RACING IN A FRESHWATER GALE The little scows shown here are just getting under way, ten seconds after the starting gun. T HE fastest sailboat in the belongs to a thirty-eightfoot scow. It is a small racing yacht that has been developed on the inland lakes of the Middle West and on some Eastern and Southern lakes, and which skims the water at a speed of twenty-five miles an hour-a speed no other sailing yacht or ship has ever attained. unless, perhaps, when driven helpless before some terrific hurricane. The freak sailing machine is a queer and startling thing, reminiscent of catamarans and the South Sea Islands. Heeled until capsize seems imminent, yet moving at railroad speed; making no splash, no noise, yet flying ahead of a snow white wave as if the very wind itself; such is the scow. The great sheet of cream-tawny canvas it carries seems unwieldy, far too big and completely uncontrollable. The men scramble out upon the upturned edge as if seeking a dry place on which they might perch, and as the craft heels to the breeze, a long shining fin sticking from her side rises from the surface, sinks again, rises, "THE FASTEST SAILING VESSEL" This freshwater scow is speedier than the finest cup defender. moves back and forth to the puffs like a leaf poised on its trembling stem. The charm of the deep-water sailing yacht has always been its majesty, its even power and calm. Until the advent of this catamaran-scow-this boat is really not a boat but really not a boat but a raft-the inland sailor had been unable to enjoy the majestic sweep that is the portion of his saltwater brother. He was forced to adopt the center board and do away with the keel because of shallow water, and to be satisfied with a small boat. What ROUNDING A CORNER The trailing craft will make the same turn that the leader has made. The sharp angle shows the remarkable flexibility of the type. rolled about was enough to cause all the scorn that the salt has for the freshwater sailor. The scow, that has now emancipated him, is the result of quite an evolution. The designers first flattened out the little tub until it became longer, lost its pointed MAKING SPEED The men are not trying to right the craft. Mere wetness has forced them out on their perch. knife-like bow, the knife parallel to the surface of the water-the "lark" a catboat, the "sidewalk" a larger craft of the same hull type, but carrying a sloop rig. The designers in building craft with which to lift the Seawanhaka cup of eastern Canadian lakes turned out a modification of the type and installed. bilge boards and double rudders in place. of the familiar center board and a single rudder. The yacht Manchester built on these lines took the Canadian cup with ease, and established what was then a record over a twelve-knot triangular one hour, thirty-two minutes. The design spread like wildfire, and the new bilge board scow was fairly started on its Classes developed slowly and today there are several recognized and largely used sizes, chief of which are the Western classes of "As". thirty-eight feet long, "Bs", career. twenty-one feet long with cat rigthe vessels that delight the freshwater sailor. In addition, the Quincy cup scows of Massachusetts Bay form a fleet of vessels restricted only by the water line length of twenty-one feet and in many cases fifty feet over all. Among these flyers the greatest racing of all time takes place. As the racers stand today they have been tried out with almost every conceivable device and with great additions in canvas. Rules keep them down in the Middle West because a large proportion of the experiments have been comparative failures, and freak wins by freak boats discourage the sport as a whole; but tremendous catamarans have been used in competition for the Quincy cup. These vessels sometimes carried as much as two thousand square feet of sail, which was held together by steel or wire trusses like a bridge. They were fast under certain light wind conditions, but in anything else were completely unmanageable. The thirty-eight footer, with five hundred square feet of sail, is the most enduring and seems to be the best of the lot. great wind, and in spite of the fact that these boats are in reality overcanvassed for strong winds, not a skipper in all that fleet of thirteen boats tucked in a reef. Instead, each intrepidly ordered up his light canvas-and that under conditions where cup defenders would hardly be able to go out unless under jury rig. Tales of great races are innumerable in the hotbed of scowdom. Many a yacht has been capsized in a race only to be righted by a fast and skillful crew who threw their weight on a bilge board before the boat had time to fill with water or turn turtle. One skipper attained fame because when in a bad puff, he invariably stepped out on the windward rudder and sailed the boat from the bottom. There is a famous picture hanging in the Oshkosh (Wisconsin) Yacht Club, which shows a man hooked over the spinnaker boom, his