The yachtsman who is inexperienced, or much out of practice in the management of a boat, had far better take a sailor or a couple of sailors with him. By observing what they do he will learn or remember how to do things properly, and the tiro will pick up in a day or two, from watching an expert, many things that he would take long to learn for himself. Indeed, I think that in dangerous weather it is always as well to have a seaman on board. He will be unnecessary, probably, if nothing happens--that is to say, if nothing carries away or gets jammed; but it is just on such days that things do happen, and it is in such emergencies that the difference between a sailor and an ordinary amateur becomes widest. A good sailor has some resource for almost everything that can happen, and if one thing will not do he tries something else. Even if the amateur is as quick to know what should be done, he is usually far slower and more clumsy in the doing of it. Suppose, to take a very simple instance, the peak halliards carry away. How many amateurs are there who could make a long splice and re-reeve them with reasonable expedition? In a tumble of a sea, with a lee shore imminent, the mere reeving of them, if no splice is required, will very likely bother him considerably. Still no one will ever be a passable boat-sailer, or will ever enjoy boat-sailing as it can be enjoyed, until he learns to dispense with professional assistance and to manage his boat single-handed if necessary. So, when he has learnt with his eyes, as far as a man can, how things should be done, other than steering and giving orders, let him go out alone or with an amateur like himself and learn his business. Let him choose a fine day and sail away if possible out of sight of the most powerful glasses on his ship, and then deliberately and of set purpose practise everything essential that is comprised in the art of boat-sailing. He will instantly discover that between knowing how things are done and doing them there is an extraordinary difference, and he will find himself curiously awkward in doing what he has seen his men do a hundred times. He will make acquaintance with the malign tendency of all ropes to get foul of each other, and the strange law that whenever you are trying to put something right on a boat something else always goes wrong. When he first tries to reef his sails--he will do it at anchor if he is wise--he will find that the foretack is horribly inconvenient to get at, and that the foresail will keep running up the stay and muffling his head, while the main-boom seems to be possessed by a devil and tries to push him overboard whichever side of it he gets. When he gets under way again he finds that he has got the anchor-line foul of the foresheets, and while he is clearing these and re-reeving them through their fairleads, a puff of wind knocks the boat nearly flat and sends him scrambling aft to the tiller and the mainsheet. He will bruise his