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Charter glossary

64 terms as they are actually used on an Australian charter, written for someone booking a boat rather than sitting a theory exam. Terms marked in prose across this site link back here.

Charter

Bareboat: A charter without crew, where the hirer operates the vessel. In Australia this runs as a Class 4 hire-and-drive operation under the operator’s certificates.
Charter resume: A one-page summary of your sailing experience, used by bareboat operators to decide whether to hand over a vessel. A voyage table of five specific lines beats a paragraph of adjectives.
Handover: The briefing and inspection at the start of a bareboat charter, typically one to three hours. Photograph existing damage, write down the radio schedule, and ask which anchorages the operator would avoid today.
Sail guide: A professional skipper who sails the first day or two of a bareboat charter, hands over when satisfied, then leaves. Often optional, sometimes required, and frequently the difference between sailing and being refused.

Regulation

Certificate of Operation: The certificate held by the charter business, covering its safety management system: how skippers are assessed, how the weather call is made, how incidents are handled.
Certificate of Survey: The certificate held by the vessel, recording the maximum number of people aboard, the operating area, and often the minimum crew. It is the document that decides where a boat may legally go.
Class 1: A domestic commercial vessel service that carries passengers. A professional master is responsible for the vessel, and their decisions on route and safety are final.
Class 4: The hire-and-drive category of domestic commercial vessel operation, which is the legal basis of Australian bareboat chartering. You take the helm and carry the consequences of your decisions.
Marine park zoning: The rules that decide where you may enter, anchor and fish. In the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, green zones are closed to fishing and some areas are closed entirely.
Master: The person legally in command. On a skippered or crewed charter the master decides the route and whether the trip proceeds, and that decision is not negotiable on the day.
Operating area: The limit on a survey certificate, running from smooth and partially smooth inshore waters through defined offshore distances to unlimited. It is a certificate question before it is a weather question.
Survey: The assessment of a commercial vessel against the National Standard for Commercial Vessels, resulting in a Certificate of Survey with its stated limits.

Money

Bond: A security deposit held against damage, usually authorised on a credit card at handover and released after the boat is checked in. On bareboats it can run to thousands of dollars.
Damage waiver: A daily fee that reduces your insurance excess. It rarely reduces it to zero, and commonly excludes the tender, the outboard, the sails and any grounding.

Vessel

Beam: The width of the boat at its widest point. Catamaran beam is what buys the living space, and also what decides whether a marina berth will take her.
Berth: Two meanings, both common on charter paperwork: a sleeping place aboard, and a marina parking space. When an operator says a boat sleeps eight, they mean berths, not cabins.
Bimini: A fabric sun cover over the cockpit. In tropical Australia it is not a luxury, and its condition tells you a lot about how a charter fleet is maintained.
Cabin: An enclosed sleeping compartment. A four-cabin boat is not an eight-adult boat unless four couples are happy sharing doubles.
Catamaran: A twin-hulled vessel. Level decks, shallow draft, far more living space and easier motion at anchor, at the cost of upwind performance and marina fees.
Davits: The arms at the stern that hoist and carry the tender. Getting the dinghy up on davits each night is how it survives the week.
Displacement: The weight of water a hull displaces, which is the boat’s weight. Heavy boats move more kindly in a sea; light boats accelerate and stop faster.
Draft: How deep the boat sits. The number that decides which anchorages, bars and creeks are available to you. Catamarans typically draw far less than monohulls of the same length.
Ketch: A two-masted rig with a shorter mizzen mast aft of the main. Several Australian heritage and classic charter vessels are ketches.
LOA: Length overall. Charter fleets often advertise a length class rather than true LOA, so ask for the real figure when berthing or budget depends on it.
Monohull: A single-hulled sailing vessel. Sails better upwind, costs less to charter, heels under sail, and is the choice of people who want the sailing rather than the floor space.
Sloop: A single-masted rig with one headsail. The commonest configuration on charter monohulls and the simplest to handle short-handed.

Aboard

Galley: The boat’s kitchen. On a charter catamaran expect a two or three burner cooktop, a modest fridge, limited freezer, and no oven worth planning a meal around.
Head: The marine toilet, and by extension the compartment holding it. Charter listings quote heads and showers separately because they are often not the same count.
Painter: The bow line on a tender. Chafe through a painter and the dinghy is gone, which is why it is one of the most claimed items on charter insurance.
Provisioning: Stocking the boat with food, drink and consumables. Either you shop, or the operator packs it for a fee. Plan water and ice as carefully as meals.
Saloon: The main indoor living space. On a charter catamaran it is usually at bridgedeck level with all-round windows, which is most of why families pick cats.
Tender: The dinghy, usually an inflatable with an outboard, that gets you ashore. Treat it as the most stealable and most damageable thing in your care.

