If these few practical suggestions and hints prove of any service to yachtsmen, captains and engineers, the writer will feel happy. He has simply touched on the limits of a wide and fertile subject that might be expatiated upon at a large expense of paper and printer's ink.
To whiten decks, mix oxalic acid with fresh water in the proportion of one pound to the gallon. Apply lightly with a mop and wash off immediately.
Good elastic marine glue for paying seams after they are caulked, can be made of one part of india rubber, twelve parts of coal tar heated gently in a pitch kettle, and twenty parts of shellac added to the mixture. When about to use this preparation, dip the caulking iron, used to drive the oakum or cotton thread into the seams, in naphtha, which dissolves the glue and helps to closely cement the seams. If oil is used instead of naphtha, the glue will not adhere. When melting marine glue for paying, take care to heat it very slowly.
Mildew on sails is almost impossible to remove, but the stains can be rendered a little less unsightly by well scrubbing the sail on both sides with soap and fresh water, and then leaving the sail to dry and bleach in the sun. Avoid the use of chloride of lime or other caustics or acids, which, while they might take out the mildew stains, would certainly rot the duck. Sometimes sails must necessarily be stowed when damp or wet, but they should be hoisted up to dry as soon as practicable. Every boat should be provided with water-proof sail covers.
Composition paints and other mixtures for preventing the fouling of boats' bottoms are plentiful as clams. Each one is warranted to be a specific against weeds and barnacles. But wooden or iron vessels, however treated, if left for any length of time at anchor anywhere on the Atlantic or Pacific coasts, are sure to become encrusted with barnacles and to be covered with such a rich growth of marine grasses as would take some particularly active work with a lawn mower to remove. Luckily small boats can easily be hauled out and scrubbed, but those with any pretension to size should most certainly be coppered. Copper in salt water will keep clean for a long time, the exfoliation being extensive. Some authorities recommend that the copper be coated with one or other of the compositions prepared for that purpose, but I think that to leave the copper clean will be more satisfactory in the long run. A coppered cruising vessel should not require her bottom to be cleaned more than four times in the season, but the oftener a racing yacht is hauled out to have her copper burnished the better should be the result, so far as speed is concerned.