Jabberwocky

Sailing 101 - First Day, in the Classroom

Ok, So I have been around boats all my life and know my bow from my stern as I bet many of us do. But the terminology that revolves around a sailboat is mind boggling. Words like leech, tack, roach, luff, clew - all well accepted in the sailing world - have little to do with the actual parts of the boat they are describing.  

And don’t even get me started on “ropes”. There must be a dozen “ropes” attached to these sailboats but we were instructed that there is only one “rope” on the sailboat and that’s the boltrope???  All the other “ropes” are called lines, well unless it’s a sheet or halyard or a shroud. And some of the “lines” turn to “sheets” depending on where they are being used. Confused yet?  Join the club. At least someone had the decent courtesy to divvy all the “ropes” up into two categories, standing and running - that I can hang with.

Before we get all wrapped up in knots, let me just say this. For a culture that uses so many words to create clarity at a moment when the wind is ripping and the seas are breaking over the bow, it has some strange idiosyncrasies in its word use.  There are several items on the sailboat with the same name.  I know, I know, you're probably thinking, "Really, with all those separate strange words that describe every little part we're going to start using the same words more than once!?" Yes Folks, that’s correct. On the sailboat there can be two heads with two entirely different purposes and They're no where near each other, and two things called the tack, which even more confusingly are in very close proximity.  

So, many of us know knots.  But the knots that you may have learned for camping, rock climbing or tying up the bad guy don’t necessarily translate into the sailing world very well.  And once you learn knots for sailing such as the bowline, you can have great debates with fellow sailors about the best ancestry of that knot and why the bowline from Dutch sailors is superior to a bowline, say from Spanish sailors or Tahitian sailors.   

My brain hurts, and we’re not even on the water yet!

~ J ~