Practice your English comprehension: Sailing vocabulary & expressions

Hi guys, welcome back to www.engvid.com.

Today's lesson is a little bit different.

It is based around boats.

Now, the idea for this lesson is that - came from an experience that I had when I was trying

to communicate in a language that was not my own on a boat.

I lived in Spain for a year and a half, and I was invited onto a boat to take part in

a hundred-mile race.

And the other crew, the other guys on the boat didn't really speak much English, or

didn't want to speak much English.

So, it was a test for my Spanish.

So, in this lesson, I'm going to be going over basic boat terminology, particular to

a sailing boat rather than a motor boat.

And then in the second half of the lesson, we will be looking at some idioms to do with

the water and boats.

Okay, so I hope it's interesting for you.

Now, I first did this standing in front of the whiteboard talking about boats when I

was about seven or eight years old, so it feels quite weird to be doing it for YouTube.

Here we go.

So, this is a boat.

There are two sails.

This one is actually bigger than this one, I'm just not very good at drawing.

And this big sail here gives all the power to the boat.

The wind blows and, through clever physics, the boat's able to go through the water.

This one here is called the main sail.

And the smaller one towards the front is called the jib.

And this huge, great big pole, which may be metal or wood, depending on the type of boat,

is called the mast, the mast.

Now, this thing here, you have to be really careful that it doesn't hit your head.

It's called the boom, boom.

Boom!

You don't want it to hit your head.

And sometimes, this will go from this side of the boat, so we're sitting here or there,

and it'll cross to the other side, so you have to duck underneath it.

So, this is where the steering takes place.

You hold this - it's normally wood or some sort of aluminum or something.

It's called the tiller that controls the steering and it connected to the bit that actually

goes down into the water, which is called the rudder, okay?

If you have an anchor, it will be at the front.

You throw it out if you want to, I don't know, go and visit a nice beach somewhere.

Okay.

So, that's our basic, very, very basic parts on a boat.

Now, some basic theory for you.

Let's imagine the wind is coming from here, yep.

You can't go directly into the wind, because it will blow against you and the sail won't

know what to do.

So, we have to bear away from the wind.

We have to turn away from it.

Now, this is the sail, yep.

My hand is the sail, and this is the boat.

So, the closer we are to the wind, the closer the sail is to the boat.

And as we bear away from the wind, we let the sail out, okay?

And if you get here, the sail, the boat will then be here and you want the sail to come

around to this side.

If that makes any sense at all with my hands, okay.

So, there are two points where you'll turn.

You turn there and you turn there.

So, what can you control on a boat?

Well, you control which direction you are going in.

It's called bearing away or bearing up into the wind.

If I turn away from the wind or go closer to the wind.

You can control this main sail, whether it's close or far out, and to have that just in

the right place will affect the speed of the boat.

You also will control, whether the jib is in or whether you're going to let it further

out, depending on the wind direction.

The center board can be all the way down into the water, or you can lift it up.

I'm not going to explain why.

It's complicated.

And you can control where you sit.

So, to help with the balance of the boat, okay?

So, that, in a nutshell, is the basic sort of rules.

The basic idea of sailing.

Now, let's have a look at some idioms.

So, here are our idioms.

First one: All in the same boat.

If we're all in the same boat, like I was when I went on a hundred-mile race and we

were on it for 24 hours, we were all in the same situation.

We were all on the same team.

This idiom, all in the same boat, yep, it's the same for all of us.

The cameraman is working just as hard as I am.

To push the boat out.

Let's push the boat out, meaning let's take a risk.

If you think about the boat that headed off to the New World from Plymouth down in England.

To push the boat out, let's take that big risk.

Ah, I've written this wrong.

To miss the boat.

So, think of that ship going off to the New World.

If you miss the boat, then you are not on it.

And you've missed out on this opportunity.

To miss the boat, to miss an opportunity.

There's a song by Bob Marley, in which he's singing about "I don't want my boat to be

rocked".

Okay, if you rock the boat, you upset the balance.

So, to rock the boat means to unbalance, cause unnecessary problems.

Like ships that pass in the night.

