Seaworthiness
"Yachtsmen pleasuring in the 'lilies of the sea' will not think favourably of my craft," warned Joshua Slocum, anticipating the criticism of those who juggle with coefficients. "They have a right to their opinion, while I stick to mine." It is worth reading the Appendix of Sailing Alone Around the World for Slocum's candid explanation of the Spray design and its seaworthiness.
An analysis by Howard I. Chapelle, curator of maritime history at the Smithsonian Institution and a noted expert on small sailing craft, demonstrated that the Spray was stable under most circumstances but could easily capsize if heeled beyond a relatively shallow angle. He felt that Slocum was merely lucky that his unstable vessel had not killed him earlier.
Despite this, and other criticisms of the Spray design, many hundreds of Spray copies and several Spray replicas, are presently sailing on all oceans of the world. Indeed, there has been no recorded incident of a Spray design having been lost at sea with all hands since Joshua Slocum and Spray disappeared in 1909, and the general opinion of that is that basic seaworthiness was not an issue in the vessel's fate. However, one of the many theories for the boat's disappearance suggested that her internal ballast may have shifted in a severe knock-down and thus unbalanced her. Only exact replica Sprays today would retain internal ballast. Frenchman Guy Bernardin is attempting a circumnavigation in a Spray replica Spray of Briac. With no weighted keel, the boat carries 1.4 tonnes of iron ingots as ballast – jig-sawed into position in the bilge, just like Slocum’s Spray. Would they fall out if he rolled? "They might..."
In his book "Captain Joshua Slocum", Joshua's son Victor Slocum stated that "the ballast was concrete cement, stanchioned down securely to ensure it against shifting should the vessel be hove on her beam-ends. There was no outside ballast whatever. The Spray could have been self-righting if hove on her beam-ends, a fact that was proven, since, by an experiment on an exact duplicate of the original boat and ballasted just like her. The test boat was hove down with mast flat to the water and when released righted herself."
When commodore John Pflieger pointed out in Spray, the journal of The Slocum Society, that a long keel is harder to tack or go about in and that a boat similar to Spray foundered on a lee shore on this account, Peter Tangvald, competent ocean sailor who circumnavigated in his 32-foot cutter Dorothea I, promptly replied, "How much more should Slocum have done to demonstrate that the boat was seaworthy? I would not hesitate to claim that if one Spray was wrecked on a lee shore it was because her crew needed a few more hours of sailing lessons."
Bound from Samoa to Australia, Slocum encountered gales and heavy seas that foundered the American clipper ship Patrician running a course south of Spray. A French mail steamer blown off course reported seeing Spray at the height of the storm and wondered what sad fate had befallen the little ship. Slocum's log records that, at the time that passengers of the steamer were up to their knees in water in the big ship's saloon, Spray was laying snug under a goose-winged mainsail.
Joshua Slocum, a classic sailor and a forthright, honest man, not being concerned by the controversy over the seaworthiness capabilities, said simply, "I have given in the plans of the Spray the dimensions of such a ship as I should call seaworthy in all conditions of weather and on all seas." He also stated: "I may some day see reason to modify the model of the dear old Spray, but out of my limited experience I strongly recommend her wholesome lines over those of pleasure-fliers for safety."
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