Matt and Bonnie know that Rachael and I are planning to take the ASA 101 Basic Keelboat Sailing Course soon and somewhat familiar with our sketchy and yet-to-totally-be-developed plan to escape the Frozen Cul-de-Sac to more flip-flop appropriate tropical climes for the 11 & 1/2 months of winter here. As such, Matt invited me out on his sailboat the other day so I could practice and he could put his own life into my hands - a brave and noble feat. We had a great time sailing Matt's 14 foot Javelin on our moderately sized Minnesota lake in moderate to light winds (sorry I don't know how many "Knots" the wind was - read on...). He allowed me to take the tiller with just the mainsail up and we successfully tack back and forth across our lake for about an hour an a half. We talked about sailing (of course) and the parts of the boat amongst other things. It was great fun and I actually remembered several of the things I'd been reading about for our upcoming ASA 101 Basic Keelboat Sailing Course. I could identify the mast, shrouds, boom, goose neck, boom vang, keel (a swing), fore, aft, windward, leeward (pronounced "leward"), rudder, etc... It was great fun and a well spent time with a great neighbor. Thanks Matt!
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| Matt's 14 foot Javelin - I'm barely older than his sailboat! |
This of course got me thinking about our first official sailing lesson for the ASA 101 sailing course, which is now a mere two days away. We have been reading and studying in our course book titled "Sailing Made Easy". The popular saying "You can't judge a book by it's cover" may have first been coined to describe this very book. My Master's degree in Education should have red-flagged the title. Since when are "Sailing" and "Easy" allowed to be used in the same sentence? To start with, the sheer vocabulary and use of wording is akin to learning another language, something that is best taught in preschool to 3 year olds whose brains have not yet fully developed the locked down patterns and verbiage that are eventually used as adults. Studies into linguistics and aging suggest that for our brains to learn a new language at, say, middle age versus during pre-primary development is similar to mixing separately tasty ingredients into a high powered blender and then turning the blend setting to "Puree". New vernacular goes in, mixes with your existing language knowledge and the result is a thick slurry of jumbled semi coherent and moderately tasty jargon likely will leave experienced sailors listening to us with bewildering looks on their faces. Sorry, Captain!
I'm fairly confident in discerning the reason for this. Sailing on this planet goes back who knows how many thousands of years, likely to a time long past when early humans looked across an expanse of water and fashioned some type of crude platform on which to cross it. As we study the verbiage and use of terminology that has evolved over these many years, it's become apparent to me that no one was assigned and left fully in charge of developing a Dictionary of Sailing that would be easily understood by future generations of sailors. It's obviously adapted to changes in time and location to become what it is today. I wouldn't doubt that many of the modern sailing terminology still sounds and means the same as the primordial grunts and squeaks uttered by the Earth's first sailors, and is equally confusing now as it was back then. Words and usage have been adapted to various languages, and their meanings and understanding are varied and colorful.
For example, when I was in the Boy Scouts, I learned to tie things called knots on long thin useful strands of fiber or fabric called ropes. Useful for tying down tent stakes, a clothesline between trees, etc... On a boat a knot can still refer to a twist of the "rope" onto, within and around itself to secure something. But less stright-forwardly, it can also refer to the speed with which a sailboat is traveling. In America, the speed I'm used to utilizing in my car is measured in miles per hour. On a sailboat, well, all that Driver's Education learning is out the window (or porthole...?). There are no MPH's on a sailboat, only "knots".
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| Boy Scout Knot Tying Merit Badge |
According to Wikipedia, a nautical "knot" is thusly defined:
Vessel speed at sea is measured using a chip log.
This consisted of a wooden panel, attached by line to a reel, and
weighted on one edge to float perpendicularly to the water surface and
thus present substantial resistance to the water moving around it. The
chip log was "cast" over the stern of the moving vessel and the line
allowed to pay out.[6] Knots placed at a distance of 8 fathoms - 47 feet 3 inches (14.4018 m) from each other, passed through a sailor's fingers, while another sailor used a 30-second sand-glass (28-second sand-glass is the currently accepted timing) to time the operation.[7] The knot count would be reported and used in the sailing master's dead reckoning and navigation. This method gives a value for the knot of 20.25 in/s, or 1.85166 km/h. The difference from the modern definition is less than 0.02%. [A fathom is 1/1000 nautical miles, roughly 6 feet]
Umm...OK then! My last math class was during my senior year in high school, and most of what I learned to use in my daily life I'd actually learned back in Kindergarten. I guess Calculus was a way for me to occupy 3rd hour rather than leave me to wander about the campus with no apparent purpose during that time. In any case, what does it really matter if we are inept at utilizing this method of calculation? Isn't that what chart plotters and wind speed indicators are for? I've never had to do that while driving to work... Of greater concern, should I be worried about accuracy when the sailing master is relying on some vague skill referred to as "dead reckoning"?
