"Luff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the manoeuvre of a skilful helmsman, who, when a flaw that may not be resisted strikes the sails of his ship, doth not luff, and thereby increase the power of his enemy, and risk destruction, but, by a gentle turn of the rudder, glides by the danger, making its very violence facilitate his advance; or it may be compared to the progress ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... named a character; while one remaining in a state of development—a skilful navigator on life's river, who did not sail with close-tied sheets, but knew when to fall off before the wind and when to luff again—was called lacking in character. And he was called so in a depreciatory sense, of course, because he was so hard to catch, to classify, and to keep track of. This middle-class notion about the immobility of the soul was transplanted to the stage, where the middle-class element ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... always seemed to me that the most dangerous point of sailing in a small open boat in a high combing sea is running dead before the wind. When you are sailing close-hauled, you can luff up into a squall, if necessary, or meet a steep, dangerous sea bow on; but when you are scudding you are almost helpless. You can neither luff, nor spill the wind out of the sail by slackening off the sheet, nor put your boat in a position to take a heavy sea safely. The end of your long boom ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... back with one eye shut and the other fixed on the luff of the sail. He was in his element: nothing to do but steer and smoke, warmed by the sun and cooled by the breeze. A landsman would have been half demented in his condition, many a sailor would have been taciturn and surly, ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... piece again, while the Mellish crept along, all too slowly for the eager anxiety of her crew, toward the mouth of the channel, of which most of them, however, knew nothing. The frigate, partly because in order to bring a gun to bear on the chase it would have to luff up into the wind and thus lose valuable distance, and also because the rapidity with which the Mellish was being overhauled rendered it unnecessary, had hitherto refrained from using its batteries. The chances of ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
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