CHAPTER X
THE ART OF COASTING
How to use Charts—Sounding—Heaving the log—Tides—The Barometer—Getting a slant—Weather-wisdom—Storm signals—Weather forecasts.
A yacht of small tonnage, such as I have described
in this book, is unfit for an ocean voyage; but, as
I have already said, she can be safely navigated
from one end of Europe to the other, provided she
be a boat of the right sort, and the skipper knows
his business and is not foolhardy. 'Coasting' is
a wide term, and to cross the North Sea where it
is four hundred miles in breadth would still be
reckoned as coasting work. On a coasting voyage
to the Baltic, for example, one would often be out
of sight of land for many hours at a time. A
knowledge of navigation in the strict sense of the
term—that is, the determination of a vessel's position
at sea by observation of the sun, moon, and
stars, and her guidance from land to land by
dead reckoning, as carried out in the orthodox
fashion by working traverses, and so forth—is not
needed by the coasting seaman. A rough-and-
