Terminology. Translate this site
I speak yacht, badly. Lots of slang here's a dictionary of yachtie stuff I'm likely to use.
| Aft | Backwards in a the boat, or the back of the boat. |
| Anchor | A big metal hook thing, used to attach the boat to the bottom of the sea, they come in several types. |
| Anchorage | A bay or shallow patch into which the wind is always blowing at the wrong strength and or angle in which it is supposed to be possible to put and anchor down without dragging into something unpleasant |
| Anchoring | Parking the boat at sea, can only be done in sheltered water, where it is shallow enough and holding is good. If you have chain you need to use 4 times as much chain as the depth of water, so we have 55m of chain on board. We get nervous if we have more than 15m of water. |
| Astern | Behind a boat |
| Atoll | A ring shaped islands, where the original volcanic island has eroded away and or sunk back beneath the waves, as its been happening the coral continues to grow around the edge till there is no island, just the ring of coral where it was. Most atolls will not survive global warming. |
| Autopilot | A Electronic/Electrical/Hydraulic/Mechanical system that steer the boat for your. See Unreliable. |
| Beacon | a navigation mark mounted on something solid, either on land or in shallow water. |
| Beating | Going up wind in a sailboat, ins a series of zigzags (slow and uncomfortable), not what is done to mutineers. |
| Berth | Either a bunk on a boat or a slot in a marina where you park a boat. |
| Bimini | A metal frame and fabric awning open at the sides over the cockpit to primarily keep the sun off, and some rain shelter. |
| Blunt End | Back of the boat (stern) |
| Boom | Metal pole attached to the bottom of a sail. |
| Bow | Front of the boat |
| Bunk | A bed |
| Buoy | A floating thing tied to the bottom of the sea. These are either navigational marks, which are there to inform/confuse boats into avoiding rocks and shallows or for racing around (usually known as marks). Or are Mooring Buoys which are for tieing your boat too. |
| Cardinal Mark | A type of yellow and black marker used to indicate which side it is safe to go. Come in North, two black cones pointing up, South 2 pointing down, West pointing together, and east pointing apart. |
| Chinese Gybe | The act of gybing by mistake. |
| Choppy | Used primarily as an understatement, especially by the English especially in the past tense. If some ones says "looks a bit choppy out there" tie everything down, don full oilies, and check your life insurance policy. In reality it mean short steep seas, often seen in coastal waters. Not large, but annoying. |
| Close Hauled | Sailing as with the wind as close to the bow of the boat as possible usually about 45 degrees. |
| Cockpit | A recessed area on the deck of a yacht, where the crew usually hangs out, contains the tiller or wheel to steer the boat, and on most boats the winches and ropes to control the sails. The social centre of most boats in good weather. |
| Crew Flag | Unofficial, but almost universal practice of hoisting country flags up the port side of a yacht mast on mixed country crews. E.G. Ornen, swedish boat, flew a Red Ensign and a Auzzie flag on the port side for me and Roz. Island Kea doesn't fly a Icelandic flag at present due to the volcano thing. |
| Cruseing chute | A type of asymmetric spinnaker that is slightly easier to set than a conventional spinnaker |
| Courtesy Flag | When abroad it is considered respectfully to fly the flag of the country your are in up the right hand side of the mast. If no flag available. Paper cardboard etc can be substituted. Caution needs to be applied to this, in secessionist areas or independent areas you can cause offence by flying the mother land's flag. |
| Customs | People who never inspect your boat, for plutonium, crack cocaine, or automatic weapons so long as you fill out forms right. |
| Davits | Mini cranes on the back of the boat for hoisting in dinghies. |
| Dinghy | See tender for yachtie use, other wise it’s a small boat. |
| Dodger | England: A small piece of heavy cloth attached to the guar rail near the back of a boat to stop spray getting into the cockpit. American's use this term for a spray hood. |
| Donkey | See Engine |
| Downwind |
Usually used to denote sailing with the wind generally behind you or-at-least-no-further-forward than the beam. Sometimes used instead of leeward |
| Dragging | When your anchor doesn't bite into the bottom and slides along the sea floor. |
| Dropping the Hook | See anchoring. |
| El Nino | A weird and misunderstood weather phenomenon in the south pacific, which occurs (according to english people) 9 years in every ten and is responsible for the predictability of wet bank holiday weekends in northern europe. |
| Electricity | In boats this is either 12volt batteries or 24volt batteries. + some form of mains, either from shore, a genny or an inverter. Given the range of countries and boats, you need to know if you need 12v 24v DC, 110v 50hz, 110v60Hz 200(ish)v 50Hz or 200(ish)v 60Hz AC or various permutations of the above. No boats have enough of this (whatever it is) |
| Engine (auxiliary) | Converts large quantities of diesel fuel, filters, oil and impellers to slow forward motion through the water. |
| Expensive | See sailing |
