| 'Is that from the boat, Grampa? What is it?' my | | | | trysail? I have to say that I have no idea. |
| daughter asked the other day. | | | | But sails are the least of my worries. Sailing |
| 'It's a whizzy whatchamacallit,' replied my | | | | conversations, on board, in the pub or over the |
| father-in-law, spinning a chunky bit of metal | | | | dinner table, sometimes seem as if they are in a |
| around in his hand. 'From the mast. It's broken.' | | | | foreign language. Discussions of jackstays, |
| We have a lot of whatchamacallits on our boat [ | | | | goosenecks and sliplines all sound a little fascist to |
| whizzy or otherwise. Take the cockpit for | | | | me, and as for warp protection... well, is it any |
| example. Fourteen different ropes, with fourteen | | | | wonder that I get confused? |
| different names, snake their way from various | | | | In the interests of sanity, I opened a sailing book |
| parts of the boat into the cockpit, and that's only | | | | the other day, just to see if I could work out |
| on the right - sorry, the starboard - side. | | | | what it all means. It was heavy going, but I |
| The whole thing is repeated on the port side, | | | | struggled on until I reached the bit about jiffy |
| giving us twenty-eight bits of string, of clashing | | | | reefing and leech cringles. |
| colours and patterns, to decorate the middle of | | | | So, I've made a decision: if you want me to pull a |
| the boat. There seems to be a rope for every | | | | rope on board a boat, keep it simple. Don't tell me |
| conceivable purpose, so whether it be kicker or | | | | to pull the spinnaker halyard sheet, just ask me |
| cunningham, runner or halyard, you can be sure | | | | to heave on the green rope. And as for all the |
| that we have a sheet for it. | | | | other essential sailing items, well, from now on, |
| It all gets a bit messy at times, especially when I | | | | they're all watchamacallits to me. |
| pull the wrong one! | | | | Which brings me back to the whizzy one - the |
| And the sails! I can at least tell a spinnaker from a | | | | broken whatchamacallit from the mast. |
| mainsail, but what is the difference between a | | | | You'll be glad to hear that this turned out to be a |
| genoa, a number one jib, a working jib and a | | | | vang bracket, of a type that they don't make |
| storm jib? And what about a staysail and a | | | | any more. |