thus convert her into a lifeboat. One compartment in the bows, and another in the stern-sheets will suffice, and, if made to fit closely, they occupy but little room.
Bags of sand are sometimes used for ballasting small boats; but these are clumsy to handle, occupy a lot of room, and greatly increase in weight when the sand gets wet.
I have already explained in Chapter II. that the leeway of a boat, or her tendency to drift sideways when she is sailing with the wind before the beam, must be counteracted by giving her a deep keel, or by otherwise providing an area of lateral surface below the water-line, and thus increasing the lateral resistance.
One of the author's first sailing-craft was an old ship's boat, recovered from a vessel that was wrecked at the mouth of the Seine, to which he affixed a False Keel in order to prevent leeway. The false keel (of wood) was bolted on to the original keel, and attained its greatest depth, of about six inches, a little abaft the middle of the boat, tapering up towards the bow and stern. This is an inexpensive method of converting an old open boat into a fairly good sailing-craft. A centre-board, however—which I shall shortly describe—is far more effective as a preventer of leeway; for with a given area of immersed lateral surface, the keel that is deep but not long (like the centre-board) offers the greatest lateral resistance to the water. A centre-board boat