| Finger Pontoon | Posh marina's have their docks like this, one boat each side of a finger off the main dock, like the teeth on a comb. Cheaper marinas have just strait dock that your go Stern Too on. |
| Flogging | The act of selling ones boat, oilies and nautical equipment when one has had enough of bloody sailing. |
| Four stroke |
a type of infernal combustion engine, which is complicated expensive, heavy, low emission and totally unsuited for say small simple applications like outboard motors or scooters. Therefore approved by the European minion. |
| Furl(er) | Many modern boats have roller reefing/furling you pull a rope and it rolls (furls) up the thing that does it is a furler. |
| Galley | The Kitchen area of a boat. |
| Generator (marine) | An auxiliary, auxiliary, diesel engine used solely to generate electricity. See Unreliable. |
| Genny | See genoa, or generator, depending on context. |
| George | See Autopilot |
| Green | a colour used to denote left. You leave green buoys to port, vessels display a green light on their starboard side etc. |
| Ground Tackle | The anchor and associated equipment, chain or warp. |
| Gybe |
The act of moving the sails from one side of the boat to the other with the wind behind. Often quite violently. |
| Halyards | a piece of rope for hauling a sail up the mast. |
| Harbour Master | Man who's in charge of a harbour. Collecting fees, allocating berths, making sure you don't get in the way of something important. |
| Heads | Toilet, usually manual pumped affairs with sea water piped in and waste piped out. |
| Headsail | A generic name for sails set on the front of the boat. |
| Holding | The condition of the bottom in which you are trying to anchor "good holding" means bottom is nice sand or thick mud where an anchor is likely to work well. "Poor holding" rock, or broken shale where you have hope your anchor will bite into a crevice….. |
| Immigration | People who stamp passports |
| Impeller | A rubber starfish thing used to pump water round marine engines to keep them cool |
| Inverter | Converts the ships batteries to main AC voltage, possibly at a murderous exchange rate. |
| Lagoon | This is the area of shallow water between an island and its fringing reef. |
| Leeward | Down wind from the observer. Usually the observers boat. |
| Locker | Cupboard |
| Mooring Buoy | A buoy, usually attached to a large lump of concrete - say an old chest freezer full of cement, with a piece of rope tied to a floating object. Used instead of anchoring. |
| Motu | A small low lying coral island part of a larger reef/island, but with water around. |
| Pointy End | Front of the boat (bow) |
| Oilies | Abbreviation of Oil Skins, now very expensive waterproofs, which no matter how much you spend can't actually keep you completely dry. |
| Osmosis | It turns out fiberglas isn't waterproof. This is a bit of a bugger since most yachts are made of it. Mostly a problem with older boats, water permeates the fibreglass, leeching out chemicals, symptom's include blistering on the hull. The problem is massively accelerated by placing a yacht in warm tropical waters. Its the biological process you, like me, learned about at school, which neither you nor I can remember. |
| Osmose | To keep you boat in the tropics for a long period (so causing osmosis) to be encouraged. Ok so I invented this one. |
| Pollywog | Someone's who's not crossed the Equator, by boat. See shellback |
| Port | The left and side of a boat as looking forward. |
| Port Captain | A kind of uber beaurocrat, has to say yes to your arrival/leaving. |
| Port Hand Marker | A red coloured buoy or post, preferably with a square red top mark used to mark the left and side of the channel, on your way into a harbour or anchorage. In Europe (system A), asia, the pacific. Every where apart from the americas , where it’s the right hand side of a channel. Bloody americans. |
| Quarantine | People who confiscate your fruits veg, kittens etc when you enter a country. |
| Reaching | Sailing with the wind from the side of the boat. |
| Red | a colour used to denote left. You leave red buoys to port, vessels display a red light on their port side etc. |
| Red Can | See port hand marker |
| Red Right Returning | An aide memoir to the System B buoyage system the americans use. |
| Reef | Under water or just exposed rocks. Or to reduce sail. (reefing = the act of reducing sail, not wandering around on rocks) |
| Reliable | In a marine context this means "only breaks occasionally". |
| Rolly | A description, frequently an understatement attached to conditions which cause the boat to roll from side to side and spill your drink. Often used in conjunction to the word anchorage. |
| Running | Sailing with the wind behind you (a bit more specific than downwind) |
| Sailing | The art of getting wet and becoming Ill whilst going nowhere at great expense. (Mike Pyton quote I think) |
| Saloon | The lounge/dinning room of a boat |
| Sheets | either a bit of rope used to control a sail or things that are supposed to catch the sweat of the tropics before they soak into the foam mattress (or mop up engine oil) |
| Shellback | Someone's who's crossed the Equator, by boat. See pollywog |
| Snuffer | A sort or bottom less bucket with a sock attached pulled over a spinnaker on a cruising boat to make it easier to hoist or drop |
