98 Fun Facts About Sailing

What colour is the navigation light on a vessel's starboard side?

Green marks starboard and red marks port, so that two vessels meeting at night can tell which way the other is heading.

Why was the steering oar on early ships placed on the starboard side?

Most people are right-handed, so a helmsman at the stern held the steering oar on the right; ships then docked on the opposite side, which became the loading or 'port' side.

What was the older name for the port side of a ship?

Larboard probably came from 'ladebord', the loading side; the Royal Navy replaced it with 'port' in 1844 because it sounded too much like starboard when shouted.

Which manoeuvre turns a boat's bow through the wind so the wind moves to the other side?

Tacking turns the bow through the wind; a series of tacks in a zig-zag lets a boat make progress toward a destination directly upwind.

What is the lowest inside part of a hull, where water collects, called?

Bilge water is the seepage and spillage that gathers there until a pump clears it out; bilge is also slang for nonsense.

A sailboat stalled head to wind, sails flapping and unable to steer, is said to be 'in' what?

Irons is the word: a boat 'in irons' has stopped inside the no-go zone, where its sails cannot draw, and without headway it cannot be turned in either direction.

A boat sailing at 90 degrees to the wind is on which point of sail?

Beam reach is named for the beam, the boat's side: the wind arrives square across it at 90 degrees, midway between a close reach and a broad reach.

The spar that runs along the foot of a mainsail to control its shape is called what?

The boom takes its name from the Dutch word for a tree or pole; because it can sweep across the boat in an accidental jibe, crews often rig a preventer line to hold it.

What is the line used to hoist a sail up the mast called?

Halyard comes from Middle English 'halier', a rope for hauling; the ending was later reshaped by association with the yard, the spar many halyards hoisted.

The large balloon-like sail flown when sailing off the wind is thought to be named after which yacht?

Sphinx set such a sail in the Solent in 1865, and one theory is that 'spinnaker' grew from sailors mispronouncing her name; dictionaries call the origin uncertain.

A sailboat with a single mast, one headsail and one mainsail is called what?

Sloop comes from the Dutch 'sloep'; set a second headsail on the same single mast and most sailors would call the boat a cutter instead.

A two-masted yacht whose shorter mizzen mast is stepped forward of the rudder post is called what?

Ketch is the rig with the mizzen ahead of the rudder post; move that mast aft of the post and shrink it, and the boat becomes a yawl.

The triangular mainsail rig used on most modern yachts takes its name from which island?

Bermuda gave its name to the rig, which is also called the Marconi rig because the tall stayed mast reminded people of early radio masts.

The word 'catamaran' comes from a word in which language?

Tamil kattumaram means 'logs bound together'; the original craft was a raft of lashed logs rather than a twin-hulled boat.

Which seafaring peoples invented the catamaran and spread across the Indian and Pacific Oceans?

The Austronesians built the twin-hulled and outrigger canoes whose crab-claw sails carried them from Taiwan as far as Madagascar and Easter Island.

One knot equals one nautical mile per hour, which is exactly how many kilometres per hour?

1.852 km/h is exactly one knot because the international nautical mile was fixed at 1,852 metres in 1929; the name comes from the chip log, a knotted line paid out to measure speed.

A nautical mile was historically defined as one minute of what?

Latitude is measured in degrees and minutes of arc along a meridian, and one such minute was the nautical mile; that makes the Earth's polar circumference close to 21,600 nautical miles.

Francis Beaufort, who devised the wind-force scale in 1805, was a naval officer serving which country?

Britain's Royal Navy was Beaufort's service; his original 1805 scale described the effect of wind on a frigate's sails rather than wind speeds.

On which river could early sailors drift downstream and sail back up on the prevailing wind?

The Nile flows north while its prevailing wind blows south, so Egyptian boats could ride the current one way and hoist a sail to come back.

The America's Cup was first raced in 1851 around which island?

Isle of Wight was circled in the 1851 race in which the schooner America beat a fleet of Royal Yacht Squadron yachts, and the trophy took her name.

What informal nickname does the America's Cup trophy go by?