And did you know that you never tie a knot on a rope on a sailboat? You tie it on a line, which at my house is where we hang clothes outside to dry. Further confusing the matter, you may actually be tying a know on a sheet, which is a line (which to me still looks like a rope) that is used to control the lateral movement of various sails (at least the word sail is understandable). So if a rope on a boat is called a line and some lines are called sheets, then what do you put on your bed and where do you dry them when you pull them out of the washing machine?
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| 40 Common Sailing Knots |
Cockpit, helm, lifeline, boom, boom vang, tack, clew, luff, leeward, batten, port, starboard, abeam, stern...... Yikes! This was on page 26 and we still had 93 pages to go! I desperately want to complete our sailing course while avoiding another situation whose descriptive phrase was likely invented in ancient times to describe the look on uncomprehending newbie sailors faces when hearing a command from their captain: the blank stare.
Could there possibly be alternate definitions and simpler understandings to this myriad of nautical terms? With those 93 pages left to study, and the goal to swiftly shortcut our studying time while achieving 100% comprehension, I thought maybe I'd turn to Google to see if there could be anyone out there who'd devised a Sailor's Cliff Notes for all of this sailing vernacular. Thanks to Blue Water Sailing I was able to clear up a few things regarding the lineage and true meaning of many of the sailing terms we'd need to know to pass ASA 101. Some excerpts:
- Aboard: A piece of construction lumber
- Anchor: A device designed to bring up sand, mud and muck from the bottom at inopportune times
- Backstay: Last thing you try to grab as you're falling overboard.
- Boat: Break Out Another Thousand
- Boom: A horizontally mounted metal bar designed to unexpectedly shift crew members to a fixed, horizontal position on the deck
- Bow: 1) Part of the boat that no one should ever be asked to go to work on. 2) What the Captain takes after successfully returning boat and crew to a dock unscathed.
- Cleat: Small plastic triangular shaped studs emitting from the bottom of an athletic shoe for sports such as football, baseball and golf.
- Clew: What new sailors often don't have any of.
- Cruising: Waterborne pleasure journey embarked on by one or more people. A cruise may be considered successful if the same number of individuals who set out on
it arrive, in roughly the same condition they set out in, at some piece of habitable dry land, with our without the boat.
- Dead Reckoning: 1) Plotting a course leading directly to a reef 2) What a Southern doctor says when a sailor goes to Davey Jone's Locker
- Galley: 1) Ancient Definition: Aspect of seafaring associated with slavery. 2) Modern definition: Aspect of seafaring associated with slavery.
- Gybe: Useful method for removing unruly guests from your boat.
- Landlubber: 1) Anyone on board who wither wishes they were not it 2) anyone who truly does not belong on a boat in the first place.
- Leeward: The side of a boat where the moveable ballast known as passengers tend to shift to once sea motions commence.
- Luff: Front part of the sail that everyone but the helmsman seems to pay attention to.
- Keel: Very heavy depth finder used to locate the bottom of the sea.
- Mast: Religious ceremony typically used prior to leaving port.
- Port: Fine red wine, always stowed on the left side of a boat.
- Propeller: Underwater winch designed to wind up all manner of stray fishing line, weeds and other lines left hanging overboard.
- Pulpit: A spot on the boat where you fervently pray that you will pick up a mooring ball.
- Ram: Complex docking maneuver often used by experienced captains.
- Sailing: Fine art of getting wet and sick,while going nowhere extremely slowly at enormous expense. equivalent to standing in a cold shower, fully clothed, throwing up, and tearing up $100 bills, while a bunch of other people watch you.
- Sheet: 1) Cool, damp, salty night covering. 2) Line made to make gloves fail or rip hands apart. 3) Something with the ability to tangle on anything.
- Starboard: Special piece of wood that the captain uses for navigation, usually with "Port" written on the back side.
- Tack: Shifting the boat from a direction far to the right of where you desperately want to go to a direction far to the left of it. Rinse and repeat often.
- Windward: Wing of maritime hospitals for sailors with chronic gas problems.
- Winch: Anything you spend lots of effort grinding until it squeals or groans. (caution: not to be confused with similarly spelled words)
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