THE OCEAN RACE W HAT is called the Ocean Race is
likely to become more popular every year. It is a long- distance race which provides a real test of seamanship for amateurs. The yachts start from Ryde, sail round the Fastnet Rock off the Irish Coast, and finish at Plymouth. When the race started from Ryde this year onlookers were inclined to smile at the precision with which the handicaps had been allotted. How absurd, they felt, to give time allowances of minutes and seconds for a race that would last five or six days at the best, and might easily take a fortnight, or even more if head winds were encountered both going and coming ! Yet if there is to be handicapping at all, as assuredly there must be, the handicap can be given only on the same calculations that apply to a race in • the Solent. The result of the race this year was, after all, very flattering to the handicappers. Only three or four hours separated three of the yachts at the winning post ; and from the Lizard it was an open question which would be second, third and fourth.
No yacht engaged in a race of this kind is a " racing machine." The present writer, who has taken part in every kind of racing and cruising, feels that there is more room for a development of this kind of racing than for any other sort. If yachting is to continue to be a sport for the many in these straitened times we must adapt ourselves. Before the War the tendency was to make yacht racing for the large classes continually more expensive. True, racing among the small inex- pensive classes of boat was at the same time continually growing and new small classes were continually being produced ; but the races both for the expensive yachts and the small cheap ones were all for short distances. An ocean race is a return in spirit to the more or less informal races which used to take place between cruising yachts fifty years ago. What could be more glorious fun than for an amateur to match his seamanship, his knowledge of the behaviour of his own craft, his know- ledge of weather and tides and his skill in working out courses and making good landfalls against the corre- sponding accomplishments of his friends ? Although no one who understands would deny that yacht racing has been brought within recent years to a higher pitch of skill than ever before, it is still possible to feel that much was lost when the racing among cruisers fell out of fashion. From the Royal Yacht Squadron, which now accepts seamanship as just as good a qualification for membership as the possession of a yacht of considerable tonnage—from the Royal Yacht Squadron downwards, all the -clubs are adapting themselves to the times in a manner which shows that English people in their sport are still full of alertness and common sense.
During the past generation the gulf has been widening between the racing yachts and the cruising yachts. Neither side has professed to be very much interested in the sport of the other. Long-distance handicap races might well be the means of bridging that gulf. The owner who has a yacht which is in no sense a racer but who is a good and cunning seaman, and who knows how to handle his ship and lose no ground in bad weather, has always a sporting chance of winning against a com- petitor who owns a much faster vessel. The yacht which finished fourth in this year's Ocean Race was what might be called a typical cruising vessel—an old Bristol Channel pilot cutter built to face the steep and fierce seas of the part of the world to which she belonged. If the weather had been rougher than it was she might easily have won. One of the revelations of the past forty years has been the comparative safety with which small yachts that are well built and well found come safely through even the worst weather. Mr. McMullen, whose book Down Channel is a kind of Bible to many cruising yachtsmen, was a pioneer in this line. Since his day boldness has been added to boldness, and to win the chief prize of such a club as the Royal Cruising Club, the amateur owner must now sail in a smallish boat, not round the British Isles, but to the White Sea or Australia or even round the world. To the layman it is always a puzzle that a small boat can come through when large ships have foundered, but the explanation is really simple. The heavily laden ship which has little buoyancy, and therefore presents great resistance to the seas, may be battered like a rock in a storm. But the little boat behaves like a sea bird in a storm or a cork in a cataract. The one thing she requires is sea room. So long as she has plenty of sea miles between her and a lee-shore she can heave to (particularly if she has a drogue or sea anchor to lie to) and wait for better weather. The real fear of the man in the small yacht is to be caught on a lee-shore in a gale, for when his sail is sufficiently reduced for safety he will probably not have the power to claw off the land. Shakespeare, who understood all things, understood this. He males one of his sailors in Pericles say : " Blow and split thyself ! But give me sea room and I care not." Few well found and buoyant little yachts have been lost in mid ocean, though many have been lost when trying to make a harbour under their lee. Then they got into shoal waters and were engulfed by confused and heavily breaking seas.
It would be a great thing for the sport of yachting if more cruising owners took part in an occasional race. They would not give up cruising for racing ; they would regard the race as an occasional variation. And this would be a good thing too for the nation which needs to have particular kinds of skill developed among men who would form a reservoir of knowledge and aptitude to be drawn upon in times of national emergency. In the War the R.N.V.R. drew largely upon the yachtsmen. To-day there is one little fly in the ointment when we contemplate the new generation learning to sail. MiChanical power has crept in. Twenty years ago the amateur yachtsman relied entirely upon sail ; no matter how great the difficulties ; no matter how full of shipping the harbour was, or how tricky the wind, or how strong the tide, he had to free himself from the entanglements under sail. The present writer confesses to have some- times sat upon his deck and thought for half an-hour before starting how on earth he was going to get out. The very complications of the movements of a vessel under sail are a fascination but also a danger. A yacht will certainly make a fool of you to the end of your life if you give her a chance. There is not only the sagging of the yacht to leeward, there is the error introduced by the movement of the tide, so that if one is sailing across the tide the vessel does not reach the spot at which she is pointing ; and years of experience are required to judge these combinations with accuracy. Now the modern yachtsman nearly always has an auxiliary engine ; if the difficulties of getting out of a harbour or crowded roadstead are too great, he switches on his engine and sets sail when he is clear of all the obstacles. Not that engines are to be derided. Mr. Belloc thinks otherwise, but the truth is that they have become in- dispensable, because with their help a man who has only a couple of days to spare can make a programme and carry it out with tolerable certainty. In the old days he did not dare to go far for fear of not being able to return. In this matter, too, we must move with the times. What is lost in one way, even in matters of skill, will be gained in another.
Yachting is called an expensive sport, but it is not expensive for amateurs who sail their own boats. Second- hand boats can still be bought at prices which are not unreasonable, and if a man's regular holidays are spent at sea he is housed free, and he can fairly set off that saving against what he would have spent on some other kind of holiday. The charm of taking your house with you wherever you go is incomparable. Of course the yachtsman may find himself let in for' a more arduous and exciting time than he bargained for, but the rewards are more than. a mere solace for pain. To make a true landfall and to drop anchor in the coveted haven after a long and difficult passage is to experience a triumph and elation that cannot quite be matched in any other sport. Long life to the Ocean Race 1
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