"Sailing trip 2004 with Blgg colleagues (part II)" Woudsend Travelogue by Pavlik_NL

The names of a sailing ship's parts makes a first timer truely dazzle. All ropes, lines, sails, parts of the mast and other pieces of the ship, have ther own specific name. Sometimes it indeed seems that our captain is speaking a complete unknown language to us, but hey ... maybe it's Frisian!

No unexpected movements from the sails

Then the great moment of lifting the sails one by one. We are in luck, as the wind is very weak and we can totally relax in this work. We can only imagine what it is like to do this with more wind or even storm. However, when all sails are up and the motor is shut down, we start believing that the present wind is to little to make us sail at all.

Pulling up the main sail

Though the circumstances are easy, we come to the conclusion that putting up the sails is quite strenuous work. Especially when one finds out thet some ropes are entangled or winding the wrong way. Then everything has to go down again to start anew again.

The main sail even catches some wind

and when the main sail is up we notice that it catches some wind and we realy start to sail on the (now weak) power of the wind.

Nooo, don't pull that one ... Paul !

Two Dutch nicknames of ships mates.

Stuntman Jan isn't afraid of anything

When preparing the fok sail we find out that some ropes are realy entangled way up in the bow spreet. Therefore fearless Jan is climbing immediately into the net to get the problem solved.

Theo explaning about going "overstag"

"Overstag gaan" is the activity on a sailing ship when the wind is changed from going on one side into the sails towards the other. This also means that the "giek" (the large horizontal mast that holds the sail at it's bottom side) swings over the ship. Ducking is then - especially with strong winds - quite recommended.