If you think Cunningham/ downhaul can be confusing...

[Norm L.]

I just finished reading Two Years Before the Mast. This is my second reading with the first about 30 years ago. At that time I read it as a sea story. This time I read it more as a historical document.

Also I had Google and Google Earth at my side this time. I love Google Earth when reading sea stories and could follow along the CA coast from the air along with my memories of it from being there for two years and covering it from San Diego to Portland OR.

But I also tried to get more into the sails and sail handling. I have a book that gives all of the orders for tacking and gybing a square rigger, but Dana's book gives all of activity in the rigging.

In my search this is what I found. A primer on "knowing the ropes".

https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~pbtyc/genealogy/B_S_M/Sail_Instruction.html

[CapnK]

Great book, I've read it a couple of times. As the fates would have it, the below happened just after my second reading.

It was a few years back, one early AM, and I woke to see a set of spars from a late night arrival towering over the next dock. Cuppa in hand, I wandered over to take a look, and wound up meeting the owners wife as she came off the boat. We quickly had good rapport, and that resulted in my taking care of the boat for a few days while they were gone.

The owner was RH Dana's grandson. Dennis Conner had tuned the rig for them after she was commissioned, and they'd take their friend WF Buckley out for daysails when he'd become too elderly to sail his own vessel...

Yeah.

She was/is the S/V St. Roque. Very impressive vessel.

[Norm L.]

What a great design. Center cockpit with dodger and pilothouse for some greenhouse warmth on chilly days.
Pilothouse sloops/cutters are a great liveaboard design.