"We're heaving to."
In sailing, heaving to (to heave to and to be hove to) is a way of slowing a sail boat's forward progress, as well as fixing the helm and sail positions so that the boat does not actively have to be steered. It is commonly used for a "break"; this may be to wait for the tide before proceeding, to wait out a strong or contrary wind. For a solo or shorthanded sailor it can provide time to go below deck, to attend to issues elsewhere on the boat, or for example to take a lunch break.
The term is also used in the context of vessels under power and refers to bringing the vessel to a complete stop. For example, in waters over which the United States has jurisdiction the Coast Guard may, under Title 14 USC 89, demand that a boat "heave to" in order to enforce federal laws.
Hove to
A sailing vessel is hove to when it is at or nearly at rest because the driving action from one or more sails is approximately balanced by the drive from the other(s). This always involves 'backing' one or more sails, so that the wind is pressing against the forward side of the cloth, rather than the aft side as it normally would for the sail to drive the vessel forwards. On large square rigged, multi-masted vessels the procedures can be quite complex and varied, but on a modern two-sailed sloop, there is only the jib and the mainsail. A cutter may have more than one headsails, and a ketch, yawl or schooner may have more than one sail on a boom. In what follows, the jibs and boomed sails on such craft can either be treated as one of each, or lowered for the purposes of reduced windage, heel or complexity when heaving to for any length of time.
When a sloop is hove to, the jib is backed. This means that its windward sheet is tight holding the sail to windward. The mainsail sheet is often eased, or the mainsail reefed, to reduce forward movement, or 'fore-reaching'. The rudder is placed so that, should the boat make any forward movement, it will be turned into the wind, so as to prevent forward momentum building up. Looking from above, the three relevant items would make something like a Z-shape: jib to windward, main to leeward, and rudder roughly parallel with the jib.
"The heart of the operation. Our Flash Gordon room."
Flash Gordon is the hero of a science fiction adventure comic strip originally drawn by Alex Raymond. First published January 7, 1934, the strip was inspired by and created to compete with the already established Buck Rogers adventure strip. Also inspired by these series were comics such as Dash Dixon (1935 to 1939) by H.T. Elmo and Larry Antoinette and Don Dixon and the Hidden Empire (1935 to 1941) by Carl Pfeufer and Bob Moore.
In Australia, the character and strip were retitled Speed Gordon to avoid a negative connotation of the word "Flash". (At the time, the predominant meaning of "flash" was "showy", connoting dishonesty.) In France, his adventures were published in "Le Journal de Mickey", under the name "Guy l'Eclair". Dale Arden was named Camille in the French translation. In Mexico and some countries in Latin America, the strip is called "Roldán el Temerario".
The Flash Gordon comic strip has been translated into a wide variety of media, including motion pictures, television and animated series. The latest version, a Flash Gordon TV series, appeared on the US Sci Fi Channel in 2007–2008 and then on the United Kingdom Sci Fi channel. A print comic book series by Brendan Deneen and Paul Green and published by Ardden Entertainment debuted in 2008, with the first arc entitled "The Mercy Wars", and is also available on iTunes for the iPod and iPhone. They followed this up with further storylines.
"A Selco-Ramsey 8300 computer system"
This is a fictional computer.
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