[Public-List] Twings and In-haulers

[Gordon Laco]

Carrying terminology further…

If one is known to be a sailor, calling the mast the ’stick’ as it ‘I’m stepping my stick on Sunday’ or ’the Abbott 33 has a nice bendy stick’ is cool….   If you are not a sailor, then calling it a stick is just another symptom of lubber status.

If one is known as a sailor, the tiller is ’the stick’ but one never never calls it that unless it’s clear one is a sailor.

Around here we never said ‘Leeward’…. it had to be pronounced ‘Loo’rd’    

It is acceptable for one acknowledged sailor to compliment another’s new sails with ’nice rags’.   That’s an insult if the speaker is not of known status.

A sailor never says ‘prow’… hearing that one knows the speaker knows nothing so one can raise an eyebrow in significant distain.  However if the same part of a vessel is called ’the pointy end’, and the speaker is a sailor, well that’s cool.

When I was in training to be an officer in the RCN, we had a lecture on managing ship’s companies, or so the title of that day’s class went.  We were told…

- if Canadian seaman and American seamen are together, they may fight
- if Canadian seamen and Australian seamen are together, they’ll gang up on the Americans.
- If American sailors encounter British sailors they may fight
- if Canadian sailors come upon American sailors and British sailors already fighting, they might side with the Americans, unless the fight hasn’t started yet, in which case they will side with the British to fight the Americans.

This went on and on getting more and more complicated with more and more nationalities added.  I quickly realized we were being had… which was cool because it was the first glimmer of humour our instructors showed us in an otherwise intentionally stressful training experience.  I amused myself watching to see how long it took my fellow officer-trainees to lay their pens down and start grinning.  Quite a while, in a few cases...


Gordon Laco
426 Surprise





> On Apr 22, 2021, at 12:23 PM, Greg Roberts via Public-List <public-list at lists.alberg30.org> wrote:
> 
> Ah, define one's terms first... Twings as defined in the articles I've
> been reading are attached low and primarily control the height of the
> clew.In-hauls are attached high and primarily control the horizontal
> position of the clew.A few articles have used the term barber hauler
> loosely to encompass both or when only one is used low and inboard of
> the rail.All of this is of course colored by regional use of terms.
> Part of exploring this is the concept of enabling technology. Machine
> vision is a good example. Industry was well aware of the value of
> having machines do high speed inspection long before it was practical.
> It became widely used once relatively cheap, high resolution cameras
> and processing hardware became available.Perhaps the newer rings and
> dyneema warrant a second look... Perhaps low friction rings and
> dyneema is an example of technology catching up, or not.
> Michael,I guess I would argue that adding a main traveler is a far
> more significant change to the original boat than adding twings etc...
> Mine, #43 like yours, didn't come with any of those and I certainly
> would not want to race without one. So, I have to ask with tongue
> firmly in cheek, should you have bought a different boat instead? :)
> As for slamming boats together: My non-skid pattern is shifted by
> several inches aft on port relative to starboard. The winches,
> stantion bases, etc were all installed relative to the pattern and as
> such are all shifted.
> Regards,
> Greg
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