Schooners

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I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.
John Masefield

I started sailing around on Ocean Star in September but have never really introduced you to her properly, so I thought I would take this opportunity to tell you a bit more about this beautiful vessel.

Ocean Star is a gaff-rigged schooner …”what does that mean?”, I hear you ask Mrs Mott. Well, schooners are a type of sailing boat with at least two masts, where the aft mast (the one at the back) is taller than the foremast (the one in front). Schooners were first built in the 1600s by the Dutch, but came into their own as a way to transport cargo during the early 1800s, when there were thousands plying their trade around the United States. The design also became popular with privateers, (a sort of legal pirate) because they were capable of high speeds and could change course and direction quickly in shallow coastal waters, allowing the pirates to make a speedy getaway.

Then we come to the ‘gaff-rigged’ part. This means that one of the sails isn’t your usual modern triangular shape common to yachts you see sailing off the shore of Devon. Instead, the sail is rectangular in shape and has a boom (a bar or pole) running along the top edge of the sail as well as the bottom edge. The result is a ship that looks more like a pirate ship than a modern cruising school ship!

Ocean Star is filled with strange pieces of equipment and sailing paraphernalia. There are the ‘baggy wrinkles’. No these aren’t a group of old men, but bunches of frayed twine that hang like dead cats from the rigging, stopping the sails from rubbing against the ropes or ‘lines’ as they are known.

At night, have you noticed when walking outside from a brightly lit house, that for a few minutes you can’t see anything until your eyes get used to the dark. On a boat it is very important that your night vision is always good so you can see passing boats or any danger, so when the sun sets over Ocean Star instead of turning on white lights, red lamps are illuminated giving the whole boat an eerie crimson glow. The red light has no effect on your ability to see in the dark, so you can walk outside and immediately see as much as possible.

Sailors also have numerous unique nautical terms to apply to common every day items: the kitchen is the galley, downstairs is called below, the floor is called the sole and the toilet is called the head!

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