Just a bit of fun! We’ve found a delightful blog illustrating the following six nautical terms that relate to a boat’s motion. They are:
Heaving
Swaying
Surging
Pitching
Yawing
Rolling
It’s called six degrees of freedom and the drunken sailor. We hope you enjoy the sketches and their depiction of the fluidity of movement as much as we did.
A blog alerted me to the term ‘frostbiting’ – sailing in winter – and my curiosity was aroused. It’s not to be confused with iceboating, where hulls are fitted to ski-like runners and can get up to 100 mph off the wind. No, frostbiting would seem to be for people who don’t feel the cold! Boston harbour is one place where intrepid (or should that read foolish?) sailors pull on many layers to look like the Michelin man so that they can enjoy a few hours on the water. And one of the yachts that race is the Laser, on which you can expect to get wet!
Here in Sydney we’re fortunate that the temperature in the coldest month (July) only drops to an average 16.3°C /61°F. Even so, there’s always a great buzz back in the bar as competitors warm up again after a race.
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A. A paralympic sailor.
B. A yacht with two identical masts and sails.
C. A spinnaker with a vent system that provides greater stability than a traditional spinnaker.
The video has given the answer away – it’s C.
The Parasailor, a German innovation, was written up in Yachting World in “The Best Way to Sail the ARC”:
“It is a spinnaker with a vent and is said to be better mannered than a traditional version and can be set with or without a pole.
“With the vent, it will tend to allow the wind to blow through, so gusts will have less of an effect and it will provide added stability.”
Time will tell whether the idea takes on. What do you think of it?
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In The Boating Bible Manual of Seamanship – Boat Handling 1 – we show how to use twin headsails to keep the boat stable when running.
