JOE IS DEAD | JOE IS DEAD - Page 315

Directionality at sea

Hey look it's that guy from before, he's still here. It's a good thing Cricket is being such a good host to him and keeping him entertained. By the way did you know "port" and "starboard" used to be called "starboard" and "larboard", with the one starting in L as the "left" one, but it was changed because they sound too similar? I don't remember when or under what circumstances that change happened but you can probably look it up yourself using the computer. If you ever need to remember which one is port and which one is starboard (between right and left), you can remember because "starboard" has the same number of letters as the word "right".

Some other directional boat words that are a little less commonly known: You may have heard of bow (the front of a boat), and stern (the back of the boat), but did you know each side is called the "beam"? Just like you can say something is "astern" of your boat, you can say something is "abeam" when it's positioned to either side. Another way of saying "astern" is "abaft", but that can mean behind even if you're not all the way behind the whole ship. There's also the word "athwart" or "athwartships", which means something is positioned in a side-to-side way of the ship, rather than back to front. A square-rigged sail is oriented athwartships, while a fore-and-aft sail is oriented fore-and-aft.

Now that you know all that, I can tell you a joke that my friend Oscar made up:
When is a wind not a wind? When it's abeam.

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