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Be Free · 13-01-2016, 10:57

The thing and the other thing: the two most important components of sail trim.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClzaP8HN2wc

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"I wonder if he is using the same wind we are using." Inigo Motoya

ryon · 13-01-2016, 11:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by jongleur

Okay, let's try this tack: Two scenarios.

#1
Captain: Sailor! Haul the downhaul!
Sailor: Aye aye Captain!
Captain: Sailor! I thought I told you to haul the downhaul.
Sailor: I did, Captain. The luff is tight.
Captain: No, no. I meant haul that other downhaul line,
the one that takes the sail down.
Sailor: Oh. Yes sir. Right away sir.

Or

#2
Captain: Sailor! Haul the disgracing line.
Sailor: Aye Aye Captain!
Captain: Well done, Sailor.

References? We don' need no stinkin' references.

Which disgracing line, Cap'n? We have six of them! Seven if you count the flying jib, which we don't have rigged at the moment. Don't you want me to cast off the halyards first? Nothing's coming down until we cast those off. If you want me to tighten up luffs on the gaff-tops, I can haul the tacks for you. That would probably be better. And why are you telling me how to do my job?

"Dammit, Ryon! Can't you take a simple order?"

jongleur · 13-01-2016, 12:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by ryon

Which disgracing line, Cap'n? We have six of them! Seven if you count the flying jib, which we don't have rigged at the moment. Don't you want me to cast off the halyards first? Nothing's coming down until we cast those off. If you want me to tighten up luffs on the gaff-tops, I can haul the tacks for you. That would probably be better. And why are you telling me how to do my job?

"Dammit, Ryon! Can't you take a simple order?"

If you're trying to refute my argument,
your logic is backwards.

ryon · 13-01-2016, 12:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by jongleur

If you're trying to refute my argument,
your logic is backwards.

Only if you're the captain.

**StuM** · 13-01-2016, 15:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by jongleur

Okay, let's try this tack: Two scenarios.

#1
Captain: Sailor! Haul the downhaul!
Sailor: Aye aye Captain!
Captain: Sailor! I thought I told you to haul the downhaul.
Sailor: I did, Captain. The luff is tight.
Captain: No, no. I meant haul that other downhaul line,
the one that takes the sail down.
Sailor: Oh. Yes sir. Right away sir.

Or

#2
Captain: Sailor! Haul the disgracing line.
Sailor: Aye Aye Captain!
Captain: Well done, Sailor.

References? We don' need no stinkin' references.

#1
Captain: Sailor! Haul the downhaul!
Sailor: Aye aye Captain!
Captain: Well done, Sailor.

Or

#2
Captain: Sailor! Haul the disgracing line.
Sailor: What's a disgracing line, Captain!
Captain: Oh, that's what I call that line that you use to haul down the sail.
Sailor: (under breath (Oh, the downhaul! WTF?).
Aye aye Captain!
(under breath - Prat!)

**Jim Cate** · 13-01-2016, 15:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by StuM

#1
Captain: Sailor! Haul the downhaul!
Sailor: Aye aye Captain!
Captain: Well done, Sailor.

Or

#2
Captain: Sailor! Haul the disgracing line.
Sailor: What's a disgracing line, Captain!
Captain: Oh, that's what I call that line that you use to haul down the sail.
Sailor: (under breath (Oh, the downhaul! WTF?).
Aye aye Captain!
(under breath - Prat!)

Aye, that's the likely outcome!

As they say, different ships, different longsplices... and different local nomenclature.

Jim

**StuM** · 13-01-2016, 15:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by carstenb

Hence the term "man the braces"

In this part of the world at least, we use the word "brace" rather than "guy" for the spinnaker sheet on the pole side (unless you have both a sheet and a brace/guy on both clews as some do).

jackdale · 13-01-2016, 15:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

and different local nomenclature.

Jim

Boom vang or kicking strap?

When I called it the former an RYA trained person told me that was the funniest phrase he had ever heard.

**Jim Cate** · 13-01-2016, 16:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by jackdale

Boom vang or kicking strap?

When I called it the former an RYA trained person told me that was the funniest phrase he had ever heard.

And in some places that device is called a "go fast". None of them make much literal sense, so I guess we gotta go with the local flow if we want to be understood... but I don't see why "boom vang" was so funny!

Jim

ryon · 13-01-2016, 16:21

"Del Rey Rigging." The curious practice of displaying ship's fenders while under sail. Or as the sailors of Marina del Rey call them, "bumpers".

