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November 28, 1999
Page 2 of 3
An afternoon view of one of our best anchorages. This is Love Cove at the end of Townsend Gut.
I could have spent a week here exploring all the side creeks and sloughs. The water was flat calm.
The trees forested the shoreline, the slough was private, and it just seemed to invite "Silver Heels" in for a stay.
About our eighth favorite anchorage, Jewell Isle. The anchorage was crowded with other boats, and it had noisy Atlantic
surf on the island's other side. It was a narrow crevice of water that didn't allow proper anchor
line scope. Still it was nice.
"Silver Heels' " main halyard, or main sheet throat halyard. We're at Center Harbor. Not an
exciting sailing picture, I know, but I liked the color of bronze, spruce, three
strand line and Chatto Island in the background!
A nice day off the Atlantic coastline. Those three hooks in the deck in the photo's lower right
are called sway hooks. On the coastal schooners, winches were not common on smaller boats and halyards were "sweated"
to proper tension. Power to raise a heavy sail was gained by rope tackles fastened to the head of the sail with a purchase of three or
four to one. The bitter end of the line from the sail's lifting halyard would be led down and around a sway
hook. Once around a sway hook, the line could be pulled to the side as a bowman (bowperson?) pulls a bowstring.
When some line had been gained, it would be urged down toward the sway hook and the excess pulled
taut by a helper pulling upward on the line at the other side of the sway hook. This works well and can be actually
done to some degree by a single person at the line.
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