I recently spent a week on a sailboat as a guest of an experienced captain and his first mate – in this case, literally so because she is also his wife. This was my first real exposure to sailing on the open sea, of which past experiences have been confined to the occaisional summer afternoon, usually in calm weather. Throughout the trip I couldn’t help but compare sailing in a boat with flying in an airplane. This was a fun and satisfying exercise. In many ways, after all, the main sail of a boat does the same job as the wing of an airplane, with physical forces acting upon such craft in ways that make the art of sailing and the science of flight seem more closely related than I would have guessed.
But what fascinated me most about my time on the water was the sheer breadth of nautical terms sailors must learn and understand. In many instances, I could only make vague guesses about their meanings. Port and starboard, those are obvious. Rudder and keel, likewise. Main sail, jib and halyard, these were more or less familiar terms and easily understood once I saw each in action. But what about lazy jack, forestay, boom vang and dozens of other strange seafarers’ terms? To experienced sailors, these are the basics. To me, it might as well have been another language.