The Auld Mug is a bottomless sterling silver ewer made by Garrard & Co in 1848, three years before it was first raced for.

What design innovation did the 1983 challenger that finally took the America's Cup use?

A winged keel, credited to designer Ben Lexcen, gave Australia II such an edge that the American defenders challenged its legality that summer; the dispute was decided in the Australians' favour.

Which American skipper lost the Cup in 1983 and won it back in 1987?

Dennis Conner lost the Cup with Liberty in 1983 and won it back with Stars & Stripes 87 off Fremantle; the 1992 film Wind was loosely based on the story.

The 2013 America's Cup was raced in which type of boat?

AC72 foiling wing-sail catamarans were the 2013 boats; Oracle Team USA came back from 1-8 down to win 9-8 and keep the Cup in San Francisco.

Which syndicate won the America's Cup in 2017, then defended it in 2021 and 2024?

Emirates Team New Zealand beat Oracle in 2017, then defended in Auckland in 2021 and Barcelona in 2024, far from the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron's home.

Who was the first person to sail single-handed around the world?

Joshua Slocum finished the voyage in 1898; his book Sailing Alone Around the World is a travel classic, and he vanished at sea aboard the same boat in 1909.

What was the rebuilt oyster boat that completed the first solo circumnavigation in the 1890s called?

Spray, 36 feet long and gaff-rigged, could famously hold a course for long stretches with nobody at the helm.

Who became the first person to sail solo, non-stop around the world, in 1969?

Robin Knox-Johnston was the only one of nine starters to finish the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, and he gave his prize money to Donald Crowhurst's family.

Which Golden Globe Race sailor abandoned the race while well placed and sailed on to Tahiti?

Bernard Moitessier used a slingshot to fire a note onto a passing ship, saying he was carrying on 'because I am happy at sea and perhaps to save my soul'.

Who made the first solo non-stop circumnavigation westward, against the prevailing winds, in 1971?

Chay Blyth sailed British Steel around the world against the prevailing winds in 1971, three years after entering the Golden Globe Race with no sailing experience at all.

In 1966-67 Francis Chichester sailed around the world with a single stop, in which Australian port?

Sydney was his only stop in 226 days of sailing; on his return the Queen knighted him with the sword Elizabeth I had used to knight Francis Drake.

In 2005, which British sailor broke the record for the fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe?

Ellen MacArthur's time of just over 71 days beat Francis Joyon's record; she later founded a charity promoting the circular economy.

The Vendee Globe, the solo non-stop round-the-world race, starts and finishes in which French town?

Les Sables-d'Olonne has hosted every start and finish; founder Philippe Jeantot, twice a winner of the stage-by-stage BOC Challenge, wanted a race with no stops at all.

Australia's famous Boxing-Day-start ocean race runs from its largest city to which port?

Hobart is the finish, about 630 nautical miles away; the 1945 original was planned as a cruise until a visiting Royal Navy officer, John Illingworth, suggested making it a race.

Which billionaire's yacht Sayonara took line honours in Australia's deadly 1998 Boxing Day ocean race?

Larry Ellison's Sayonara finished first as a storm sank five yachts and killed six sailors; 55 others were rescued in Australia's largest peacetime search and rescue.

The Fastnet Race is named after a rock off the coast of which country?

Ireland's Fastnet Rock, off County Cork, is the turning mark; a storm during the 1979 race killed 15 competitors, and many safety improvements followed.

The round-the-world race later renamed the Volvo Ocean Race was first sponsored by which British brewer?

Whitbread backed the race from its 1973 start until Volvo took over in 2001; the first edition was won by a Mexican amateur, Ramón Carlín, in his yacht Sayula II.

Which sailor won Olympic gold at four consecutive Games from 2000 to 2012?

Ben Ainslie followed silver in 1996 with four straight golds, then joined Oracle Team USA as tactician midway through the 2013 America's Cup and helped overturn an 8-1 deficit.

Which Olympic single-handed dinghy began as a sketch Bruce Kirby doodled during a phone call?

