How to speak yachtie, with Sarah Ell

The America's Cup is over. The fervour of the campaign has died down, but memories of the regatta and the language used to describe the boats and the battles lingers on. Yachting is full of jargon and unusual sayings, so we spoke to writer and journalist Sarah Ell to help us navigate the perilous waters that are the language of the sea. She’s written a book that helps demystify the secret code uttered by sailors and commentators called Shoot the Breeze, How to Speak Yachtie. Published by Random House, it’s a useful introduction to what can be a strange-sounding and colourful world for landlubbers, and Sarah's second sailing book.

Language from the past of sailing

“I did a dinghy sailing book in 2001 for an international publisher called New Holland. It was part of a series on adventure sports, so there was one on scuba diving, one on rock climbing and sea kayaking and so on, and that was published here, in Australia, South Africa and in the UK. It’s also been translated into Danish, Croatian and German.”

This book might pose more of a challenge for the translators though.
“A lot of the language does come from the good old days of the high seas, certainly names for parts of the boat and so on. Things like halyard, which is a piece of rope to pull the sails up and down, is a compression of hall yard if we think of square rigged sailing ships that have the bits of mast that go acrossways had big square sails, called yards the hall yards used to pull the yards up and down the mast, now they pull the sails up. So there’s things like that that come from a long time ago and things like ‘the heads’ the toilet on the boat is because the ‘seats of ease’ where they used to go to the toilet on ships were always at the front of the boat. The old ships only sailed down wind. So you kept the smelly part of the boat downwind of everybody. So some of those things cross over.

New expressions

“Then there’s other things that come into the language certainly every time the America’s Cup comes around there are new expressions added in. When there are big international events, expressions spread around the world. The term ‘Kiwi drop’ for a windward spinnaker drop came to prominence in the world in the 1987 America’s Cup it was a manoeuvre the New Zealanders did a lot, to great effect, so that became the term. Although now in America they call it ‘a Mexican’ apparently, because when the event was in San Diego, the windward side was facing towards Mexico so it became ‘a Mexican’.

“I think yachties love slang and to make up puns and things as well. One of the commentators was talking the other day about what they call a ‘tender drop’, which means that you drop the spinnaker so badly it ends up in the water and you have to cut it free and pick it up with the tender (support boat).”

“We call it trawling the Americans call it shrimping when you drop the sail over the side and drag it through the water. There’s been the odd trawl in the Louis Vuitton Cup, but I don’t think we’ll see it in this final level, but anything could happen. It would only take one little mistake like that and it would be all on.”

Not just ropes

There’s standing rigging for the mast and the boom, and running rigging for the ropes which aren’t necessarily called ropes, but halyards or lines or sheets the number of names for things on boats can be confusing for beginners “Nothing’s ever called a rope. There are lines, control lines, the halyards and ropes like the Cunningham, the vang, the outhaul, which are used to pull on different corners of the sail to change the shape of it. Then there are pieces of rope that are tied to the corners of sails to control the positions of sails are always called sheets.”

When there were lots and lots of pieces of rope and they were all the same colour it was good to be able to give someone a precise instruction.
“My mother went sailing a few years ago on a classic yacht and she was saying ‘someone asked me to pull the so and so and I didn’t know what it was’. I said ‘just memorise what colours they are the green and white one’s the vang and so on…’
She said ‘They’re all the same colour!’

“Classic yachts have all these beautiful plain coloured ropes. Before they invented different coloured ropes and stickers that they put on the jam cleats, then people had to memorise different names. But I’m not sure why some things have ended up with more than one name. It might be regional. Also things like the vang is known as the kicker or the kicking strap it keeps the boom down it’s got two names anyway. Other things have different names. And of course the sails have different names depending on the sizes they are and things…”

Most names are transferable across different types of single masted yachts, Sarah says.
“Your standard single masted boat whether it’s a little boat, like a sailing dinghy or an America’s Cup sized yacht will be the same it’s got a mast, it’s got a boom, it’s got a mainsail, a headsail, the vang, the cunningham and the outhaul…so those things translate right across. They start getting into more technical things, like the bigger boats have bigger winches called coffee grinders, but by and large it’s the same principles, same names.”

America's Cup racing

America’s cup boats are totally built for racing, Sarah says. “It’s all just black carbon, completely empty (inside), and when you look at them from above they don’t have a side deck or anything, and just a big shell at the back - they’re trying to be as light as possible.

There’s a lot to learn about America’s Cup racing, especially the elaborate starts.
Talk of one end of the start line being ‘favoured’ relates to where the wind is on the course.
“In an ideal situation, the starting line should be set completely perpendicular to the wind, so that straight up from the start line is the top mark, and they just go to tack up to there as close to the wind as they can. Neither end should be favoured, and by favoured I mean closer to the top mark, on a slight angle to the wind.

“However in the real world, the breeze never blows in the same direction everywhere on the course you see that on the weather buoys on the course it’s never blowing the same direction and it shifts a lot. Sometimes during the start sequence there’ll be a sudden shift and one end will become favoured, and that’s the end that they want. The other thing about the favoured end of the line is that people talk about the power of the right often yachts in a match race want to start at the right hand end of the line so they are always on the right of way and they can control where the other boat sails.

“If you’re on port, so you’ve got the wind coming over your left shoulder, you’ve got to give way to a boat that’s on starboard, that has the wind coming over the right.”

