Spray (in nautical English "Écume"), Joshua Slocum's legendary sailboat, with which he sailed solo around the world from 1895 to 1898, was originally an oyster working boat.
Created as a auric cutter with a mainsail with horn, jib and staysail, equipped with a central cockpit, Spray had a draught of 1.35 m and a height under the bars of only 1.27 m! With a length of 11.20 m and a width of 4.30 m (very wide!) and 12.7 tons, it rigged 98 m2 of sail area. Equipped with a long keel, it carried a fixed 1.4 tonne concrete ballast, allowing it to straighten up in the event of capsizing.
A wreck in the mud
When he met Slocum's fate, Spray was a wreck, reformed 10 years ago, rotting in an arm of the Chesapeake River (USA). Its then owner, Captain Ebenezer Pierce, gave it to his friend and colleague Joshua Slocum, captain of the Merchant Navy, who was looking for a job, whose morale was far from its zenith.
A renovation close to a reconstruction carried out alone
The latter then undertook a complete restoration and modification, without plans or calculations, relying solely on his extensive experience as a sailor. He carried out the work with his hands, for the considerable sum at the time: $15,000 today! He used a boiler to bend the frames and cut all the structural parts with an axe (which accompanied him on his journey around the world) from holm oaks that he himself was looking for in the nearby forests.
Modification of the sail plan along the way
After his departure, he broke part of his boom during a storm in the Atlantic in 1896. He attributed this breakage to the impossibility of further splitting his canopy in bad weather. As a result, during a stopover in Buenos Aires, he reduced the height of the mast by 2.00 m and then, in Chile, he added a small mizzen mast, thus transforming Spray into a tapecul cutter (yawl according to the Anglo-Saxons).
Incredible nautical qualities
Slocum's instinct allowed him to design a perfectly balanced boat, whose characteristics correspond to the most advanced calculations of the time in the sailing industry. In particular, the boat could go alone, moored, even in the tailwind for days. Spray has covered 2200 miles in 27 days northwest of New Guinea without Slocum touching the helm once! In addition, the addition of a mizzen mast gave the boat countless possibilities for splitting its sails, which were very useful in adapting its sails to the weather, the sail's adage!
Despite rather poor upwind performance due to a rather weak anti-drift plan (the whole of the sailing navy at the time suffered from this defect), Spray inspired many sailors and boat builders.
Joshua Slocum and Spray disappeared together off Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, on November 14, 1909.