The Laser grew from the 'million-dollar doodle' Kirby drew while a friend described a dinghy small enough to carry on a car roof; more than 200,000 have since been built.

The Optimist children's dinghy was designed in 1947 by Clark Mills for a service club in which US state?

Florida's Clearwater Optimist Club wanted a waterborne answer to the soap box derby, so Mills drew a simple pram to be built from standard plywood panels.

The clipper Cutty Sark, now preserved at Greenwich, was built in 1869 to carry which cargo?

Tea was the cargo she was built for, but the China route went to steamships within a few years and she soon switched to carrying Australian wool.

The Cutty Sark is named after a character wearing a short shirt in a poem by which writer?

Robert Burns's poem Tam o' Shanter gives the witch Nannie her 'cutty sark', and she is the ship's figurehead.

The clipper era effectively ended with the opening of which two shortcuts in 1855 and 1869?

Panama Railroad and Suez Canal handed the fast routes to steam: the canal gave steamships a short cut to China in 1869, the very year the clipper Cutty Sark was launched.

What is the nautical term for a boat leaning over to one side under the force of the wind?

Heeling is resisted by a catamaran's wide stance, while keelboats rely on ballast low in the keel to bring the boat back upright.

What is the line that controls the angle of a fore-and-aft sail relative to the wind called?

The sheet is a rope, not a sail; it is probably the sheet in 'three sheets to the wind', said of someone drunk.

A boat that keeps trying to turn up into the wind is said to have what?

Weather helm arises when the centre of effort on the sails sits behind the hull's centre of lateral resistance; the opposite tendency is lee helm.

Which sailing craft typically has the least resistance to forward motion of any type?

Iceboats glide on sharp runners with so little drag that they can exceed 60 miles per hour.

What name is given to the calm high-pressure zones between the trade winds and the westerlies?

The horse latitudes lie near 30 degrees north and south; legend says becalmed ships short of water threw the horses they were carrying overboard there.

Which sailors' hailing call did Alexander Graham Bell propose as the way to answer a telephone?

Ahoy was Bell's pick for answering calls, but Thomas Edison's suggestion of hello won out.

Which radio distress call, used by sailors and pilots, was coined from the French for 'help me'?

Mayday echoes the French m'aider and was devised in the 1920s by a radio officer at Croydon Airport, where much of the traffic flew to and from Paris.

What is a sailboat's toilet traditionally called, after its old place at the bow of sailing ships?

The head is named for the front of the ship, where crews used open latrines politely known as seats of ease.

Which James Bond title is also the name of a square sail set above the skysail on sailing ships?

Moonraker sails, also known as moonsails, were square; a triangular sail set in the same spot above the skysail was called a skyscraper.

Which explorer sailed the balsa raft Kon-Tiki from Peru to Polynesia to test a migration theory?

Thor Heyerdahl and five companions spent 101 days at sea in 1947 before the raft smashed into a reef at Raroia in the Tuamotus.

Which media mogul skippered the yacht Courageous to a four-race sweep of the 1977 America's Cup?

Ted Turner beat the challenger Australia in four straight races, three years before he launched CNN.

Which Swedish warship sank less than a mile into her maiden voyage and now fills a Stockholm museum?

Vasa lay on the seabed for 333 years before she was raised in 1961 with her hull largely intact.

The Jules Verne Trophy was first awarded for sailing around the world in under how many days?

80 days was the target Phileas Fogg set himself in Jules Verne's novel, although he had railways and steamboats to help.

Which colour of navigation light does a boat show on its port side at night?

Red marks the port side and green the starboard, so at night a skipper can tell which way another vessel is heading.

Which American brigantine was found adrift and deserted off the Azores in 1872, her cargo intact?

Mary Celeste was still under partial sail when another ship came upon her, the lifeboat missing and the crew never seen again.

Which disease did the Royal Navy fight with citrus juice, earning its sailors the nickname limeys?

Scurvy is estimated to have killed at least two million sailors between 1500 and 1800, reason enough to add lemon or lime juice to the daily grog.

