Parts of a yacht and directions on board

Why sailors have their own words

On a boat, an instruction has to be understood first time — often shouted over the wind, at night, by someone who is cold and tired. “Left” and “right” are useless when two people are facing different ways, and “over there” means nothing at all. So sailors use a small set of exact words for the parts of the boat and for directions around it.

A navigator uses these words constantly: to report a hazard, to say where a buoy is, to describe what the boat can and can’t safely do, and to give and follow steering orders. In Lesson 1 you met the navigator’s four questions. This lesson gives you the language to answer the third one — how do I get there safely? — out loud, with the rest of the crew.

Bow, stern, port and starboard

The front of the boat is the bow and the back is the stern. Stand on board facing the bow: the left-hand side is port and the right-hand side is starboard.

Port and starboard belong to the boat, not to you. Turn round to face the stern and the port side is on your right — but it is still the port side.

Some ways to remember them:

• Port and left both have four letters.
• Port is always red and starboard is green, as on a boat’s navigation lights. “Is there any red port left?” puts red, port and left together.
• “Starboard” comes from the old steering board: before rudders were hung on the stern, ships were steered with a large oar over the right-hand side. To keep that oar clear, they came alongside the quay — the port — on their left-hand side.

The parts a navigator needs to know

You don’t need to name every fitting on a yacht to navigate one, but these parts come up in every plan and every report:

• Hull — the watertight body of the boat.
• Waterline — where the hull meets the water.
• Keel — the heavy fin under the hull. Its weight helps keep the boat upright and its shape resists the wind pushing her sideways. It is usually the deepest part of the boat.
• Rudder — the blade under the stern that steers. It works by deflecting the water flowing past it, so it steers best when the boat is moving.
• Transom — the flat surface across the back of the stern.
• Cockpit — the sunken area, usually near the stern, where the crew sit, steer and handle the sails. The steering compass and the instrument displays are usually here.
• Helm — what you steer with: a tiller (a lever fixed to the top of the rudder) or a wheel. The person steering is also called “the helm”.
• Mast — the tall spar that holds up the sails.
• Boom — the spar along the bottom of the mainsail, pivoting on the mast.

Measurements that decide where you can go

Five measurements tell a navigator where the boat can and can’t go. You’ll find them in the boat’s handbook — learn them for any boat you sail on.

For a typical 10 m cruising yacht: beam about 3.3 m, draught about 1.8 m, air draught about 15 m and freeboard about 1 m. Every boat is different, so always use your own boat’s numbers.

Draught is the number you’ll use most. If the water is shallower than your draught, you are aground. Much of navigation — reading depths on the chart (Lesson 8), working out the tide (Module 4), watching the depth sounder — is about making sure there is always enough water under the keel.

Air draught matters whenever there is something overhead. It includes everything on the masthead — the VHF aerial, wind instrument and light — not just the mast itself.

Directions on board

Inside the boat, towards the bow is forward and towards the stern is aft: “go forward and get the fenders”, “the chart table is aft of the mast”. Abaft means further aft than something. The middle of the boat is amidships.

Out beyond the boat:

• Ahead and astern — in front of and behind the boat. Right ahead (or dead ahead) is exactly in line with the bow; right astern (dead astern) is exactly behind. “Going astern” also means moving backwards.
• Abeam — straight out to the side, at right angles to the boat: “abeam to port”. Anything further aft than that is abaft the beam; anything further forward is forward of the beam.
• On the bow — halfway between ahead and abeam (45° off the bow): “on the starboard bow”.
• On the quarter — halfway between abeam and astern (45° abaft the beam): “on the port quarter”.

Two more words describe direction relative to the wind, not the boat. Windward is towards the wind: the windward side of the boat is the side the wind blows onto. Leeward (said “loo-ard”) is away from the wind — the sheltered side. A lee shore is a coast the wind is blowing towards. Keep well off one: if anything goes wrong, the wind will push you onto it.

Saying exactly where something is

“On the starboard bow” is fine for a quick shout, but sometimes you need to be more exact. There are three common ways to do it.

Relative bearings

A relative bearing is the angle from the bow to the object, measured clockwise in degrees. A full circle has 360°, so relative bearings run from 000 (right ahead) round through 090 (the starboard beam), 180 (right astern) and 270 (the port beam) back to 360, which is the same as 000. Bearings are always written and spoken with three figures — 045, said “zero four five” — so they can’t be misheard.

Red and Green

This system splits the circle along the boat’s centreline and measures from the bow, 0° to 180° on each side: Green to starboard and Red to port, the colours of the sidelights. Green 045 is on the starboard bow; Red 090 is abeam to port; Red 135 is on the port quarter. Right ahead and right astern need no colour. To convert, Green is the same number as the relative bearing, and Red is 360 minus the relative bearing.

The clock

Imagine a clock face on the boat with twelve o’clock right ahead: three o’clock is the starboard beam, six o’clock right astern and nine o’clock the port beam. Each hour is 30°. It is quick and easy to understand, which makes it popular with lookouts.

“Fine” means closer to right ahead (or, on the quarter, closer to right astern); “broad” means closer to the beam. So something just abaft the beam, roughly 100–120° from the bow, is broad on the quarter, and something within about 30° of right astern is fine on the quarter. These words have no official boundaries: the angles here are only a rough guide (they are the ones this course’s tools use), and the tools call anything within about 10° of the beam “abeam”.

A relative bearing changes every time the boat turns, even if the object hasn’t moved. To turn it into a bearing from north you need the boat’s heading — the direction the bow is pointing, measured clockwise from north. Lesson 6 covers this properly; here is a first look.

Navigation lights: a first look

At night, a boat under way shows sidelights: a red light on the port side and a green light on the starboard side. Each shines from right ahead round to 22.5° abaft the beam on its own side, an arc of 112.5°. A white sternlight shines over the 135° astern. Together they cover the whole horizon.

Because the colours are fixed to the sides, a light tells you which side of another vessel you are looking at. See only her red light and you are looking at her port side; only green, her starboard side; both, she is heading straight at you; only her white sternlight, you are astern of her.

Putting it to work: reports and helm orders

A good lookout report answers four questions, in this order:

1. What is it? “Ship”, “buoy”, “fishing pots”.
2. Where is it? “Fine on the port bow”, “Green 030”, “two o’clock”.
3. How far off? “About a mile”, “two cables”. A cable is a tenth of a nautical mile, about 185 m (Lesson 5).
4. What is it doing? “Getting closer”, “crossing left to right”, “stopped”.

So: “Ship, fine on the port bow, about a mile, getting closer.” Then keep watching and report again if anything changes.

Steering orders use the same language: “come to port”, “steer one-five-zero”, “midships” (put the rudder straight) and “steady” (hold the heading you are on now). Under sail you will also hear “bear away” (turn away from the wind) and “head up” (turn towards it). Whoever is on the helm repeats the order back, so the skipper knows it was heard: “Steer one-five-zero.” — “One-five-zero, steering one-five-zero.”