Has My Boat Flipped?

[Hudson Force]

I used to reach above my head to touch the cabin sole and walk on the floor boards covering my bilge ceiling, but that seems to have changed. I know language evolves and changes and I even learned back in the 1970's that especially good things could be called "bad".

I just opened the "Refinishing Sole" thread, expecting to see how someone was going to replace the headliner in their cabin and it was all about laying down strips of teak and holly on the ceiling!

Some of us are stuck in the past and slow to adapt. Maybe I'd best keep quiet or people will think my boat has flipped!

[skipmac]

Have heard the term bilge ceiling but have to confess cabin sole for the overheard is a new one on me.

[Liam Wald]

And the head is primarily used for your bottom... "but" we won't go there.

[Hudson Force]

The sole is traditionally defined as the underside of a layer or structure just as the sole of the foot or shoe. The cabin sole was originally identifying the underside of the deck. What we use as a flooring surface can't be identified as the underside of a structure. I don't know how this happened, that the top side of a surface is now the sole.

[Lizzy Belle]

Bilge ceiling? Cabin sole? Damn, I need to brush up on my nautical English
When I google Cabin sole (and yes, I had to), this is what it shows me:



Located the Refinishing sole thread, and the OP there asks:

Originally Posted by RDW

If all floor boards are removable, is it easier to refinish in place or remove and work in shop.

So, to me, that makes sense: s/he's working on what I would simply call 'the floor', and a64pilot's answer pretty much covers what I was thinking reading the question.

But now your confusion has me confused

If I translate cabin sole myself, I think 'sole .. the sole of a shoe is the bottom - cabin sole, if a weird term, is the sole (bottom) of the cabin ... probably means the floor'.

As someone who's trying hard to learn more 'nautical English', please can you all agree on the terms first, as it gets a lot more confusing for those of us that are learning when you don't

[Hudson Force]

I believe that "to google" a definition of a term would bring you to the most current usage. Back when the cabin sole was better known as the underside of the deck, "Google" was just Barney's last name. (Google "Barney Google")

I'm not suggesting that we return to the old definitions, but I'm simply sharing my amusement with the change. I'm the one that needs to keep up with the changes!

[Tayana42]

You know most Americans are monoglot (and most are monosyllabic too). I've tried learning "nautical" as a second language but I still stumble and slip into Nauticalish. I'm following the good examples of Zeehag and SailorChic. So I'll call it the cabin sole- floor thingy and the overhead-ceiling thing. Also, I prefer the salon-saloon-settee. Now I do draw a line at calling a bulkhead a wall. No one would do that.


S/V B'Shert

[Lizzy Belle]

Barney Google ... with the goo-goo-googely eyes ..!

Haha, that was fun

Originally Posted by Tayana42

Now I do draw a line at calling a bulkhead a wall. No one would do that.

I did that once ... I ask here on CF what the "wooden walls" are called in English
Did use the " cos it hurt to write it, haha!

I'm still working on "hondekooi" and the couches/settees that run alongside the hull - langsbanken in Dutch - literally translated "alongside couches"

(I always say 'couch' in English, never 'settee'. Maybe I need to look into that too?)

[skipmac]

Originally Posted by Hudson Force

I believe that "to google" a definition of a term would bring you to the most current usage. Back when the cabin sole was better known as the underside of the deck, "Google" was just Barney's last name. (Google "Barney Google")

I'm not suggesting that we return to the old definitions, but I'm simply sharing my amusement with the change. I'm the one that needs to keep up with the changes!

I must be old, I didn't have to google "Barney Google" (and Snuffy Smith).

I share your amusement with the evolution of the language and in fact many aspects of English. It's a weird, funny language and I some say the most difficult for a non native speaker to learn fluently (although having dabbled with Japanese I'm not sure I agree with that).

[boatman61]

If the 'sole' is only the underside of the shoe.. what is the topside that your foot rests on when one wears it called.??
A Sole.. the floor inside a boat is therefore considered the equivalent.
But.. I could be wrong..

[Cadence]

Originally Posted by Hudson Force

I believe that "to google" a definition of a term would bring you to the most current usage. Back when the cabin sole was better known as the underside of the deck, "Google" was just Barney's last name. (Google "Barney Google")

I'm not suggesting that we return to the old definitions, but I'm simply sharing my amusement with the change. I'm the one that needs to keep up with the changes!

If you call your cabin "Floor" the sole, I will know what you mean.

[boatman61]

Using the 'Shoe' analogy your cabin ceiling would be the 'Upper'

[Blue Stocking]

Was cox'ing a 32 Ft, 6 oar Pilot Gig this morning, and asked a crew member sit in the sternsheets. No one knew the term.

[AZ-Oldguy]

(Foot) bedliner

[TrentePieds]

I'm curious -but hopefully not too yellow to ask this :-) - What precisely is a hondekooi aboard ship? Is it the place where the schipperke sleeps? And if so, can you use the words to denote that godforsaken cubbyhole of a berth that's under the cockpit seat in such as Catalina 27s? I used to get queer looks when I told a crew member that she was to sleep in the "afterberth".

I'm a little old-fashioned, and generally fond of preserving things of old, so to me the "sole" is still just what Lizzy and others say it is: that which landsmen would call "the floor". In a ship "a floor" is a structural cross-member running thwartships from futtock to futtock, and its function is to carry the sole. A "ceiling" aboard ship is not the "overhead". It is a lining on the inboard side of the frames. It is there to prevent cargo from contacting the inboard side of the planking and forcing the fastenings. What landsmen call "the ceiling" may be called either an "overhead" or a "deck-head" with the subtle distinction that a "deck-head" is always the physical component of the hull structure, that is to say, it is the "ceiling" under a deck, whereas the "overhead" is rather more vague, sort of like "aft" is more vague than is "on the poop".

But language evolves - even English. Or perhaps particularly English. English has become the lingua franca of the world partly because it was the language of the Empah and partly because it is grammatically so wonderfully slack-ass that you'll generally be understood, more or less correctly, however much you mangle the philology. That is not true of my native language, and I dare say it isn't of Dutch either. If you mess up grammatically in Dutch it becomes "double-dutch" :-)!

One of my treasured possessions is the 1924 edition of "Haandbog i praktisk Sømandskab" (Manual of Practical Seamanship), first published in 1901, I believe, and the Danish merchant marine's equivalent of the USN "Bluejacket's Manual". It is, to say the least, authoritative in regard to the construction and management of large sailing vessels as well as steamships. Because sailing ship crews in those days were multinational, it even has a dictionary of nautical terms given in English, German, French as well as in Danish.

Bei mir, that book should be required reading for any yacht skipper. But so should the Bluejacket's Manual :-).

TrentePieds