Two words undo the whole timetable above them

A small printed card, five crossings ruled out in columns: 07:00 08:20 1h20, 09:30 10:50 1h20, 12:15 13:40 1h25, 15:45 17:10 1h25, 19:00 20:35 1h35. Under a rule at the bottom, four words: WEATHER PERMITTING.

Everything above that rule is stated as fact. The rule itself says otherwise.

Why does a ferry timetable print its own excuse in advance?

Because the operator knows something every other timetable in this set doesn't have to admit: the sea gets a vote.

A train runs on rails a company owns outright and a bus runs on a road that isn't going anywhere; a crossing runs across open water that can, on a given day, simply refuse. WEATHER PERMITTING isn't a disclaimer bolted on afterwards — it's the one honest line on the card, printed in the same typeface as the times because it belongs there just as much as they do.

Why do the crossings get slower as the day goes on?

Because the timetable is already telling you something before you reach the caveat at all.

07:00 to 09:30 both run 1h20, but by 12:15 the crossing has slipped to 1h25, and the last sailing at 19:00 takes 1h35 — longer than the first sailing of the day, on the same route, in the same boat. A crossing time that grows across the day is usually current running against the vessel by evening, or a longer approach once a tide has fallen. Either way, the timetable is conceding ground gradually, and WEATHER PERMITTING is only the last and largest concession.

What's the actual decision in choosing which crossings to print?

How many sailings a day earns a place on a card someone can read in one glance.

Five is enough to show a full working day without turning the sheet into a dense grid — an early one, a late one, and enough in between that the gaps between them are themselves informative. Very few sailings would tell you almost nothing about the rhythm of the day; every departure a company runs in a week would stop being something you can read at speed.

Can I put a real ferry operator's name and times on this?

Not their actual schedule and livery without asking, though the format of a crossing table belongs to nobody.

A real operator's route name, colours and published times are that business's own material, licensable the way any company's schedule is if a real crossing is the point of the shirt. An invented route, running between places that exist only for this card, is usually the better choice anyway — it can carry the exact five times that mattered on the day someone actually made the crossing, rather than whatever a real operator happens to publish this season.

Does this work for a crossing that isn't a big passenger route?

Yes — the small operators are often the ones worth remembering exactly: an island supply run, a foot-passenger hop to a lighthouse, a private charter that only sails on request.

The five-row table works the same size whether it's describing a route most of a town relies on or one that exists for a single family's regular trip to their own island. WEATHER PERMITTING means the same thing either way.

Isn't a timetable that admits it might not run just a useless timetable?

No — it's a more accurate one, and the accuracy is the entire value of a printed schedule.

A timetable that promised certainty on water would be lying, and anyone who's used a real crossing knows it. Printing the caveat in the same weight and size as the times is the same honesty a tide table trades in: both documents are predictions about the sea, and both are more useful for saying plainly where their own certainty runs out.

Does it print well?

Yes, as a plain ruled grid rather than anything with a gradient in it.

Cream and yellow on slate blue keeps the card legible at a distance, the way it needs to be pinned to a wall by a harbour. The five rows want setting as a simple table with hard rules between them — the same treatment a shipping forecast's ruled sea areas use to stay readable — and WEATHER PERMITTING earns the bottom line to itself rather than being squeezed in smaller than the times above it.

How do I get one made?

Describe the crossing at JustOG — the times, how many sailings a day, and whether the caveat stays on the card. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the shop.

The last sailing on the card is the slowest one, and it still says weather permitting.