No Clue What a Tack Is

This post written from the Atlantic Ocean, about three miles east of Cumberland Island, Ga. Sailing up the coast at about two knots. Conditions look favorable for an overnighter. Currently sunny, 70s with east winds 5-10 knots.

From the New York Times Opinion Section:

Lately I’ve been thinking about the word “vang.” It is a sailing term, and if you look it up in the glossary of Royce’s “Sailing Illustrated,” you find that it refers to a line to prevent “the peak of a gaff from falling off leeward.” That is how it goes when you’re learning a new technical vocabulary. The language seems self-enclosed at first, each new definition an opaque cluster of words that themselves need defining. I was taught, during vocabulary in grade school, to try using a new word in a sentence. “There is a vang.” “Can someone show me the vang?” Those are my best efforts so far.
Full Article

I struggle with the language problem when I write the blog and when I have folks on the boat. Yesterday when I wrote about anchoring, I originally called the rope connected to the anchor a "rode". This is the correct nautical term for it. But I know that there are readers who wouldn't know what I was talking about. So I changed it to "line", which is the more general term for any rope on a boat. I figured most people would be familiar with that term.

I don't know a lot of the terms myself. I learned a them as a kid at sailing camp or in some class, but there have been periods of years when I didn't own a boat and didn't go sailing. It's easy to forget all the correct nautical terms when your boating experiences are mostly casual.

I'm relearning a lot of the terms now that I'm on the boat every day. In case you didn't get the pun in the title to this post, the clue, tack and head are the three corners of a triangular sail.

Also, I'm getting pretty good at tying a bowline knot quickly. I was taught it in the Boy Scouts, but in a pretty useless way. I never had reason to tie a bowline until recently.