| Solar Panels | These are the most reliable electrical generations system a boat can have, they are also the weakest. A 2ft by 2 ft panel will put out one amp at twelve volts for about 8 hours a day in the tropical sunshine |
| Spinnaker | A large colourful sail, set out of the front of the boat that is impossible to keep full in light wind, dangerous and impossible to get down in strong winds. |
| Spray hood. | A collapsible metal fame covered in fabric and transparent plastic, that is mounted on the front of the cockpit to keep rain and spray out. |
| SSB | Single sideband radio, a good set, coupled with a good antenna (usually the backstay) and good grounding I.E. a metal place on the bottom of the yacht, the right frequency, the right channels the right licence and the right time of day can be used to discus signal strengths and levels of noise of a up to half way around the world (though only in selected pockets) or a few hundred at practical frequencies. |
| Starboard | The right hand side of a boat as looking forward |
| Starboard Hand Marker | A green buoy or beacon, conical or with a conical top mark left to starboard on the way into a harbour in system A areas. |
| Stern | Back of a boat. |
| Stern Too | A practice, particularly common in the Mediterranean where you put the back of the boat to the dock and either put sunken lines on the bow to keep it off or your own anchor to keep the nose out to sea. |
| Swell | Long slow oceanic waves often traveling long distances from where they were formed. Wavelengths are huge so they're not a problem till they strike shallow water. |
| System A buoyage | Red buoys on the left on the way into a harbour, green on the right. Used every where but the Americas |
| System B buoyage | Red buoys on the right on the way into a harbour, green on the left. Used in the americas |
| Tack(ing) | To tack is the act of moving the sails from one side of the boat to the other with the wind coming from in front of the boat. Also the forward bottom corner of sail. |
| Tender | A small boat (dinghy) used to get from the big yacht to the shore. |
| Tide | The effects of the moon's gravitation, the sun's gravitation, the planetary tilt and the elliptical orbits of the earth and sun produce very predictable changes in the water level around the planet. Called tides. These vary the depth of water in any given point predictably, allowing for the flow of water to fill up or lower the water. This makes everything complicated. Even if you've got the tides predicted they're never quite right cos atmospheric pressure moves them up and down as does wind, large waves, especially breaking over reefs etc. Its the flows of water as much as the height that are a right bugger. |
| Towed Water Generator | A type of shark fishing equipment consisting of a metal weight with spinning blades tied by string to a small alternator on the back of the boat. Converts half an knot of boat speed to a small amount of electricity (until bitten off). Has 2 sets of blades, one small set for high speed, large set for slow speeds. Normal boat speed is where the little blades are slow and big blades skip out of the water due to excess speed. |
| Trade Wind | A large area of constant, and predictable wind over a long period and or large area. Caused by the Inter tropical convergence zone and areas of established high pressure in temperate latitudes. Or something. North East to East in the Northern Hemisphere, South East or east in the Southern. |
| Trades | See trade wind |
| Transit | Lining up of 2 objects, usually special lights or pole to allow you to stay on a line through say a harbour entrance. Also used laterally to determine whether the boats forward motion through the water is more or less than the tides motion the other way. |
| Two stroke |
a type of infernal combustion engine, which is simple cheap, easy to maintain, light and for a given value of reliable, reliable. Ideal for small marine applications like outboard motors Therefore banned by the European minion. |
| Unreliable | Most things on a boat are unreliable, the sea on which the boat is on is unreliable, the wind is unreliable the weather forecasts are particularly unreliable. Even the (see reliable) reliable things on a boat are pretty unreliable. |
| VHF | Very High Frequency, marine radio, used in conjunction with a masthead antenna (that hasn't got salt water in the cables) gives a range of 25 miles |
| Water Maker | A machine for turning seawater into fresh water, using the principals of reverse osmosis. They consume large amounts of power, are very unreliable and expensive. |
| Wench | A woman on a boat used to pull ropes. As opposed to a woman on a boat solely to do the cooking/cleaning. |
| Winch | A winedy thing used to pull ropes. (Not to be confused with Wench) |
| Wind Generator | A noisy spinning engine of death that generates small amounts of electricity per unit of noise or wind. |
| Wind Vane | A mechanical contraption attached to the back of the boat which uses the power of the wind and the direction of the wind to steer the boat an a pre-set angle to the wind. Vaguely |
| Windward | Up wind from the observer. Usually the observers boat. |
| Yellow Flag | Yachts entering a country must fly one of these up the right hand side of the mast till they have cleared customs, Immigration, quarantine etc. Usually left up permanently. |
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