Alan Mighty · 13-01-2016, 17:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by jackdale

Boom vang or kicking strap?

Kicking strap, the preferred term in the UK, was a horse harness term.

The term is documented by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) since 1861: "They had‥his belly-band buckled across his back, and no kicking strap."

So a kicking strap was originally a strap to prevent a horse kicking its hind legs (and so disturbing the gentle folks sitting in the carriage behind).

The OED records the transfer of the term to sailing in 1951: "It is to prevent the boom from lifting that a kicking strap is fitted." The OED details the use of the term further with a citation from 1961: "It is in a gybe that a kicking-strap proves its worth, since it holds down the after end of the boom thereby allowing complete control to be maintained over the sail at all stages of the manœuvre."

Vang and boom vang have a longer history, dating to the days of square rigs (instead of the more recent fore-and-aft/Marconi/Bermudian rigs). The OED (again, the best authority for first appearance of a term in Engllish) dates the first appearance of vang to 1769 in Falconer's marine dictionary where vang is used in two definitions: "Brace: The mizen-yard is furnished with fangs, or vangs, in the room of braces."; and "Vangs: a sort of braces to support the mizen gaff, and keep it steady."

Note that first citation from Falconer in 1769: "fangs, or vangs". That suggests that vang was a spelling and pronunciation variant of fang. The OED records a first use of the nautical term fang in early Modern English in 1513: "Now the lie scheit, and now the luf, thai slak, Set in a fang, and threw the ra abak". That etymological line leads all the way back to the concept of a fang as something that captures or seizes, to hold steady and so on.

The earliest published use of boom vang I found was in 1948, where it was used as a synonym for kicking strap (and incidentally predated the OED's 1948 record for kicking strap): "boom vang (or kicking strap, as some call it)". I do not have the resources of the OED, so I cannot guarantee that boom vang was not used in print earlier than 1948 (and the 1948 citation I found is further evidence that the OED is not the perfect source for sailing terms - the readers for the OED just don't read specialist sailing magazines or the catalogs of marine suppliers).

Make of all that what you will (and depending on your viewpoint).

My view is partly influenced by the ideas of Jacques Derrida and what he called deconstruction in looking at a text and its meanings. So I see kicking strap as a term that the British horse-and-carriage owning class would have used. And of course that socio-economic class strata in Britain also overlapped with the owners of recreational yachts.

And I dare to extend that to the sort of chaps from good family backgrounds who might be RYA trainers at good yachting clubs with the 'Royal' prefix, who might pass on their disdain for non-U (read as "non-upper class") terms to those trained by them (and hence to the person Jack Dale met, to explain that person's laughter at anyone using a term not authorised as proper by the unwritten guidelines of the 'right' socio-economic class.

Or it might just be that the RYA-trained person who scoffed at Jack Dale's use of boom vang was a simple person, not well read and with narrow contact with the wider community, who simply was hearing boom vang for the first time.

Either way, the person who scoffed at JD's use of boom vang likely qualifies as a prat: A person of no account; a dolt, a fool, a ‘jerk’.

The OED glosses prat with:

1968 "He had been looking for the exact word to describe David and now he found it: prat."
1973 "Harris was a bit of a pompous prat."
1980 "The pompous prat. The I-know-people-in-high-places nut."

**carstenb** · 13-01-2016, 22:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by jackdale

Boom vang or kicking strap?

When I called it the former an RYA trained person told me that was the funniest phrase he had ever heard.

In Denmark - this is called a "kicking strap" (we are all upper class types here

)

All you american types call this a "vang" or a "boom vang" Took me quite a while to figure out what you were talking about (just goes to show - should never mix company with all those lower class types

)

Alan Mighty · 13-01-2016, 23:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by carstenb

In Denmark - this is called a "kicking strap" (we are all upper class types here

)

All you american types call this a "vang" or a "boom vang" Took me quite a while to figure out what you were talking about (just goes to show - should never mix company with all those lower class types

)

The Ngram of kicking strap versus boom vang, as created by Google from its database of published English 1800-2000 should give you an idea whether you are on the right side of history.

The use of "kicking strap" before 1940 is entirely related to the kicking strap on horses.

The Ngram shows "boom vang" used once in 1916 (boom vang pendants) and again in 1939 (in specifications for a lighthouse tender: Boom vang stainless- steel wire rope pendants with steel blocks and manila tackle shall be fitted as will be directed).