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Mal de Mer

One of my least favourite times of the year is the first time I go aboard Snow Goose after she's been lifted out for the winter. Not only is she cold and damp, but there's a complete lack of movement that feels really odd after the summer afloat.

One of the characteristic things about sailing boats is that they never stay still. Even in harbour or at anchor there is endless movement. You have to own a seriously large boat before the weight of two small children moving from one side of the deck to the other fails to make it rock. Then there are the waves and the wash made by passing boats. Even if you're not aware of it, your body is making constant tiny adjustments to allow for the motion and it feels very strange when it's no longer there.

Then when you put to sea, things get altogether more lively. Sailing boats heel - you just can't get away from it. It's what they're designed to do and many of them sail faster when they do so. 20° is comfortable, 30° is pushing it and 45° means that something has gone wrong!

Dinghies tip over and capsize on a regular basis, but bigger boats with keels aren't meant to. It makes a real mess of the crockery. To keep them upright they have large amounts of weight in the form of iron bars in the bilge (the lowest part of the hull) or alternatively hanging off the bottom on the end of a keel. Snow Goose has two of them which means that she sails slightly less well into the wind than a boat with a single central keel, but she has the huge advantage that if the water all runs away at low tide we stay upright.

In theory, a boat with a keel cannot capsize. The way this works is that the designer calculates the opposing forces so that even if you carry far too much sail for the conditions (we'll come onto reefing later), as the boat heels, the wind starts to glance off rather than blow against the sail and the tipping force loses its potency, allowing the weight of the ballast to bring the boat upright again. That's the theory. Where it all goes wrong is when you're heeling vigorously and a big wave hits you on the uphill side. When that happens, all the calculations go out of the window and the boat rolls right over. There are two bits of good news to bear in mind. Firstly you need some seriously big waves and if there's any chance of that happening I'll be tucked up somewhere with a good book. Secondly, even if you get knocked over, the boat tends to come back up again; sometimes lacking its mast but then you can't have everything.

All of this leads on to everyone's favourite nautical topic - seasickness or mal-de-mer which sounds far more romantic. I have to discuss this from an academic view point because I am incredibly lucky and have only ever suffered it once under exceptional circumstances. Roger, if you're reading this, you have that honour!

I've seen many people suffer from it and am always amazed that they still continue sailing because it looks awful. It's also a fairly serious matter if you're on a reasonably long passage because it makes you tired, dehydrated and seriously impairs your judgement just when things are getting tricky. That's why the most valuable member of a crew is often not the hairy-chested Yachtmaster - Ocean qualified gorilla with certificates coming out of his ears. If he takes to his bunk in anything over a force 6 claiming he had a bad pint the night before or a dodgy prawn vindaloo then he's not really much use. The lightly built novice who's never been to sea before is often far more use provided she can keep a good lookout, plot your position hunched over a chart that won't stay still and then knock up a hot meal in the middle of the night while bouncing around as if on some demonic fairground ride.

I don't know if anyone has ever worked out why it happens, but I've always been told it's because the ears sense movement but the eyes tell the brain that nothing's moving. Apparently that's why you feel better if you look at the horizon, it brings the eyes onside. Numerous cures have been suggested, ranging from the sublime (take drugs and go to bed) to the ridiculous (tie a piece of cotton round some bacon rind, swallow it then pull it up again), but in the end it seems to be one of those things you just have to live with. Just remember, if you're going to be sick, face downwind. Nothing worse than relieving yourself and then getting it all back in the face. Oh and whatever you do, don't be sick on the chart table.

Why does everything have to have a different name?

One of the things that often puzzles people when they first set foot on a sailing boat is 'Why does everything have to have a different name?'

I don't have an answer but it's certainly true. Here are a few examples:

Sole = Floor... but also ...Deck = Floor
Deckhead = Ceiling
Locker = Cupboard
Bow = Front
Stern = Back
Aft = Back or Behind
Beam = Off to the side
Quarter = Somewhere between beam and aft.
Berth = Bed
Heads = Lavatory
Galley = Kitchen
Chart = Map

And then there are ropes...

Someone once said to me 'you make it so complicated, why don't you just call them ropes'? The reason is that they all do very different jobs and the one thing you'll find plenty of on any sailing boat is rope.

