Useful Sailing Rule of Thumb

[TrentePieds]

"If you throw a potato off your bow and it goes thud instead of splash, it's time to tack."

and: "...if you see the seagulls walking, REVERSE COURSE!

and: " Rain before the wind, sheets'n'topsls mind. wind before rain, haul 'em up again!"

TP

[Jim Cate]

And my old favorite:

Mackerel skies and mare's tails mean soon tall ships will wear short sails.

"Mackerel skies" are typical shortly before a frontal passage... hence the warning.

Jim

[skipperpete]

Originally Posted by SeanPatrick

Yes. "CBDR": Constant Bearing, Decreasing Range.

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On the topic of celestial navigation, there is "computed greater away".


This phrase is not particularly witty (maybe not even useful to most), but it is easy to memorize. And it helps one to remember which way to plot a line of position. If the computed altitude is greater than the observed altitude, then the LOP is plotted away from the computed azimuth, and vice versa.


Cheers!

I became more familiar with “GOAT”, greater observed altitude towards and “CADET”… compass to true add deviation east.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by BlueH2Obound

Yep, POSH = Port Out (or over), Starboard Home, so the side of the ship (North Side)away from the sun for the majority of the voyage.
The East India Company would stamp P.O.S.H on the premium $$ tickets.

The, oft-repeated, [‘simple, neat, and wrong’*] fiction, that ‘POSH’ is an acronym [Port Outward, Starboard Home], dates to the early-to-mid twentieth century, ranking it among the earliest.
Acronyms were rare, in the English language, before the 1930s, and most etymologies of common words or phrases, that suggest origin from an acronym, are false.
The word ‘acronym’, itself, wasn’t coined until 1943 – curiously enough, the same year that the ‘Port Out, Starboard Home’ myth appears to have turned up, in print, for [one of] the first time[s], in Peter Muir’s travel book ‘This Is India’.

Here’s another new acronym: CANOEs – Campaigners who Assign a Nautical Origin to Everything

Merriam-Webster, the American lexicographers, concluded:
"... if the practice of preferring cabins on the cooler side of the ship did exist–and it certainly seems reasonable–no acronymic P.O.S.H. (or its unmentioned opposite S.O.P.H.) was necessary on the tickets for such accommodations. And no evidence of its use has yet appeared. We further conclude, then, that the acronymic theory of the origin of the adjective posh is simply a modern invention.”

Snopes also covered the objections, fairly well ➥ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/posh/

Why do I care?
These fabrications, when anything but obvious jokes, are acts of intellectual vandalism.
They play on the human tendency to prefer a good story [with Dockhead’s ‘ring of truth’], to a dull fact.

Although they have, perhaps, made some dull conversations more lively, false “history”, even of something that seems relatively benign, at first glance, can’t help but feed into alternative realities, and misinformation, on any, more substantive, topic.

* "For every complex problem, there's a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." ~ H.L. Mencken

Or perhaps, I'm just a pathetic old mam.

[Tedd]

The 1:60 rule is definitely a good one. I use it for estimating the effect of current on course. (Both to estimate the on-course and cross-course components and to estimate the effect of the cross-course component on heading.) Bear in mind, though, that accuracy drops of after 15 degrees.


I expect most sailors already know the one-minute-of-arc-to-one-nautical-mile ROT, but I thought it was worth mentioning in case someone doesn't.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Snopes also covered the objections, fairly well ➥ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/posh/

]

That snopes peice is seriously flawed.
They start with a pic of Alfred Holt's Sarpedon or one of her sisters.
Holt's never ran to India - they ran to the Far East - and these 5 ships only had passenger accomodation for about 150 first class passengers at British government insistence. It was for government employees going out to Singers and Honkers.
Wealthy british did not go to India for their hols - government employees went there on contract to manage the Raj.
P&O also ran via India to Australia. Most of those passengers had a one way ticket - they weren't stupid.

The wealthy went to Egypt for their health - esp those with consumption - as the dry climate was said to be beneficial.
On that service the sunny side of the ship was always to the south and - as up until the building of the Straths in the 30's P&O painted their passenger ships black with buff upperworks - the north side would indeed always be cooler.

While a few cabins back in the the 30's - and maybe earlier ( dunno I'm not that old) were indeed 'inside' most 2nd class cabins did indeed have a port hole even when not actually on the side of the ship. A majority of first class cabins were on the Prom Deck and were open -early and late in the day- to the sun on post 1930s ships. Probably also on ships such as the Mooltan but that was before my time.
Was 'posh' stamped on people's tickets ? Probably not.
Did people heading out to Egypt for their health ask for 'port out starboard home'? Very likely even if it made little sense.
Was this the origin of POSH?
I doubt it.