Which of sailing's three great capes lies at the southern tip of South America?

Cape Horn was a milestone on the clipper route, and round-the-world yacht races still send their fleets past it.

Which US president's sailboat Victura goes on display each summer outside his presidential library?

John F. Kennedy kept Victura, built in 1932, at the family compound on Cape Cod, where he and his siblings grew up sailing.

What did Francis Drake rename his flagship Pelican partway through his voyage around the world?

Golden Hind honoured Drake's patron Sir Christopher Hatton, whose family crest showed a hind, a female deer.

Before Captain Cook took command, HMS Endeavour was a merchant ship built to carry which cargo?

Coal was her trade: she was launched at Whitby in 1764 as the collier Earl of Pembroke, and the Navy bought her four years later.

Which actor is the sole cast member of All Is Lost, a film about a lone sailor on a sinking yacht?

Robert Redford carries the whole film alone, and the script gives him only 51 spoken English words.

Which unit of sea depth takes its name from an Old English word for a pair of outstretched arms?

Fathom once meant the span of a man's outstretched arms, and it settled at two yards for measuring the depth of water.

A rapidly falling reading on which instrument warns a sailor that stormy weather is on the way?

Barometer readings track air pressure, and the idea that falling pressure foretells a storm gave rise to the simple weather glass.

Which knot, nicknamed the king of knots, forms a fixed loop at the end of a rope?

Bowline loops are easy to untie even after taking a heavy load, though the knot can work loose when the rope goes slack.

Which navigation method works out a boat's position from its speed, heading and time elapsed?

Dead reckoning was a navigator's mainstay until satellite positioning took over, and the name is not short for 'deduced reckoning', despite the popular myth.

Which type of sailboat has a main hull flanked by two smaller outrigger floats?

Trimaran designs descend from the double-outrigger boats of Maritime Southeast Asia, where the layout still dominates traditional fishing fleets in the Philippines.

Which rig, with a foremast usually shorter than the mainmast, did the yacht America carry in 1851?

Schooner is a word that first appeared in eastern North America in the early 1700s, though Dutch marine artists had been painting the rig a century earlier.

Which traditional sailing vessel trades along the coasts of Arabia, East Africa and South Asia?

Dhow is really a European catch-all: outsiders lumped many Indian Ocean boat types under one word because their Arabian sails looked alike.

Which small, nimble ship type, favoured by Portuguese explorers, were Columbus's Niña and Pinta?

Caravel hulls were small and handy for exploring, while the flagship Santa María was a bulkier carrack.

Which beach catamaran, launched in 1968, was created by a Californian surfboard maker?

Hobie Cat grew out of Hobie Alter's surfboard business: he set out to design a fibreglass catamaran that could be easily beached.

After Magellan's death in the Philippines, which navigator captained the Victoria home to Spain?

Juan Sebastián Elcano chose to keep heading west across the Indian Ocean, the decision that turned a spice voyage into the first lap of the globe.

Which Australian teenager's seven-month solo voyage was dramatised in the Netflix film True Spirit?

Jessica Watson set off aged 16 in October 2009, sailing non-stop and unassisted, so she could not moor in any port or accept anything from another person.

Which skipper led the first all-female crew in a round-the-world yacht race aboard Maiden in 1989?

Tracy Edwards mortgaged her home to buy the second-hand yacht, and King Hussein of Jordan arranged the airline sponsorship that got Maiden to the start.

Which amateur sailor radioed false positions in the 1968 Golden Globe Race and then vanished at sea?

Donald Crowhurst secretly quit the race and hid in the Atlantic for seven months, and his abandoned boat later ended its days as a dive boat in the Caribbean.

The sailing events of the 2024 Paris Olympics were held in which Mediterranean port city?

Marseille hosted the sailing well away from Paris, but the Games' surfers travelled much further: their events were held in Tahiti, more than 15,000 km from the host city.

Which US Navy frigate, launched in 1797 and still in commission, earned the nickname Old Ironsides?

USS Constitution earned the name by capturing HMS Guerriere in the War of 1812, and she is now the oldest naval vessel still afloat.

