SIDE stays...?

[Wooden Boat Fittings]

.
Are there other people out there who are as aghast as me at the apparently-growing use of the term "side stays" for those lines of rigging that seamen have called shrouds for pretty-well as long as boats have been sailed?

Or (for JohnB :) ) am I just being a crusty old curmudgeon?

Mike

[Michael Beckman]

never heard them called side stays

i actually clicked on this so i could tell you that you were using the wrong term. >_>

[P.L.Lenihan]

You're hanging with the wrong crowd Wooden Boat Fittings! Move away, I say, move away from the beer fridge :D

Peter

[SchoonerRat]

I'm not sure aghast is the proper term for how I feel. I've heard them called that for ever, even by seasoned sailors. I can't be sure, but I think I even once read a reference to side stay as a proper alternative. I've always called fore and aft rigging stays and athwartship rigging shrouds, but I guess I've heard side stay often enough to not be offended by it.

[bamamick]

I call them both. Who cares?

Mickey Lake

[John B]

A stay stops a spar falling over forward or backward and a shroud stops em going over sideways.

[bamamick]

:)

Mickey Lake

[Wooden Boat Fittings]

A stay stops a spar falling over forward or backward and a shroud stops em going over sideways.

Eggsackly! Thanks John. I guess that makes us two old curmudgeons, right?

[martin schulz]

Which Side-Stays are you talking about?

The port-stays or the starbord-stays

;)

[Kaa]

A stay stops a spar falling over forward or backward and a shroud stops em going over sideways.

Not always. Whisker stays are stays and they stop the bowsprit from going sideways.

Kaa

[SchoonerRat]

And you also have a bobstay to stop the sprit from going up.

I think that technically they are all stays, and shroud is the term specificaly used for a sidestay. I could be wrong, but this has always been my impression. Anybody got a dictionary?

[Canoeyawl]

Whisker stays and bobstays are foreign aft
Boats don't have "side stays" but telephone poles might.

[bott]

Actually, as I know rigging and tradition, the standing rigging for a bowsprit should be named just as if it were a mast, but tilted forward. So "whisker stays" are more properly bowsprit shrouds (unless, you have whisker poles, then you have whisker shrouds). And the term bobstay is proper, as it still retains for-n-aft stability.

This point is really driven home when sailing a vessel with a sprits'l, where is lifts adjust the sprit-yard in a horizontal plane, and the braces lift and lower the yardarms (effectively, depending on the "jauntyness" of the spar).

[Kaa]

Actually, as I know rigging and tradition, the standing rigging for a bowsprit should be named just as if it were a mast, but tilted forward. So "whisker stays" are more properly bowsprit shrouds (unless, you have whisker poles, then you have whisker shrouds). And the term bobstay is proper, as it still retains for-n-aft stability.

Interesting. I do believe you're right. Moreover, bowsprit shrouds win by the geeky new-fangled Google metric:

Google search for "bowsprit shrouds" returns 2,200 hits.

Google search for "whisker stays" returns only 306 hits.

Hmm...

Kaa

P.S. ... and an interesting quote from Brion Toss who is kinda an expert :D (http://www.briontoss.com/spartalk/showthread.php?t=708): (http://www.briontoss.com/spartalk/showthread.php?t=708%29:)


First of all, you need whiskers to have whisker stays; spreaders on the bowsprit shouds give you the right to use this wonderfully salty term.

[John B]

factoid, the word. Something accepted as truth because its written down.
The bobstay is fore and aft rigging, whiskers should be whisker shrouds ( not stays), because they impart lateral stability, but in the same way that marconi has become accepted as meaning bermudan instead of the original meaning' lots of wire holding a tall mast up 'applied to the last of the gaff racers, language does change. My rigger calls em whisker stays too.Doesn't make it right though.

[SchoonerRat]

Common usage is what makes it right. Whisker stays is the only term I have heard applied to those particular pieces of wire in 35 some odd years of adjusting them. It's like calling the helmsman a driver. I've been driving a boat all my life, sailors are always asking for permission to drive my boat. Is driving the correct term? It is if you're driving a boat, but not if you're a sea going lawyer demanding the absolute proper dictionary use of words that were defined hundreds of years ago.

I'm not certain how I got drug into this discussion, but I've had my say, and I've had enough. I'm gonna go look for something silly to argue about!