Learning the ropes # 2
November 17th 2006 05:32
Plenty of ropes to learn here
New chums are absolutely gob smacked to hear that they must tie off a reefed sail with a reef knot. “Gee I never thought about that” is a common enough reaction. Recently during an exam for a yacht master’s certificate I was asked to put in a reef and then an “earring” I was pretty stumped. I did not want to seem perplexed so I passed on the command to two of my crew who were very experienced seamen and they looked at me like I was mad. I have sailed on yachts that used hoops to attach the luff of the sails pre luff ropes and used hoops elsewhere. It was the only clue I could come with. (Clew here is the more obvious word) But I was on a pretty modern Benateu yacht! It turns out that what was required was a strop to hold the new reefing pendant in close to the boom. “A common term in the seventeenth century navy” my examiner told me. Gong, I guess I blew that one.
One of the least understood and recognised words for new crew is Gybe. Written many ways it said the same. So I have seen jybe, jib and so forth but if I listen closely most new people are saying jive. It takes some correcting but then it can be hard to hear at sea. How long did it take for larboard to become port? I can only imagine the difficulty during a howling gale at sea understanding the order to turn half a point to larboard. “Huh, did he say starboard or larboard?” How many serious mistakes did that make? Yet it was only in the early twentieth century that the Royal British Navy deemed it a proper time to change the wording.
I am trying to teach crew to always use the term heel when talking about the leeward lean of the boat. It sounds a lot less scary than leans, tilts, or anything else that suggest to the poor soul clinging to the safety rail with whitening knuckles that the vessel is about to tip over. It is often untimely to describe the science behind keeping a yacht upright. As a quick fix I usually tell people that there is a big weight about the equivalent of three Holden commodores hanging off the bottom to stop us going over.
more tomorrow
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Comment by katyzzz
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MS Paint Art
Very interesting well written and informative.
katyzzz
Comment by Anonymous
I appreciate you stopping by and commenting,
Cheers
Tom