Note 270 — Chapter XIX

One of the pranks to be prepared for in a boat is this jibing of the boom, and until by practice you know the exact range of safety for your head in relation to that swinging spar, caution should be the rule. Long ago I had learned the exact length of the Rob Roy’s boom in relation to my nose; for even in the Thames, soon after starting, it had once caught the back of my head, and knocked my face down on the deck, where a bloody nose (but no worse result) speedily settled the question as to which must yield when the boom and the captain are at loggerheads. I learned more lessons of this sort when, in 1871, I had a lonely voyage in a “yawl canoe” through Holland and the Zuyder Zee, and Friesland and the Texel. An account of it was published in the ‘Graphic’ for November of that year.