Halyard = a rope that pulls a sail up.
Sheet = a rope that pulls a sail in.
Downhaul = a rope that pulls a sail down.
Outhaul = a rope that pulls a sail out
Kicker = a rope that pulls the boom down
Topping lift = a rope that pulls the boom up.
Shroud = a rope that stops the mast from falling over sideways.
Forestay = a rope that stops the mast from falling over backwards
Backstay = a rope that stops the mast from falling over forwards
Painter = a rope attached to the bow of a dinghy
Spring = a rope that stops a moored boat from moving forwards or backwards... and so it goes on.

Port and starboard deserve special mention. The starboard side is the right hand side when looking forward. Port is the left. So if you stand at the stern and look forward, the starboard side is on the right. However, if you stand at the bow and look aft, the starboard side is on your left. The old word for 'port' was 'larboard' Clear? Good.

The origins are reasonably straightforward. In old Norse, the steering oar or 'steerboard' was always on the right hand side at the stern. Larboard referred to the left side, the side on which the ship was loaded so that the harbour wall would not damage the steering oar. So how did larboard become port? Shouted over the noise of the wind and the waves, larboard and starboard sounded too much alike. The word port means the opening in the 'left' side of the ship from which cargo was unloaded. Sailors eventually started using the term to refer to that side of the ship.

But were you aware of how deeply other seafaring terms have entered our everyday language, a reflection of our maritime heritage...

Toe the line
The space between each pair of deck planks in a wooden ship was filled with a packing material called "oakum" and then sealed with a mixture of pitch and tar. The result, from afar, was a series of parallel lines six inches or so apart, running the length of the deck. Once a week, as a rule, usually on Sunday, a warship's crew was ordered to fall in at quarters -- that is, each group of men into which the crew was divided would line up in formation in a given area of the deck. To ensure a neat alignment of each row, the Sailors were directed to stand with their toes just touching a particular seam. Another use for these seams was punitive. The youngsters in a ship, be they ship's boys or student officers, might be required to stand with their toes just touching a designated seam for a length of time as punishment for some minor infraction of discipline, such as talking or fidgeting at the wrong time. A tough captain might require the miscreant to stand there, not talking to anyone, in fair weather or foul, for hours at a time.

Clean Bill of Health
This widely used term has its origins in the document issued to a ship showing that the port it sailed from suffered from no epidemic or infection at the time of departure.

Copper-bottomed
Copper sheathing was used to prevent boring worms from damaging the hull of wooden sailing ships. It was the ancestor of antifouling paint! It stood for security and protection.

A square meal
In Nelson's day the sailors ate of square wooden platters.

To hang on to the bitter end
The very end of an anchor cable, the section after the 'bitts' to which it was attached in the bow of the ship was known as the bitter end. To hang on to it meant that you had reached the end of your cable and had nothing left after that.

Nipper
The ship's boys who used to 'nip' or attach the anchor cable to another rope called a messenger that went round a capstan used by the crew to haul the anchor up.

Taken aback
Caught suddenly by a surprising wind shift.

Let the cat out of the bag
The cat o' nine tails with which miscreants were flogged was traditionally kept in a baize bag.

How many people can you fit in a Fulmar?

We bought Snow Goose because she offered a compromise between accommodating plenty of people and sailing reasonably well. I don't think I ever dreamed of quite how severely we would test her.

She's designed to sleep 6 or at a pinch 7. Two in the forecabin, two on the fold-out double on the port side of the saloon, one on the starboard saloon bunk and one, or two very good friends in the quarter berth on the port side (have a look at The Boat/The Fulmar for a guided tour).

When we bought her she was also fitted with brackets for two hammocks, one on each side of the saloon and that raised the potential to 9.

But still we weren't finished. One of the things I looked for when I was choosing a boat was flat cockpit seats so that at a pinch, someone could sleep on them. And so on one memorable night we added three more in the cockpit bringing our total for the night to 12.

Admittedly some of the children were quite small but even so I think it took about two hours to get everyone to bed in the evening and then up again the next morning. I can't remember how long breakfast took but I know we didn't go far that weekend!

Needless to say, the heads chose that weekend to get clogged up!