Information provided above came from between my ears. Contains no nuts, snopes , or google reseach.

[CrispyCringle]

Regardless of the origin of POSH, it doesn't qualify as a relevant Rule of Thumb for sailing.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by CrispyCringle

Regardless of the origin of POSH, it doesn't qualify as a relevant Rule of Thumb for sailing.

Depends on the size of the boat and number of cabins, doesn't it?

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Depends on the size of the boat and number of cabins, doesn't it?

I have a simple rule on my boat. I'm the captain, I sleep where I want. The rest of you do what you want with the remaining options. I normally choose the low side in the saloon if going to windward unless SWMBO says otherwise.

Back to 'posh' and snopes. The better class of liner such as Sarpedon and her 3 sisters didn't have passos in airless cabins below the maindeck. They lived as can be seen in attached pic on either one or both decks between the main deck and the boat deck.
Big passo boats built up until the early 60's were not airconditioned. Much of the ventilation simply involved punka louvres. My memories of doing rounds ( twice a watch) in the tropics of D and E decks involves a heady aroma of socks and jocks and other delights.
But that was not the life of the first class passo.
http://cardemp.co.uk/pics/bluefunnel/sarpedon.jpg

[grantmc]

Originally Posted by CrispyCringle

Regardless of the origin of POSH, it doesn't qualify as a relevant Rule of Thumb for sailing.

And I think it's nice when the conversation slides off in unexpected directions.

Here's the Wikitionary entry for posh:
Etymology
Unknown.

Most likely derived from Romani posh (“half”), either because posh-kooroona (“half a crown”) (originally a substantial sum of money) was used metaphorically for anything pricey or upper-class, or because posh-houri (“half-penny”) came to refer to money generally.

A period slang dictionary defines "posh" as a term used by thieves for "money : generic, but specifically, a halfpenny or other small coin". An example is given from James Payn's The Eavesdropper (1888): "They used such funny terms: 'brads,' and 'dibbs,' and 'mopusses,' and 'posh' ... at last it was borne in upon me that they were talking about money."

Evidence exists for a slang sense from the 1890s meaning dandy, which is quite possibly related.

A popular folk etymology holds that the term is an acronym for "port out, starboard home", describing the cooler, north-facing cabins taken by the most aristocratic or rich passengers travelling from Britain to India and back. However, there is no evidence for this claim.

It could also possibly be a clipping of polished.

At the foot of the article there are:
Derived terms
this one took my eye: posh wank - (slang, vulgar) An act of male masturbation with a condom placed over the penis.
Eg. Mark bought a packet of condoms so that he could have a posh wank.

[Democritus]

I think the origin more likely to be found here...the P and O ticket tale leaves me circumspect....read https://www.wordorigins.org/big-list-entries/posh..

[grantmc]

Originally Posted by JBP

Estimating distance offshore:
4 miles - see houses but not individual windows.
2 miles - can see windows but not people
1 mile - can see people

You can see the surface of the water for about 3 miles, or about a total of a circle six miles across, from a a yacht cockpit, given the curve of the Earth. Obviously that increases the higher you are.

So if you can make out waves splashing on a beach or rocks you're within 3 miles off that shore (on a calm day).

Closer in, (helpful when racing round the cans!), an average observer:

• Can see a person (as a dot) at about 2 or 3 km or 1 or 2 miles, provided that the person wears clothing which makes a good contrast to the background.
  
• Can distinguish the upper and lower body of a person at about 500 to 700 meters.
  
• Can distinguish the head of a person at about 250 meters.
  
• Can distinguish the eyes of a person at about 100 meters.
  
• Can distinguish the irises of the eyes of a person at about 25 meters.

These generalisations are in good light, and assuming that the target person is not wearing camouflage. There are similar rules of thumb for gauging distance for building features, ir windows, chimneys etc.

Just to add in a tad of needle, some men probably see distant objects better than women. Women are usually better at colour.
Fun fact most men can recognise a nude female figure at an astonishing distance.

Wondering how many here on CF have built a platform to keep a look out up their mast? Yes I mean some sort of crow's nest.

[Peregrine1983]

Heard this regarding making "Go/No Go" decisions in aviation - "You'd much rather be down here wishing you were up there than up there wishing you were down here."

Same goes for boats and harbors.

[Skylark UK]

When sailing in the shallows, match depth in metres with speed in kts.

[Andrew Lippman]

A great list! There are also a slew of hints for night lights, like "red over white, fishing at night," etc.

The only thing I would add is "one man one job." All too often when something breaks, everyone moves to fix it. Bad idea. I tell crew to stick to their job unless the person fixing the problem asks for help. Otherwise everyone runs to the foredeck to fix the shackle and no one is monitoring the boat.