Keeping the boat moving

The grinders on the boat provide the power keeping the sails as full of wind as possible. It’s a hard job. “They are motive power the trimmer, the person who’s changing the shape of the sails, is calling to them ‘bring it on’, ‘let it out’ and so on so they’re providing the power to bring the sails in and out.”

It’s not the worst job on the boat though: “Sewer is the worst and it’s interesting Grant Dalton’s doing that job, so good on him. Being down below you’re inside this black hull on a hot day it’s 30 degrees ion Spain, with wet sails that stink, and the boats going up and down that would be the worst job I think.”

Two-mark courses, or windward leeward courses are used in America’s Cup racing, as in most match racing. There’s a lot of tacking which is a precision job that has to be executed flawlessly to avoid losing a lot of boat speed. “It’s interesting what we’ve seen in this final is that it is an art, and Alinghi are very good at tacking quickly. If you can tack quickly it means you’ve got an advantage if you’re close to another boat. They would have spent a lot of time practising that manoeuvre. The helmsman has to get it at the right speed so the boat doesn’t lose momentum through the tack, and that the sails can get across to the other side and can be trimmed back on again and be ready really rapidly. They do a lot of training for that kind of thing because you can lose a lot of time in a tack if you do it wrong, or you tack where there’s choppy water, you can lose a lot of boat speed.”

Match racing

There’s not much resting on a match racing boat either.
“The grinders don’t get a rest, but some of the boats will have a different upwind and downwind trimmer but there’s no mental rest, and you’re thinking the whole time.

Racing is a long, exhausting process especially if the start is delayed, or there’s more than one race in a day.
“Doing one race a day is not so bad, but the days when they were doing two races, that would be really exhausting. I know from regattas I’ve done, where you wait for ages and you’re thinking ‘we’re probably not racing today’ and all of a sudden they put the flag up and say ‘we’re off in 5 minutes’ that’s really hard to get your head around.”

Sailing high is a common expression used by the commentators, and Sarah explains it simply:
“When a boat is going upwind, they can’t sail straight up into the wind, so most boats sail at an angle, which could be 45 degrees in an older style boat, up to about to maybe 30 degrees to the wind. The smaller that angle is to the wind, the higher you are. So basically the higher you can sail, the shorter distance you have to sail upwind. If imagine a zigzag with 45-degree zigzags in it and you imagine a zigzag with only 30-degree zigzags in it, you’re not sailing as far to get to that top mark, so high is good.”

Sailing ‘high’ means less distance, but doesn’t necessarily equate to higher speed. “The ideal situation is to be both high and fast but if you sail a little bit too high, that can actually slow you down. If you’re too close to the wind you’re doing what they call pinching the air flow is not as good over the sails, you’re not getting that optimum flow across the sails.You have to try and find the balance between sailing high and sailing fast.”

Salty language part of history

Yachtie is a salty, colourful language as Brad Butterworth showed on live TV, and one mostly created by men.
“Throughout history, there’s been more male sailors. It‘s only in the last 20 or 30 years that women have being a lot of racing sailing. It wasn’t that long ago that women were not banned exactly, but you couldn’t be a female member of the Yacht Squadron, and they would have Ladies Days, but the women weren’t allowed to steer the boat over the line, when they were tacking, when they were gibing, when they were going around any marks or when they were near any other boat!”

“So if you were going in a straight line away from other boats, ladies were allowed to steer … but that has changed a lot. I sail most of the time with an all-women’s crew. We went out on Sunday in 40 knots my mother would have had kittens if she’d known about that but girls are great to sail with because they don’t swear so much and they always say please and thank you when they want you to do something.”

Most of the language in the book are orders you might receive if you were crewing a boat it is easy to imagine them being yelled at you from amidships.
“Often there’s not time to say ‘Could you please pull on that piece of rope by your foot?’ and ‘would you mind adjusting that slightly’. Often you’re just yelling ‘drop’ or ‘hoist’ and there need to be clear commands. That’s why there’s a section in the book on things people yell fence or skirt for instance.”

As the genoa is trimmed on after a tack (i.e. the sail is pulled in after turning) it’s foot can get caught outside the lifelines (low wires or ropes that run around the outside of the boat for crew to grab on to if they slip or fall overboard). Skirt and fence are both instructions to get the foot of the sail back inside the lifelines. Note that America’s Cup boats don’t have lifelines, which is why crew members can fall overboard.

Next on the horizon for Sarah is another young adult fiction book but that will be after she gets married set to take place in Venice, complete with gondola and serenading, early in July.

Fun to write

Shoot the Breeze was a fun exercise she says. “I’m lucky that my finacee has a great range of nautical language that he uses frequently, but during the period I was writing the book I’d be going out sailing and someone would say something and because I had my hands full sailing I’d be trying to remember it so I’d be going round the racecourse trying to chant these words; we’d get into the car park and I’d be trying to write them down frantically to remember. But I’m always keen to collect new ones.

“It’s part of the fun of sailing, I think is sitting down and analysing it.”

“There was one hadn’t heard that I quite liked when it’s windy it’s referred to as ‘blowing dogs off chains’. It’s great, in a very dry kind of way a lovely metaphor.”

“Sometimes things get a little saucy and it had to be toned down a bit. My parents read the book and Dad said ‘it’s a bit schoolboy humour’. But that’s what its like.”