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Show Lets Sootuu)! SALTY JARGON MARKS BOATMAN "Landlubber" is a term used in ridicule, and refers specifically lo anyone who is clumsy aboard ship. A landlubber can also be distinguished distin-guished by his lack of knowledge about common boating jargon. For example, when a skipper says, "She'll do about 30 knots," he doesn't mean his wife can tie lM) different knots. He means his craft can cover 30 nautical miles per hour. A nautical mile is 1.15 statute miles, so he will travel 8'4.5 miles per hour when making 30 knots. The "hull" is the main body of a boat. "Keel" refers to the boat's backbone, or the member that extends ex-tends along the center of the bottom of the vessel. "Draft" has nothing to do with compulsory military training- when - applied to boating. Rather, it is the depth of the hull from water line to the lowest point of the keel. When aboard a boat, a "painter" doesn't swab anything with a paint brush. A painter is a line b which a small boat is towed or made fast, A swab is a sea-going name for a mop. You don't "mop up;" you "swab down." By the same token, a "cleat" is not somcth ing a baseball player wears on the bottom of his shoes, but hardware on a boat or a pier to which lines are fastened. A "transom" "tran-som" isn't the opening above a hotel room door, but rather the part of an outboard boat on which the motor is hung. The "galley" is a seaman's name for the kitchen, while the "head" is the ship's toilet. When you go clown the "hatch" you don't necessarily neces-sarily go bottoms up. but rather down through the hatch, which is the opening through the deck or cabin top to the area below. Wc often speak of a "trick" as some sort of mischievous act. but in boatman's language it means a period of duty at the helm. The nautical version of "trim" has nothing to do with a girlish ligurc, but refers to the way a boat floats in the water with reference to the horizontal plane: We usualh think of a "stem" as something long and slender that has a flower or pipe at one end. In boatman's boat-man's jargon, it is a boat's leading edge of the bow. |