Like ships that pass in the night.

This is comparing two people to being ships or boats.

So, it's like one person gets up very, very, very, very early and comes back just as this

person is going off to do that.

So, like ships passing in the night, they see the lights of the other boat, but that's

it.

And these people, they're on two different schedules, two time tables, and they don't

really see each other.

To jump ship means you abandon the ship that you are on.

So, it means you change what you're doing.

If you jump ship from a business, then you leave it and you go and work somewhere else.

I'll come to our character ones at the end.

Now, the actual process of sailing.

So, plain sailing is when everything is going fine, yep.

The sun's shining, the wind is not too little, it's not too much, and you can just sail.

So, plain sailing, no problem.

This is easy.

To sail through, it means - same idea of the travel being relatively effortless.

If you sail through your exams, then you passed them and it's not too much work and it's,

you know, no problem.

Like, I've got really good grades, great.

I sailed through them.

So, why are we doing these idioms?

What's the point in doing them?

I was just speaking about this, and we decided that the purpose of it is so that you can

recognize them when you're watching a film or you're listening to an audiobook and you

recognize these idioms.

It's nice to understand all of the language when you're watching something, but more than

that, it's good to be able to use this stuff.

So, as we're going through, if you're like, "Ah, yeah, I really like that one", then make

the effort of trying to use it.

To sail close to the wind.

This means to be quite risky, yep.

I showed you earlier that you can't sail directly into the wind, yep.

So, this is impossible, and you're choosing to be just possible, yep.

You're taking risk.

To sail close to the wind, to take risk.

To hit rock bottom.

So, here's our boat, and we can't see that under the water, there is rock.

If you hit rock bottom, then you're in the worst possible situation, because you're going

to drown, maybe.

So, hitting rock bottom, the worst possible place to be.

Now, if we hit the rock, then water is going to start coming into the boat, and we need

to get that water out.

So, we're going to get something to scoop it out, a bailer.

We're going to bail the water out.

So, this is an effort, an attempt to get out of trouble.

So, if someone is in prison and they need to be bailed out, then someone is trying to

get them out of trouble, at least temporarily.

All hands on deck.

Deck is like the surface of the boat.

All hands mean the people who are working on the boat.

So, everyone needs to be here right now to get the water out of the boat.

All hands of deck means everyone help right now.

To show someone the ropes.

Now, if you go onto a big yacht or, you know, one where, like, three masts, a tall ship,

something like that.

You'll notice that it's incredibly complicated, all these different ropes.

And if you're new onto that boat or ship, you'll want someone to explain how everything

works.

You'll want them to show you the ropes.

So, if someone shows you the ropes, then they are giving you basically an induction.

They're giving you a guide to how things work.

To run a tight ship.

A tight ship is a well organized one.

Everything is in the right place.

Now, if you run a tight ship, then you run an organized household or business or whatever

it is.

You know where the money's coming in, you know where it's coming out.

Everything's kind of clean and correct and as it should be.

Now, right at the bottom, we have a couple of more which are sort of describing character.

So, this is a very old expression here, to show your true colors.

Now, back in the time when wars happened on water, Spanish boats - probably the English

did it as well - sometimes hoisted, yep, they lifted up a flag that was not their own to

trick the enemy in thinking that they were someone else.

And when they finally showed their true colors, then the enemy was surprised.

So, if you show your true colors, it means that you actually show that you are bad.

It's normally got a negative connotation, this.

So, maybe if a child is found guilty of stealing from a shop, the parent might say, "Oh, you've

really shown your true colors, haven't you?"

Yeah.

Okay.

To keep one's head - it can be positive as well, but more often, it's negative with this

one.

Next, to keep one's head above water.

If you go under, then you're not surviving.

That's actually a phrase too.

To go under means you're kind of going bankrupt.

So, if you keep your head above water, then you are surviving, just.

To be in deep water.

So, if our boat starts to fill up with water and we are a long way from land, then we're

in deep water.

We are in big, big trouble.

Okay?

So, quite a few useful idioms for you to try and learn and absorb.

Why don't you start that process now by doing the quiz?

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Okay, see you next time.