Posted by Alex Forbes on December 28, 2007 at 18:35:43 from 4.242.120.9 user Pitsligo.
Just having a look through WDMTGTS and came up with a couple questions some of you might be able to answer:
1) What's "American Cloth"? Jim spreads a "wide strip" of it on Goblin's table. Plasticised fabric of some sort?
2) In the ilustration "All but O.B.", John appears to be grasping, in his left hand, a line that leads up to a whip block, then down to the deck by the stbd shrouds. In the text he "got a hand to the end of a halyard". Can someone tell me if Goblin (i.e. Nancy Blackett or her ilk) has a whip arrangement on the main halyard? This would give good purchase on the halyard, lacking a halyard winch, but would make the lead rather cramped once the sail was up and the halyard needed sweating in --which we know John does have a bit of trouble with. The illustration "Meeting the sailing ship" shows it again, but the whip block is up far too high to be an accurate illustration of a halyard whip unless there are rigging details I just don't know of that were common on English Bermudan cutters of the '30s (entirely likely). Anyway, I can envision a way to make it work, but wondered if anyone had any personal experience with such a rig. Can anyone enlighten me?
3) Yes, I'm a clueless American: is Rubgy a high school, from which Jim has graduated to go to college at Oxford?
Thanks, all,
Alex