Knowing Your Fender from Your Tender

Virtually nothing on a ship has a name that fails to boggle the mind.  Whether a direction, a place on board or a ‘thing’ on the ship.  They all have a special name.  Some are very obscure such as a ‘boomkin’; nothing to do with exploding family members at all I might add!  We will skip the more obscure in favour of the day to day terms that are used onboard.

So lets start with the two in the title…

Fender. This is a vital piece of equipment as it protects the yacht owners not inconsiderable investment.  These are the large sausage shaped (some are round) things that are tied to the ship (very important to do this) and dangled over the side to protect the hull from damage by other ships, jetties and other solid objects.
The more one has hanging over the side the better.  Fenders should be kept clean and if the inflatable type – inflated. If you really want to look after your fenders and the ships hull fit fender socks.

Tender. When you need to get ashore you take the tender.  Essentially it’s the ships ferry.  Used to carry passengers and crew from ship to shore.  They come in all shapes and sizes.  Some are rigid or solid and others inflatable, an RIB (Rubber Inflatable Boat) and then there is the hybrid the semi-rigid, which is a bit of both.  On the left we have a rigid but very old tender and on the right a semi-rigid, so called because the bottom section is rigid and the top is inflatable.  As an aside, ships can be described as being 'tender' if they have a tendency to heel (lean over) easily.

< - A retired rigid tender

A semi rigid tender ->

No tender would be of any use without a painter. On the right hand picture you can see it.  The line/rope that is tied to the front that is used to prevent your pet tender from running off without you.  Of course how you tie the painter to your ship or jetty is very important too but knots we will address in another article.  The tender on the left is in need of a painter amongst other things.

Fairlead. These come in all shapes, sizes and designs.  Here is one which can be seen on superyachts.
As you can see the mooring line, the black one, ‘leads’ ‘fairly’ between the two rollers.  The white rope I suspect is for a fender and I would not be too happy with this arrangement as the mooring line can chafe or snag against the fender line.

Mooring lines are often tied off to cleats.  Of which this is a lovely example.

More commonly though cleats are more likely to look like the one below.  Notice how the rope is wrapped around the cleat in a figure of eight.

This is very important because it prevents the line jamming.  Some people like to end the last turn by flipping the loop over which prevents any chance of the line unwrapping itself.  This is how this line has been ended, the top 8 is tied in such a way that the free end is under the cross over and then wound neatly around the cleat.

Samson post. As you can imagine this sounds like something strong and it is and needs to be.  Most commonly found at the front of a ship it is a large heavy post which will take a number of ropes or perhaps on some vessels an anchor line.  They could also be used for towing.  Most of them have a pin through to prevent a looped rope from slipping off.  This one does not.

The last is the block. Don’t call it a pulley, they are only used on land.  This beautifully varnished one is a double block because it has two ‘sheeves’.  The ‘sheeves’ are the metal grooved discs between the ‘cheeks’.  The block with it’s rope would be called a block and tackle.  That’s it for now.  Keep visiting the site as we will be adding more.