New PS reader Ed Marchese recently called to say that he is relatively new to sailing and is bewildered by the abundance of acronyms used in the sailing business; whats frustrating, he said, is theres no place to go for answers. Later he emailed us his “secret list” of “Classifiedese 101,” of which he said, “these may be obvious to the veteran sailor but NOT to a novice!” Well, Ed, here are definitions for some of those perplexing collections of letters on your list.
• ST winches- self-tailing winches.
• PHRF- Performance Handicap Rating Fleet.
• Class sails- sails designed and constructed in conformance with a one-design class association rules.
• Faired foils- keel and rudder that have been sanded fair.
• Autohelm- brand of autopilot made by Raytheon.
• K/CB- keel/centerboard; keel is usually shoal draft and houses the centerboard.
• C/B- centerboard
• Fin Keel w/MARS Keel Bulb- Deep, short keel that has a bulb affixed to its bottom made by the Mars Metal Co. in Burlington, Ontario, Canada.
• Windlass- Mechanical device on foredeck used to retrieve anchor.
• Freeboard- distance between water and rail or edge of deck
• 2 STRMS- two staterooms.
• Repeater- duplicate instrument display located elsewhere from primary instrument.
• Dutchman system- brand name of a mainsail flaking system.
• Full batten main- sail battens that measure the entire width of a mainsail, from luff to leech.
• AP- abbreviation for autopilot.
• Barient self-tailing primaries & secondaries- brand name of winch company now out of business; primary cockpit winches are used for trimming headsail, secondaries for other purposes such as spinnaker, boom vang, etc.
• Awlgrip, Awlgrip hull, Awlgripped mast- brand name of polyurethane paint made by U.S. Paint Co.
