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BRICK 100 no longer close-hauled, so grab that rope attached to the little sail—the one you were just holding when you were sheeting it in—and release it from its cleat, gently letting it out until I say stop or until you have ascertained through observation of the telltales that the sail is properly trimmed. Do this at once, as I need to attend to maintaining our current course.” But who has time to say all that when the wind might shift again? Optimally, the crew member would not have to be told but would notice the shifty conditions with the sheet in their hand instead of “setting and forgetting” it, since this is more or less their only job. As satisfying as boat speak is, it’s even more gratifying not having to say anything at all. There was a difference in how our skipper spoke to us in our first years of racing Wednesday nights at the club and how he spoke when he was on land again, recapping and reviewing the race with other skippers, tall cans of Old Milwaukee in their hands. I stood shyly aside, not knowing many people beyond our crew. By the picnic tables, wind conditions and tacking decisions would be discussed, praise given, regrets expressed. They spoke in what sounded like English, but sailors have their own impenetrable dialect. I listened with my attention slipping in and out, catching what I could understand, confused as to why the same story was recounted over and over again. I wouldn’t know the pleasure of retelling, rehashing, of filling in gaps and correlating information, until many summers into sailing. Until I knew my job well enough or until I had accumulated my own small victories and griefs. Then I could spend more time observing how other boats were overlapped at a mark rounding, struggling to sheet in a jib under heavy winds or taking a different tack, literally. I particularly like to compare notes with other foredeck crew, who, like me, rolled and danced around the bow on downwind legs, lifting poles and helping sails as rain slicked the foredeck or lake water sprayed pant legs. I would hear the boat phrases come out of my mouth, self-consciously, and watch for confusion or correction. I wanted ardently to sound like a sailor since I didn’t look or feel like one. Nautical terminology is rooted in Old and Middle English, imported by way of Germanic and Norse roots. Its monosyllabic, grippy, and sticky sounds harken back to the flexible clinker-built ships of the Viking times that wove their way through the Baltic sea carrying cargo or invaders, or to medieval galleys and long ships powered by both oars and sails. While ships have evolved and adopted new technologies, terms such as bow and stern remain unchanged, recalling centuries of use. In boat words, you can hear the creak of wood timbers, commands shouted to crew across an eighty-foot vessel pitching in autumn winds, and the wind itself, knocking bodies and shoving objects about, filling the sails with sudden gusts, then dropping to leave hopes limp. The idiosyncrasies of the language are further intensified by the fact that no two skippers or sailors do things in the same way, and no two sailboats have the same set-up. Despite this singularity of personality and capacity for customization, I still find myself reaching for some rule or generalization for what the quirks of the language might reveal about a collective identity. These questions on the relationship between language, experience, and identity are not particular to
page 103
PHOEBE WANG 101 sailing. When I began teaching, I absorbed the lexicon of learning outcomes and lesson plans. There’s the patter of hockey announcers that I picked up while watching the Canucks, full of offsides, penalties, dekes, and wraparound goals. The academic jargon of literary criticism, with its examination of liminalities, marginalities, and subversions. The shoptalk of writers when they compare publishers and contracts and mull over drafts and intentions. Sociolinguists call this kind of manoeuvrability through different registers code-switching, and I switch into these specific registers with varying degrees of consciousness. But I have always found it easier to sound like a teacher, an academic, or an obsessed Canucks fan than to sound like a sailor. The difference is that when I felt unsure about whether I identified with each of those roles, I could build confidence through speaking the language until it no longer felt like a performance. Yet using the language of sailing wasn’t enough to solidify my capacity. I needed to know what I was doing. Nor were descriptions and diagrams sufficient—the understanding

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BRICK

100

no longer close-hauled, so grab that rope attached to the little sail—the one you were just holding when you were sheeting it in—and release it from its cleat, gently letting it out until I say stop or until you have ascertained through observation of the telltales that the sail is properly trimmed. Do this at once, as I need to attend to maintaining our current course.” But who has time to say all that when the wind might shift again? Optimally, the crew member would not have to be told but would notice the shifty conditions with the sheet in their hand instead of “setting and forgetting” it, since this is more or less their only job. As satisfying as boat speak is, it’s even more gratifying not having to say anything at all.

There was a difference in how our skipper spoke to us in our first years of racing Wednesday nights at the club and how he spoke when he was on land again, recapping and reviewing the race with other skippers, tall cans of Old Milwaukee in their hands. I stood shyly aside, not knowing many people beyond our crew. By the picnic tables, wind conditions and tacking decisions would be discussed, praise given, regrets expressed. They spoke in what sounded like English, but sailors have their own impenetrable dialect. I listened with my attention slipping in and out, catching what I could understand, confused as to why the same story was recounted over and over again. I wouldn’t know the pleasure of retelling, rehashing, of filling in gaps and correlating information, until many summers into sailing. Until I knew my job well enough or until I had accumulated my own small victories and griefs. Then I could spend more time observing how other boats were overlapped at a mark rounding, struggling to sheet in a jib under heavy winds or taking a different tack, literally. I particularly like to compare notes with other foredeck crew, who, like me, rolled and danced around the bow on downwind legs, lifting poles and helping sails as rain slicked the foredeck or lake water sprayed pant legs. I would hear the boat phrases come out of my mouth, self-consciously, and watch for confusion or correction. I wanted ardently to sound like a sailor since I didn’t look or feel like one.

Nautical terminology is rooted in Old and Middle English, imported by way of Germanic and Norse roots. Its monosyllabic, grippy, and sticky sounds harken back to the flexible clinker-built ships of the Viking times that wove their way through the Baltic sea carrying cargo or invaders, or to medieval galleys and long ships powered by both oars and sails. While ships have evolved and adopted new technologies, terms such as bow and stern remain unchanged, recalling centuries of use. In boat words, you can hear the creak of wood timbers, commands shouted to crew across an eighty-foot vessel pitching in autumn winds, and the wind itself, knocking bodies and shoving objects about, filling the sails with sudden gusts, then dropping to leave hopes limp.

The idiosyncrasies of the language are further intensified by the fact that no two skippers or sailors do things in the same way, and no two sailboats have the same set-up. Despite this singularity of personality and capacity for customization, I still find myself reaching for some rule or generalization for what the quirks of the language might reveal about a collective identity.

These questions on the relationship between language, experience, and identity are not particular to

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