Here ye olde land lubbers can find yer selves what my sail-y words and terms mean. Arr.

Swell: naturally occurring ocean waves, usually traveling in one similar direction.

Pylon: Large, upright cylinders located on floating docks.

Stern: the backend of a boat.

Dinghy: a small, usually rubber, boat that is used for recreational things and such.

Dock: …… I think everyone knows what that is.

Moorings: Places to keep your boat, typically a mooring ball.

Heads: the boat term for toilets.

Holding Tanks: where the…stuff in the toilet gets stored until it’s dumped.

Arch: an arch on the back of a boat used for supporting the dinghy and some such items.

Legs: trips from one place to another in technical boat terminology.

Spreaders: The bars going horizontally across a boat’s mast that spread the shrouds.

Shrouds: long, skinny wires going vertically from the midship of the boat to the upper parts, typically used for hoisting stuff and keeping the boat…nice. Who am I kidding. I don’t know boat terminology!

Mast: hmmm. Take a guess. You can’t miss it.

Midship: The middle part of the boat.

Spinnaker: a large sail that comes either symmetrical or asymmetrical, which are extremely light weight and capable of sailing in low winds.

Knots: the boat way of counting speed and wind speed.

Gybing: swinging the boat across a following wind.

Clew: the back bottom corner of a sail that the rope or line attaches to.

Doused: taking down the sail.

Halyard: a line used for sails.

Line: a fancy way of saying rope.

Sheets: another fancy way of saying rope.

Starboard: the right side of the boat.

Port: the left side of the boat.

Hull: the framework of the boat, the outside.

Doldrums: no wind and flat sea areas, often lasting for days

Sailor Superstitions

Scratching the back stay: My grandad cryptically told us to “scratch the backstay” when we reached the doldrums. This superstition is said to bring favorable winds.

Coins under the mast: (I’m a Greek mythology nut, so this is a warning!) In Ancient Greek mythology, the family of a deceased would place a coin in the dead’s mouth. Why? So that they could pay the ferryman Charon to take them across the river Styx into the underworld. If you didn’t pay, you would wait one hundred years on the riverbank until you could cross. Sailors took the tradition, but would place a coin under the mast to ensure a travel across oceans remained safe.

Markings and amulets: both marks and amulets warded off evil spirits.

Setting Sail on a Friday: (This is Norse mythology) Frigga was the goddess of which Friday was named after, and she was an all-round good person. Unfortunately, early Christianity took her concept and distorted it into a witch or pagan emblem. Sailors then believed that Friday was a terrible day to set sail.

Whistling for wind: sailors used to whistle for the wind, like one might do to summon your dog. This supposedly attracted the wind for the boat to use.

Death and High Tide: “a sick man wouldn’t die until the next high tide” is what the doctors and counselors on sailing boats believed.