toes in a cleat and his hands clinging to a belayed rope on the deck. His skipper had told him to keep the boom down in the puffs. He was not heavy enough to keep it from going skyward, so he used his weight and his strength too. Occasionally a member of some crew goes over the side to ride the bilge boards; but he has a rope in his hands, so that should he slip from his polished foothold he will still be with the yacht, and his companions can help him aboard again. "THE FASTEST SAILING CRAFT" IN A STIFF BREEZE Bilge keels keep it from capsizing. Racing on Oconomowoc Lake, Wisconsin, a year or two ago, the fleet of "As" gathered from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois yacht clubs for the Inland Lake Yachting Association regatta, covered the twelve-knot course in a little Freshwater sailors who know the new craft think little of wetting their sails in this fashion. sence of the distressing roll and pitch that characterizes its predecessor. The scow moves like a great keel boat, as though it were on the finest of railroad road beds. It slips from wave top to wave top in gentle winds, and the motion, once known, prevents the inland sailor from ever returning to his old wash tub type of craft. The scow has high speed, wonderful action, and beautiful balance, and it takes a real sportsman to stay at the helm. It is the nearest approach to the cup defender that will float in our shallow lakes with safety, and best of all, match the scow and the ocean racer together and the big defender would often trail. That is the joyful part of it to every freshwater sailor; his is one more amateur game that is a bit faster than its professional prototype. FINDING USES FOR WASTE N WOOD By RENÉ BACHE OW that wood is becoming so scarce and dear, the Government Forest Service is greatly interested in promoting the utilization of such material. Much that was thrown away a dozen years ago is today carefully saved and turned to profitable account. Not only Not only are factories utilizing "scraps" and woods formerly thought useless; even wood that has reached the ultimate consumer in some form is being used again, when he is through with it. For example, there is a steady and re liable demand for worn-out tenpins. These are made of a superior grade of maple; but after being in use for no great length of time, they become rounded on the bottoms, and will not stand up satisfactorily. But they are still most suitable material for shoe-lasts though only lasts of misses' and children's sizes are made from them, because the sides of the pins thus retired from service in the bowling alleys have suffered a good deal of bruising and must be cut away, leaving only the core of the tenpin for further use. Most people will be surprised to learn that wooden shoes are coming into use in this country on a rather considerable scale. They are made from pieces of beechwood that might otherwise be thrown away. The saving thus made is considerable, over seventy-five thousand pairs having been manufactured last year in Michigan and Wisconsin, and sold to the large foreign population of Swedes and Germans. The shoes are used in the "muck country" of Michigan, where celery is largely grown, and in the moist lands of Wisconsin where cranberries are cultivated for market, as well as in iron works, where they are serviceable for walking over hot floors, wood being a non-conductor. Scraps are used in endless ways. For example, a Michigan factory devoted to the production of school desks, for which maple planks of a certain length are required, converts the sawed-off ends into backs for scrubbing brushes. Chair rungs are made from odd pieces of beech, birch, or maple; spare scraps of red-heart birch are similarly utilized for the handles of chisels, awls, saws, and other carpenter's tools; gunstocks are turned from stray but suitable lengths of black walnut and Circassian walnut. Beechwood is employed as material for the soles worn by clog dancers on the stage. Twenty-nine million board feet of lumber were consumed in the United States last year in the manufacture of toysa branch of industry that utilizes very largely scrap wood material. Immense numbers of toy pianos are manufactured out of basswood; Noah's arks and their appropriate animals are turned out from white pine by the tens of thousands, as well as nursery blocks, popguns, and sets of dolls' furniture. Scraps are also made into wooden spoons, checkers, and chessmen, clothespins, mousetraps, candlesticks, mallets, spigots, broom and mop handles, umbrella and parasol handles, lemon squeezers, and stair banisters. New uses are being found for woods formerly thought useless. The bark of the giant California redwood, enormously thick, was formerly regarded as waste, and accumulations of it in the forest were burned to get rid of it. Today it finds many valuable uses, being employed in the manufacture of pincushions, penwipers, bicycle handles, brushes for silk GETTING READY FOR CHRISTMAS |