Which flagship carried Horatio Nelson at Trafalgar and now rests in dry dock at Portsmouth?

HMS Victory spent almost a century as a harbour ship before she was placed in dry dock in 1922.

Which raised platform at the stern of a sailing ship takes its name from the Latin word puppis?

Poop deck comes through the French poupe, meaning stern, and its height made it the natural place to keep a lookout.

The word canvas, the traditional cloth for sails, comes from the Latin name of which plant?

Hemp gave canvas its name through the Latin cannabis, because the sturdy cloth was originally woven from its fibres.

Which English clockmaker built the marine chronometer that let sailors work out longitude at sea?

John Harrison, a joiner by trade, never received the full £20,000 reward that Parliament had offered for solving the problem.

Which everyday phrase began as sailors' shorthand for sailing both into the wind and with it?

By and large joined two ways of sailing, 'by' meaning into the wind and 'large' with it, so a ship that handled well both ways was good all round.

The biennial Transpac yacht race, first sailed in 1906, runs from Los Angeles to which Pacific city?

Honolulu was the goal from the start: the idea grew from King Kalākaua's 1886 invitation to Californian yachtsmen to race over for his birthday.

What is the term for reducing a sail's area to keep a boat stable when the wind grows strong?

Reefing is undone once the wind eases, when restoring the full sail area is known as shaking out a reef.

Which star gives its Hawaiian name to Hōkūleʻa, the canoe sailed to Tahiti without instruments?

Arcturus, known in Hawaiian as the star of gladness, passes directly overhead at Hawaii's latitude, which helps navigators sailing without instruments find the islands.

Which signal flag, hoisted when a ship is about to sail, gave its name to a BBC children's show?

Blue Peter was chosen for the programme to suggest a voyage of adventure, and why sailors call the flag 'peter' is still disputed.

What do sailors call the windless belt near the equator where the two trade winds converge?

The Doldrums could strand a sailing ship for days or weeks, a deadly prospect in the heat when wind was the only way across an ocean.

Which word for gossip began as the name of a sailing ship's cask of drinking water?

Scuttlebutt joins scuttle, a hole cut in the cask for a dipper, and butt, a barrel, and sailors are said to have swapped rumours around it.

Which downwind manoeuvre turns a boat's stern through the wind, sending the mainsail across?

Gybing, spelled jibing in American English, can be dangerous because the sails stay full of wind throughout the turn.

Which kind of tide, the weakest of the lunar cycle, comes at the Moon's first and third quarters?

Neap tides arrive when the Sun and Moon pull at 90 degrees to each other, so the Sun's tidal force partly cancels the Moon's.

The speed unit the knot comes from counting knots on a line paid out behind a ship by which device?

Chip log was simply a piece of wood on a knotted rope: sailors counted the knots slipping through their hands in a set time to get the ship's speed.

Set adrift by the Bounty mutineers, William Bligh sailed an open boat for 47 days to which island?

Timor was the nearest European settlement, 3,618 nautical miles away, and Bligh lost only one man on the way, killed on the island of Tofua.

Which sailor became the first woman to win a solo round-the-world race, the 2022 Golden Globe Race?

Kirsten Neuschäfer also rescued a fellow entrant mid-race, after his boat sank and left him adrift for more than a day in the southern Indian Ocean.

Which sailor turned back into a Southern Ocean storm in the 1996 Vendée Globe to rescue a rival?

Pete Goss spent two days sailing into hurricane-force winds to reach Raphaël Dinelli's life raft, and France awarded him the Légion d'honneur.

Which clipper, navigated by Eleanor Creesy, set a New York to San Francisco record in 1854?

Flying Cloud made the passage in 89 days 8 hours, a sailing record that stood until 1989, when a 60-foot racing sloop finally beat it.

Francis Chichester sailed alone around the world in which ketch, named after a biplane he once flew?

Gipsy Moth IV took its name from the de Havilland Gipsy Moth, the aircraft Chichester had flown solo across the Tasman Sea, fitted with floats borrowed from New Zealand's air force.