Sorry girls, but I probably didn't know the answers. I now teach safe boating classes, and I enjoy boating terminology. We boaters call these words nautical terms. Why some Old Salts call them maritime terms. The very first chapter of the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary Boating Skills and Seamanship Manual, Eleventh Edition deals with the boater's language and its origins.
Some boating terms are so common that they have found their way into our everyday vocabulary.
Take, for instance, the term Blue Monday . Although we may all find Mondays hard to bear after a weekend on the lake, Mondays for members of the British Navy were particulary difficult. You see, the British Navy disciplined soldiers on Mondays for any infractions in the past week. On Monday, for unfortunate British soldiers, the cat was let out of the bag. These types of terms and their historical origins are certainly interesting to know, but even more practical to boaters are terms used to refer to vessels.