After hanging out with San Diego sailing enthusiasts, Martha picked up several bits of slang and jargon. Catenary describes the desirable curve of an anchor chain, from Latin catena, meaning “chain.” A chain that is not pulled up correctly runs the risk of forming castles, irregular piles of links that require untangling or descastling. The route along the coast of Baja California going south from San Diego is usually pleasant and known as the Baja ha-ha (which is also the name of a well-known regatta), but traveling in the opposite direction, from the tip of the peninsula, can be grueling and is known as the Baja bash. One must always be on the lookout for a BOSS, or “big old steel ship,” and sailors approaching their home port like to say they’re nearing the barn. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Sailing Slang and Jargon”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. Here in sunny San Diego, I’ve been spending time lately with sailing enthusiasts. And of course, for me, half the fun is just listening to their language.
Right.
For the longest time, they were saying lat-long, and I didn’t know what they were talking about.
Latitude and longitude?
Yes. Yes. What’s the lat-long? And then I learned the word decastling, which has to do with when you’re pulling the chain on an anchor.
The chain can tend to castle. You know, it can tend to sort of pile up.
Yeah, yeah.
So you have to de-castle the chain.
Oh, interesting.
Isn’t that cool? The little mounds of chains.
I can picture that.
Yeah.
And then another word was catenary curve, which just made me fan myself. Because catenary comes from a Latin word, catena, which means chain, like cadena in Spanish.
Concatenation, which is a chain of events. And the catenary curve is what you want your anchor chain to look like. You don’t want it pulled tight. You want kind of a curve to it. So I was just, I was just thrilled to be having all these conversations with language that I wasn’t familiar with at all. These folks were planning to sail along the Baja California Peninsula.
And what I learned is if you’re going south from San Diego, it’s relatively easy. And that’s called the Baja Ha Ha. But if you’re coming up north, you’re going against the current sometimes and going right into the wind. And that’s called the Baja Bash for reasons you can’t imagine.
And one of the things that makes it particularly challenging is that there’s always got to be somebody on deck looking out for a boss. Do you know what a boss is?
A rock sticking up? I don’t know.
It’s a big oncoming steel ship.
Oh, wow. Yes, yes. It’s like the final boss in a video game.
Right. And speaking of final, they’re all trying to, if they’re coming up the coast, they’re trying to get back to the barn.
Oh, nice. I’ve heard that one. That’s great.
So you didn’t go down with them all the way to Ensenada or something, or Cabo even?
Gosh, no. No, I’ve been out in the bay and a little bit beyond that, but that’s for another time, I think.
That’s fantastic. That’s some great castling.
Yeah, castling.
I used to do that with a chain necklace that I had. You can stack it and search away, right?
Oh, I hadn’t thought about that.
It falls one way, one moment, another way, and another moment.
It’s interesting.
Yeah, canceling.
We know that you have hobbies and pastimes, and there’s a lot of language. You don’t think much of it.
Let me tell you, we would love to hear about it.
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