A Gallimaufry of Nautical Terms

Aside: Before the nautical terms... One of my faithful readers — whom I know only from the blog: I think she discovered it on Cruisecritic.com — did the math I didn’t do in yesterday’s ‘Just the stats, ma’am’ post.

Re: Potable water consumed: 38,675 cubic meters = 10,216,854.1 US gallons or 8,507,310.6 Imperial gallons! TEN+ MILLION gallons of water!

Heading for Boston on BA flight #213, May 5 — Words and phrases from a talk given by Robin, the onboard naturalist… and from Captain Knutsen’s daily ‘nautical term of the day’ when he gave his noontime status update on the PA system, beginning, ‘This is your designated driver from the bridge…’ If he came on the PA system and said, ‘This is the captain….’ we knew it was serious — like the Gulf of Adan pirate warning, or alerting us to the helicopter that would be hovering over us to drop a stretcher to take an ailing crew member off the ship, which happened somewhere in the south Pacific.

‘Ship shape and Bristol fashion’ — Bristol had particularly high standards and insisted that ships in port be well cleaned when they docked — to improve smell and remove disease

‘Cut and run’ — cut the anchor line to escape danger (thereby losing the anchor)

‘Cut to the chase’ — cut the anchor line to pursue the enemy

‘Crack on with it’ — a ship traveling fast may make a crack-ing noise

‘Footloose’ — when the bottom of the sail is loose and flapping

‘OK’ — au quai, ergo, safe in port

‘Tidy’ — from the word tides, which are orderly and generally predictable

‘The whole nine yards’ — 3 masts with 3 sails on each

‘Whistle down the wind’ — to abandon something or let it go

‘Scuttlebutt’ — ‘a cask on shipboard to contain fresh water for a day’s use,’ ergo, a shipboard ‘water cooler’ where people collected to gossip

‘Nail your colors to the mast’ — will not surrender

‘Rope yarn Sunday’ — sailors’ personal time, when they could mend their clothes or hammocks (U.S. Navy)

Plus…

Thalassocracy — ‘a state with primarily maritime realms, an empire at sea (such as the Phoenician network of merchant cities) or a seaborne empire’ (Wiki)

Triskaidekaphobia — fear of the number 13 #