Seafaring Sunday: Aboard the Alerte

There was a high wind from the north-west and a great swell. We were now on a lee shore, and a very dangerous one too; so all was got ready for slipping the anchor and running to the open sea in a moment, should it be necessary to do so. We gave the yacht all her starboard chain - sixty fathoms. We got up the end of the chain, and made it fast to the mainmast in such a way that we could let it go at once. One end of a stout thirty-fathom hawser was attached to the chain, just below the hawse-pipe, and to the other end of a breaker and a small bamboo raft. In order to get under way we should now merely have to throw the buoy overboard and cast off the end of the chain from the mast. We could then sail away and leave our moorings behind us.

~ E.F. Knight aboard the cutter Alerte off the Island of Trinidad, November 24, 1889 from The Cruise of the Alerte at Project Gutenberg

Header: Cutter Alerte from the Project Gutenberg frontispiece