Date: 5 Dec 2012 05:28 am (UTC)
kaigou: (1 Nyanko dances)
From: [personal profile] kaigou
Oi, I recall teaching new rowers and going through the hell of getting them to unlearn the same instinct -- that when you start to lose control, you lock down. You do that with a 12' oar, it digs down into the water, and what was a horizontal lever becomes a vertical one, and whoosh, there goes some poor novice thrown halfway out of the boat. (Actually saw an experienced rower do it once in a race, and was thrown about forty feet free of the boat!) Which in turn at least made me make one less mistake when learning to ride a horse -- when the horse started to panic, the teacher said, "relax! relax! don't tighten your legs!" (because it'd give the horse specific message and just make things worse). I had years of crew to teach me that when things start to go wacky, you intentionally let all your muscles go soft. Horse stopped rearing immediately.

That said, the rest of the explanation, okay, I think I got the gist (thank you! clearly you've been a coach, since you don't mind my not-knowing and uncertain questions). One thing I do twig on is something my friend K also mentioned, and I've still not got a sense of: when the boat jibes. K was mostly talking about the boom swinging around and knocking someone clear off the ship, which had me curious because the pictures I've seen of chinese junks, the bottoms of the sails are at least a foot or two over everyone's head. (And often times, there's also a sun-cover in the way, too, but then, a lot of the junks it seems like the cargo is in the hold and everyone sleeps on-deck, from what I can tell.)

But the way you put it, it sounds like to jibe (jibing?) is not a purposeful thing? As in, the wind shifts suddenly, and takes the sail with it? Or is it more that the sails are full and the shift in direction is too sudden and throws everything off? ...I'm trying to figure out whether with most things equal, jibing is the result of crazy wind-changing directions, or of an inexperienced helm trying to change direction too quickly and/or without proper prep. Or could be either, but the helm would get the blame anyway?

Which makes me wonder about how these things get passed along, how everyone knows what to do. That's more important for my purposes (as a writer) than jargon (since the story doesn't even take place in English, so jargon is kind of catch-as-catch-can or it'll be horribly out of place). I've seen descriptions for some of the larger merchant ships, where the pilot couldn't actually see all that well past the sails, or was in a nice warm room with the whipstaff or tiller and... still couldn't see all that well. So a navigator would be up on the top deck, and yell down what to do next. (Poor navigator, stuck out in the open.) But if whomever is steering chooses to change direction to any degree, it sounds like the sheets also have to be adjusted to take advantage of this. Does the navigator or helmsman have to yell every time s/he does something? Or does the sailing master/captain/whomever watch the helm and anticipate?

I don't think I need a book on jargon quite so much as something that walks me through how the various people on a ship understand, anticipate, and follow each other. Hrmmm. That kind of thing doesn't get shown in a lot of videos, since it's usually just background fixings. ("you, in the back, look like you're busy being sailors! pull on some ropes or something!") Fiction will give you more info, it's just that it's hard to find fiction that doesn't either romanticize it heavily, gloss everything, or use so much jargon I haven't the faintest clue what anyone's doing anywhere. Other than being on a boat. Maybe. Sometimes it's hard to tell, with all the jargon. (Heh.)
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kaigou: this is what I do, darling (Default)
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"When you make the finding yourself— even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light— you'll never forget it." —Carl Sagan

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