrated in Fig. 218, which is a top or plan view of the frame.

MOUNTING THE FRAME ON BICYCLE WHEELS.

We were now ready to mount the frame on the bicycle wheels. We used only the front wheels of the bicycles with the forks in which they were journaled. The shanks at the top of the forks were firmly driven into holes in the crosspiece near the ends. For the steering wheel Bill took the front fork and wheel of his new bicycle, letting the shank into a hole at the stern end of the backbone.

THE TILLER.

For a tiller we used a piece of an old rake handle. A small hole was first drilled into the handle and the end of the stick was then split through the hole, permitting the projecting shank of the fork to be driven tightly into the hole. The split wood was now tightly closed onto the shank by means of a bolt (see Fig. 220). In the rubbish heap we found an old chair. The legs were sawed off and the seat was then firmly nailed to the backbone. The back of the chair was cut down so that it just cleared the tiller.

A "LEG-OF-MUTTON" SAIL.

Everything was now completed but the sail. This was a triangular or "leg-of-mutton" affair, of the dimensions given in Fig. 222. It was made of light canvas, 30 inches wide, of which we bought 14 yards. Out of this we took one strip 18 feet long, one 13 feet, one 8 feet, and one 3 feet long. We had no sewing machine, and therefore had to sew the strips together by hand. The selvedge edges of the strips were lapped over each other about an inch and then they were sewed together sailor fashion, that is, each edge was hemmed down, as shown in Fig. 223. The strips were sewed together so that at the foot each projected at least 21 inches below the next shorter one. This done, the sail was cut to the dimensions given, allowing 1-1/2 inches all around for the hem. The hem was turned over a light rope, forming a strong corded edge. At the clew, tack and head loops were formed in the rope which projected from the canvas, and at intervals along the foot the canvas was cut away, exposing the rope so that the sail could be laced to the boom, as illustrated. The boom was a pole 11 feet long attached to the mast by means of a screw hook threaded into the end of the boom and hooked into a screw eye on the mast, after which the screw hook was hammered so it would close over the screw eye to keep it from slipping off. The sail was raised by a halyard passing over a block at the top of the mast. The sheet was fastened near the end of the boom, passed through a block on the backbone, back of the tiller, and through another block on the boom, and was led to a cleat within easy reach of the chair seat.

A SAIL THROUGH THE COUNTRY.

Our land yacht proved to be quite a successful craft in the flat country around the school. Of course, we could not sail everywhere; a country road is too narrow for any tacking when it comes to sailing against the wind. We hadn't thought of that when we made our trial trip. A strong east wind was blowing and so we ventured forth on a road that led due west from our school. Off we sped before the wind for two miles, until we came to a sharp turn in the road. Then we began to think of turning homeward. But this was a very different proposition. The wind was dead against us and to try to tack from side to side of the road was useless, because we would hardly get under way on one tack before we had to swing around on the other tack, losing all our momentum. It ended up by our lowering sail and ignominiously trundling the yacht back to school. After that we carefully selected our course, and never sailed away from home before the wind unless we knew of a roundabout way that would lead us back to port on a couple of reaches (long tacks).