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Thought I’d start a thread on terminology that others could add to. Might help newbies to understand some of the posts.
I’ve seen gunwale spelled a number of different ways on this site. It’s pronounced gunnel, and has been for so long that that spelling is now becoming accepted. (A topgallantsail is pronounced t’gallantsl! And a bowline knot is pronounced BOH-lin or BOH-line.) The gunwale is "the upper edge of the side of a vessel." [thefreedictionary.com]
A scupper is a deck drain, usually for decks of boats. The Whalers have amazing floatation, and I believe the early Whalers’ scuppers were revolutionary in their time. The brass draintubes ARE the scuppers. Check valves (ping-pong-ball-in-a-cage) might be called "scupper valves."
Facing toward the bow of the boat, starboard is to your right, and port is to your left. An easy way to remember that is that starboard and right have more letters than port and left.
The stern refers to the rear or aft part of the boat, while the transom is that part of the boat onto which the outboard hangs. The opposite of aft is forward, toward the bow, as in "the forward locker."
I was wondering what BW itself called the anchor locker on my boat (a 1969 16-footer). I’ve been calling it that. Ut might be called by some yachties a lazarette, but that term is now used primarily for stern lockers in a sailboat.
A bulkhead is a wall in a ship, sailboat, or boat. I’m not sure that any BWs have bulkheads, but maybe the larger cabin boats do. Bulkheads usually lend support to the structure as well as divide spaces in a boat. Freeboard is the height of the hull above the waterline. My boat has about 18" of freeboard. The freeboard of the hull on the outside is called the topsides. The keel is the centermost, lowest part of the hull. It was originally the principal structural member of a ship, to which the ribs were attached.
A cleat is the familiar thingy (great technical word there!) to which one ties his dock lines, but many Whalers' bows have an elegant Norman post, which refers to the whole assembly, with its Norman pin being the functional part. A fairlead keeps anchor lines and dock lines in place and prevent chafe on the boat. The Marinium Bow Bit for classic Whalers:
has fairleads built in. A hawshole is similar to a fairlead, but rather than being a separate part, it is a hole generally lined with a ring through which an anchor line or dock line is passed from a cleat or pin on the boat.
Early Whalers had no cleats at all. The bow line was secured to the Norman post, and the stern lines were attached to the D-rings on the transom, similar to the Bow Eye, which is used to winch the boat onto a trailer. Not sure what the correct terminology is for those stern rings. Anyone?
Rope becomes line when it’s put on a boat, unless it’s used for anchoring. Then it’s call rode. (On a sailboat, some lines are called sheets and some are halyards.)
That’s all I can think of that might be confusing to a newbie. Any others?
can't get the images to work
Edit: That's because you were pointing to the part photo URL, not the part .jpg photo.... thank you, Joe!
Great information................thanks
