Of course, in the turbulent corporate seas of today, Arlo and most of his shipmates would have been thrown overboard long ago to lighten the payload, and the ship would be crewed by foreign nationals who are willing to subsist on hardtack and won’t sue when they’re flogged. Actually, this sort of thing was happening to merchant mariners long before the rest of us ever saw it coming. Well, no one literally was thrown overboard that I’m aware. Anyway, that’s the good thing about a cartoon job.
Daysailing
By Jimmy Johnson
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147 responses to “Daysailing”
Wouldn’t hard a-port put them on the rocks? Or is that the joke?
So true, Jimmy!
Phil,
No, the wheel is aft. Port would be away from the rocks.
Rusty
The one good thing about meetings…they don’t usually involve having to do any real work.
Don’t know from boats, but in an airplane, the pilot has to coordinate rudder movement (around the yaw axis) with wheel or stick movement (around the roll axis) to turn efficiently. Oh, and use elevator movement (around the pitch axis) to control nose attitude. But at least we don’t have to fiddle around with sails. 🙂
GR6, you left out them things called flaps and slats, them are the aeroplanes sails.
The president of the company makes me sit in meetings about stuff that I have nothing to do with, hope it’s not a problem some day if he comes around saying, “hey, what is it you do here?” he may find out I have usually 2-3 hours a day of work max, well, I’m close enough to retirement, I could handle getting scaled back to part time or something
Rusty: I always did have trouble with left and right. I get in trouble at dances when the caller calls for a left-hand star or allemande-right. That’s why they’ll never put he at the helm of a ship.
Phil, recruits in basic training are also left-right challenged. It’s still amazing how quickly they learn their “military left” from their “military right.”
Good morning, Villagers. If they try to put me at the helm of a ship, I’ll just point to Jackie 😛
🙂
Phil, I had a computer instructor in college (FORTRAN class – that dates me LOL) who we observed holding his hands out vertically, thimbs touching, making kind of an “H” or goalpost shape…he explained he had trouble with left &right sometimes, and if he did that, his left hand would look like an “L”. Always remembered that! 🙂
Rusty
Sorta, sand, but not necessary for steering the craft. 🙂
To be over the age of 50 and work for a corporation is to walk around all day conscious that there is a bullseye on your back. Come October I will have been out of that milieu for nine years. Somebody asked me the other day if I “missed it”. I must have looked at the person like he had lobsters coming out of his ears because he quickly added, “I guess not”. He was right.
Good plan, Lily.
On a previous job, the boss would meet with senior staff once a week, said meeting scheduled for one hour. But I had discovered that it was easy to get her to, as we said in high school, “chase rabbits”, so if I were not really pressed for anything to do, I could ask a few key questions and maneuver her into taking up the entire morning for the meeting.
It was a little better than talking client service calls or making cold calls.
John, on the bright side, if your president doesn’t know what you do, he probably also won’t know which VP or manager to tell to fire you. 🙂
Rusty, if you learned Fortran, you and I are of an age, because I did also…Fortran II. Holding up both hands to see which makes an ‘L’ probably wouldn’t go over so well in a contra dance. I’ve thought about taking a marking pencil and marking my hands.
I seem to recall that the helm-order convention changed at some point in history. So it may depend on what year Arlo is daydreaming about.
Jackie can tell us, if she’s finished doing laundry. 🙂
And Lily can tell us about marking patients’ limbs prior to surgery. Someone you definitely do not want to get confused about right and left is a surgeon.
You may have something there GR6, I seem to remember that “starboard” came from the Viking long ship “Steer board” side of the ship that the rudder was hung. All the Viking movies and TV shows I have seen have the “Steer board” on the Port side;)
Could the movies be wrong? This Viking ship was built by a well known local school teacher from my home town. Looks like he got it right.
http://explorationvacation.net/2014/01/26/hjemkomst-center-moorhead-minnesota/
If left, right is challenging; think of the poor accountant who must keep her debits and credits in balance.
Beloved sea captain finally retired. For decades, every morning, he had opened the ship’s safe and read from a small slip of paper. The day after his retirement, his successor, former first mate, opened the safe to see what words of wisdom had inspired him all those years. “Port is left, starboard is right.”
Those of us challenged by Port-Starboard have jackets with red/green sleeves or suspenders on our pants or foul weather gear that are red/green and often marked “Port-Starboard”, I had such a tee shirt too.
And Port=Left and Starboard=Right, the shortest words and longest words match. And “Red on the right returning” if I am remembering my marker buoy for shipping channels right.
The sea cock in my brain has drained most of this knowledge out!
Schooners have wheels at the back of the aft cockpit (rear) like Jimmy’s did, not in front with someone standing behind them like in movies. A sloop or similar boat may have a wheel or a tiller or even be sailed with lines/rope instead of a tiller. To further confuse things there are some boats (we owned one) where you shove tiller in the totally opposite direction than you would a “normal” sloop rig.
So the direction you steer might be counter intuitive to what you’d think. I bet Rusty knows all this better than I do!
And I sure as heck can NEVER remember even basic racing “round the buoy” rules! My philosophy of life is the bigger boat rules, so I give way to anyone that can run me down!
I will see if I can link my “boat speak” humor email I got yesterday.
Love, Jackie Monies (still doing laundry!)
I neglected to say that all those memory reminders do absolutely no good when the boat is on a lee shore and you’re being blown into rocks. I just get hysterical.
Love, Jackie Monies
I think I told the story about the time I was given the helm of the Memphis Queen III during the return leg of a Mississippi River dinner/dance cruise. I do recall that turning the wheel right steered the boat to the right when I docked it. And that no one got in our way.
http://yourboatphotos.com.s3.amazonaws.com/2684.jpg
Traveling this afternoon. Catch you on the flip side, good buddies.
Jackie, does the clothing reverse the markings when you’re facing aft? If not, your going to be aft backwards. 😉