Sailing Terms You Didn’t Learn in Sailing School

Sailing Terms You Didn’t Learn in Sailing School

“Gunwale” or “Gunnel”? “Warp”? Why sailors talk funny.

When you first start learning to sail, you expect to pick up a few new words — like tack, gybe, and sheet. What you don’t expect is that half of them are pronounced nothing like they’re spelled, and the other half sound suspiciously like words you already know, but mean something completely different.

Take gunwale. In writing, it looks like “gun-whale” — which sounds like an unpleasant naval weapon. But every seasoned sailor will tell you it’s pronounced gunnel. Why? Tradition. Why break the habit of a few hundred years of confusing outsiders?

Then there’s warp. In normal life, warp is something that happens to wood when it’s left in the rain. On a boat, a warp is… a rope. But not just any rope. Oh no, ropes are called lines, sheets, halyards, and warps, depending on what job they do. Unless you call them “ropes,” in which case someone will correct you within 0.3 seconds.

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A Few of My Favourite Nautical Oddities

• Sheets – Not bed linen. These control the sails. If someone says “Let go the sheet!”, they’re not redecorating your cabin.

• Head – The toilet. So if you hear “Go to the head,” don’t look for a leader’s office.

• Boom – A horizontal pole that will attempt to knock your hat off.

• Kicking strap – Also known as a kicker, this isn’t part of your trousers.

• Painter – No, not an artist. It’s the rope at the bow for tying the boat up.

• and don't even get me started on Thwart.

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Why It Matters

Aside from making you sound like you know what you’re doing, understanding these terms stops you from doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. Mishearing “Let go the sheet” as “Let go the sheeting” can turn a controlled manoeuvre into an impromptu swimming lesson.

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Learn the Language

If you want to go from confused landlubber to confident crew, I’ve put together a list of 75 sailing terms that will make your time on the water far less baffling (and possibly more impressive at the yacht club bar). If you want to find out what the thwart is then you will find it here in the link.

📖 Read them here: 75 Sailing Terms You Need to Know

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Final Thought

Sailing terms are part of the charm of the sport. They’re a connection to hundreds of years of tradition — and a built-in conversation starter when you casually drop “gunwale” into a sentence and someone says, “A what?”