HELMA
Dear Editors,
I was delighted with your cover story, “HELMA: A 1938 Spidsgatter reborn,” in WB No. 296. I crewed on her out of San Pedro, California, when my friend Robert Sisler owned her in the 1960s. She was then named BOUT, and is a fine, lovely little sailing boat. Once, in 1963, we had a rough and memorable voyage north dead into the wind and wicked waves around Point Conception. Although the mainsail blew out near San Miguel Island, BOUT did fine, continuing under a spare reefed main and jib. Bob even singlehanded her to Hawaii and back in 1966. She is well deserving of the restoration described in Tom Jackson’s article. To quote Joshua Slocum, “it is a law in Lloyd’s that the JANE repaired all out of the old until she is entirely new is still the JANE.”
R.N. Bradley
via email
Of Squaresails and Norse Boats
Dear Editors,
I really like the pieces on Norse boats in WB No. 296 (“On the Edge of an Axe: Building a traditional Viking boat in modern times,” by Matthew Barnes; and “The Plywood Gislinge Boat: A stitch-and-glue interpretation of a Nordic craft,” by John C. Harris). Harris notes that he went with the dipping-lug rig due to the complexity of the lines in rigging the boat for square sailing. I want to point out that in my Åfjords faering of about the same size (the boat is now the property of Atlantic Challenge in Rockland, Maine), I need only three lines to run the square sail: the halyard; the bolina, or bowline, that runs from leech to leech via a block or “beehole” in the stemhead; and the sheet, which runs from clew to clew. Just like the dipping lug, the yard must be lowered to tack, which is done by the skipper. The secret is that you put an oar over and turn the boat through the wind with a few strokes on that oar.