For the sailors....
Boating Definitions:
Anchor: Device designed to collect mud and weed samples from the bottom.
Anchor Light: Small light for discharging the battery before the daylight.
Backstay: Last thing to grab as you are falling overboard.
Battery: Electrochemical storage device capable of lighting a lamp of wattage approximately equal to a refrigerator lamp for a period of 15 minutes after having been charged for 2 hours.
Berth: Any horizontal surface that does not exceed the size of an average man at rest, onto which at least one liter of some liquid seeps during any 12-hour period and above which there are not less than 10 kilograms of improperly secured objects.
Boat Ownership: Standing fully clothed under a cold shower, tearing up 100-dollar bills.
Boom: Laterally mounted pole to shift crewmembers to a fixed, horizontal position during jibing or shifting.
Bunk: Small uncomfortable area for wet sailors to attempt to sleep. Location to store unused sails.
Chart: Large piece of paper that is useful in protecting cabin and cockpit surfaces from food and beverage stains. Type of nautical map that shows exactly where you are aground or what you just hit.
Companion Way: Another hole to fall in aboard.
Crew: Heavy, stationary objects used on shipboard to hold down charts, anchor, and cushions in place and dampen sudden movements of the boom.
Current: Tidal flow that carries a boat away from its desired destination, or towards a hazard.
Dead Reckoning: Course leading directly to a reef. 2)A term to explain use of a map instead of a chart.
Deadrise: Getting up to check the anchor at 0300.
Displacement: Accidental loss that occurs when you dock or moor your boat and can’t find it later.
Emergency Mooring Lines: Old ropes too rotten to use regularly but too good to throw away.
Engine: Sailboats are equipped with variety of engines, but all of them work on the same internal destruction principle, in which highly machined parts are rapidly converted into low-grade scrap, producing in the process energy in the form of heat, which is used to boil bilge water; vibration, which improves the muscle tone of the crew; and a small amount of rotational force, which drives the average size sailboat at speeds approaching a furlong per fortnight.
Fix: True position a boat and its crew in are in most of the time.
Flying Jib: Any jib when the sheets have gone overboard.
Fuel Tanks: Showing appreciative expression to having enough fuel on board.
Galley: Aspect of seafaring associated with slavery.
Give Way Vessel: The boat which, in a collision, did not have the right of way.
Great Circle: Ship’s course when the rudder is jammed or stuck.
Hanging Locker: Small, enclosed space designed to keep foul weather gear wet and turn all other clothing green.
Hatch: Any deck opening on a boat to fall in.
Hazard: Any boat over 2-feet in length. 2)Skipper of any such craft. 3) Any body of water. 4)Any body of land within 100 yards of any body of water.
Keel: Very heavy depth finder.
Ketch: Sailboat with good wine in the cabin.
Landlubber: Anyone on board who wishes he or she were not.
Latitude: Number of degrees off course allowed a guest at the helm.
Leech: Crew member who’s always broke.
Life Line: Phone call.
Life preserver: Mildewed device for emergency use, stowed under extra lines and anchors. Any personal floatation devices that will keep an overboard individual afloat long enough to be run over by a vessel.
Marine Flashlight: Waterproof place to store dead batteries.
Mast: Vertical pole for crew members to climb.
Mooring: Act of bringing a boat to a complete stop in a relatively protected coastal area in such a fashion that it can be moved in less than one week’s time without heavy equipment and/or no more than $100 in repairs.
Motor Sailer: Sailboat that alternates between sailing/rigging problems and engine problems.
Passage: Long voyage from A to B, interrupted by unexpected landfalls or stopovers at point K, point Q, and point Z.
Passenger: Form of movable internal ballast which tends to accumulate on the leeward side of sailboats one sea motions commence.
Permanent Mooring: Sunken boat, anchored.
Porthole: Glass-covered opening in the hull designed in such a way that when closed (while at sea) it admits light, air and water and when open (while at anchor) it admits light, air, and insects.
Propeller: Underwater winch designed to wind up at high speed any lines or painters left hanging over the stern.
Pulpit: Somewhere you pray you are going to pick up a mooring buoy.
Rapture of the Deep: AKA nautical narcosis. Its symptoms include an inability to use common words, such as up, down, left, right, front, and back, and their substitution with a variety of gibberish which the sufferer believes to make sense; a love of small, dark, wet place; an obsessive desire to be surrounded by possessions of a nautical nature and a conviction that objects are moving when they are in fact standing still. This condition is incurable and some times results in death, divorce, or bankruptcy.
Reef Point: Part of a rock sticking out of the water.
Sailboat Race: Two or more sailboats going in the same direction.
Sailing: Fine art of getting wet and becoming ill while going nowhere slowly at great expense. Equivalent to standing in a cold shower, fully clothed, throwing up and tearing apart $100 bills, while a bunch of other people watches you.
Schooner: Sailboat with a fully stocked liquor cabinet in the cabin.
Sheet: Cool, damp, salty night covering. Something with the ability to tangle on anything.
Shoreline: Used to dock boats.
Shower: An experience that is equivalent to standing naked for two minutes in a closet with a large, wet dog.
Sloop: Sailboat with beer and/or wine in the cabin.
Stand On Vessel: Vessel that in a collision was “in the rightâ€.
Stern: Way you feel after bashing the dock.
Tack: Maneuver the skipper uses when telling the crew what they did wrong without getting them mad.
Uniform: As worn by yacht club members and other shore hazards, a distinctive form of dress intend to be visible at a distance of at least 50 meters which serves to warn persons in the vicinity of the long winds and dense masses of hot air associated with these tidal bores.
Variation: Change in menu affected when the labels have soaked off the canned goods.
Yacht Broker: Form of coastal marine life found in many harbors in the Northern Hemisphere generally thought to occupy a position on the evolutionary scale above algae, but somewhat below the cherrystone clam.
Yacht: Commonly used to describe any boat prior to its purchase, and by many boat owners to describe their vessel to persons who have never seen it and are likely never to do so.
Yacht Club: Troublesome seasonal accumulation in coastal areas of unpleasant marine organisms with stiff necks and clammy extremities. Often present in large numbers during summer months when they clog inlets, bays, and coves, making navigation almost impossible. The can be effectively dislodged with dynamite, but alas, archaic federal laws rule out this option.
Zephyr: Warm, pleasant breeze. Named after the mythical Greek god of wishful thinking, false hopes, and unreliable forecasts.
" border="0" alt="no.gif" />
" border="0" alt="me.gif" />
" border="0" alt="icon_wink.gif" />
:" border="0" alt="laugh.gif" />