XI.
THE COST OF YACHTING.
CAUTIONARY AND ECONOMICAL HINTS TO TYROS ABOUT TO EMBARK IN THE SPORT.
In a witty essay Mr. W. L. Alden,
author of "The Canoe and the Flying
Proa," points out that the most
reckless woman is vastly inferior in
wild extravagance to the ordinary yacht
whose owner has enrolled her in a yacht
club. It is with yachts as it is with
women, he argues. A man who provides
himself with a pretty wife,
equipped with a sufficient quantity of
clothes, might keep her very cheaply if
he did not permit her to go into society,
which Mr. Alden conceives is about the
same as introducing a yacht to the society
of other fashionable yachts. He
declares that when the once modest
schooner or bashful sloop has once
tasted the pleasures of a regatta, she
proceeds to lavish her owner's fortune
with frightful recklessness. During the
racing season she splits her sails as
though they were lace flounces, and
sheds topmasts and booms as though
they were hairpins. At the close of the
season he has to call in the aid of the
shipbuilding profession, and to lavish