Sailing

Apparent wind: The wind you feel on deck, which is the true wind combined with the boat’s own movement. It is why a fast catamaran feels windier going downwind than a slow one.
Furler: The gear that rolls a sail away around its own stay or boom. Almost universal on charter boats because it lets a small crew reduce sail quickly.
Halyard: The line that hoists a sail. If a halyard is led to a powered winch, say so in your charter resume; if it is not, expect to work.
Heel: The sideways lean of a sailing monohull under press of sail. Normal, alarming to first-timers, and absent on catamarans, which is why families often choose a cat.
Mainsail: The principal sail set behind the mast. On charter boats usually reefed early and often, because a small crew would rather be underpowered than overpowered.
Reef: Two meanings. To reef is to reduce sail area. A reef is also the coral structure, which in Queensland is both the attraction and the hazard.
Sheet: The line that controls a sail’s trim. Loaded sheets under winch are the main injury risk on a charter boat, particularly to hands and fingers.
Windward: Towards the wind. Sailing to windward is where monohulls earn their keep and where a charter catamaran will disappoint anyone expecting performance.

Anchoring

Anchorage: A place to anchor with holding, shelter from the expected wind, and room to swing. Charter operators usually publish a list of approved anchorages and a shorter list they will not let you use.
Bridle: A line rigged between a catamaran’s two bows to spread the anchor load. Setting it properly is part of anchoring a cat and is usually covered in the handover briefing.
Ground tackle: The whole anchoring system: anchor, chain or rope rode, windlass, bridle and snubber. The most important equipment on a bareboat, and the most commonly damaged.
Holding: How well the seabed takes an anchor. Sand and mud hold well, weed and coral rubble hold badly. Good holding in the wrong wind direction is still a bad anchorage.
Rode: The chain or rope between anchor and boat. How much you let out, relative to depth, is the scope, and it is the commonest thing charterers get wrong.
Scope: The ratio of rode let out to water depth. More scope means better holding. Operators usually specify a minimum, and the anchorage may not have room for it.
Swing room: The circle a boat needs to turn around its anchor as the wind shifts. Crowded anchorages run out of swing room before they run out of space.
Windlass: The powered winch that raises the anchor. Never let it take the full load on a bridle without a snubber, and never put a hand near a moving chain.

Navigation

Chart datum: The reference level that charted depths are measured from, usually close to the lowest expected tide. Charted depth plus tide height is the water you actually have.
Chart plotter: The electronic chart display at the helm. Treat it as an aid, not a truth: carry paper or a second device, and keep a depth sounder in view.
Knot: One nautical mile per hour. Also the confusing bit of charter vocabulary: New South Wales ties its licence threshold to boat speed in knots.
Neap tide: The smaller tidal range around the first and last quarter moon. Neaps mean weaker streams in passes and less water over shallow entrances.
Spring tide: The larger tidal range around new and full moon. Springs mean stronger streams through passes and bigger differences between high and low water.

Weather

Cyclone season: In Australia, officially 1 November to 30 April. Cyclones can occur outside it. It drives tropical charter seasons, insurance terms and cancellation clauses.
Fetch: The distance of open water the wind has blown across. Long fetch builds bigger waves, which is why a 20-knot afternoon is a different sea in a sheltered bay and in an open strait.
MetEye: The Bureau of Meteorology’s gridded forecast viewer, useful for seeing how wind is expected to vary along a coast rather than across one broad forecast area.
Sea breeze: An afternoon onshore wind driven by land heating, reliable in summer in southern Australia. It is why a calm morning on Port Phillip is not a forecast for the afternoon.
Squall: A short, violent increase in wind, often with rain. Summer squalls in northern Australia arrive fast and are a common reason a charter day is cut short.
Trade winds: The steady south-east winds that dominate the tropical Australian dry season, roughly May to October. They are the reason the Whitsundays charter season is a winter season.

Hazards

Bommie: Australian term for an isolated coral head rising from deeper water. Often unmarked, frequently just below the surface, and the reason reef pilotage is done in good light with someone forward.
Lee shore: A shore the wind is blowing onto. The thing you do not want downwind of you when the anchor drags at three in the morning.

Safety

EPIRB: Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon. Registered, in date, and part of the required safety equipment. Find out where it is during the briefing, not during the emergency.
Seacock: The valve on a hull opening. Knowing where every one is, and that they all move, is part of a competent handover.
VHF: The marine radio you will use for daily schedules with the charter base, for anchorage etiquette, and for emergencies. Channel discipline is covered at handover.

Missing a term you met in a charter contract? Tell us and it will be added. For the regulatory vocabulary in context, see safety and commercial vessel rules; for what an operator will ask of you, see qualifications and briefings.