Ever since humans first learned to pimp their dugouts with wind assistance we've been inventing systems and gadgets to make the handling of sails and other items of onboard equipment more efficient. Their names fill huge dictionaries with words undecipherable to the landlubber; doubly so in cross-language nautical dictionaries

The language of work provides a vocabulary which often spills outside the narrow confines of an industry. Nowhere is this more true than in fishing. The coble fishermen of Flamborough on the Yorkshire coast and the deep-sea trawlermen of Hull have provided names for sea and land alike.

This is how I like to think of wooden boats. Infinitely repairable, like grandpa’s axe. And even though philosophers have long debated whether an object consisting of multiple parts is still fundamentally the same object if all of its parts have been incrementally replaced over time, very few of us are curmudgeonly enough to question the authenticity of boats like TALLY HO, PEGGY BAWN or VARG