On the Ways

In 1952, my family lived on a boat while our house on Siesta Key was being built. Mom’s introduction of this boat explains:

Bucher had found her in Bradenton a couple of days earlier. He took her out in the Gulf and he put her on the ways to make sure she was sound.

I wondered whether readers who had not grown up around boats and nautical terminology would understand what Mom meant. I got my answer when my stepdaughter Kristin Eukel read the chapter. She thought there must be a typo. Was ways supposed to be waves? After I explained the nautical meaning of on the ways, my husband, Tom Rindfleisch, said that he had never heard that usage of ways either.

So for those who are unfamiliar with nautical terminology, the Wikipedia Glossary of nautical terms defines ways as:

The timbers of shipyard stocks that slope into the water and along which a ship or large boat is launched. A ship undergoing construction in a shipyard is said to be on the ways, while a ship scrapped there is said to be broken up in the ways.

So what Mom meant is that my Dad took the boat to a shipyard where she was pulled out of the water and onto the ways. That done, he could walk alongside the ways to get a good look at the hull and verify that it was sound.